“Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes” was William Prescott’s famous advice to the colonial soldiers defending Bunker Hill, and that kind of patience can be important to ADA defendants as well. Property owners and operators sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act always face a strategic choice: Should they simply remediate and settle, or should they attack the plaintiff’s standing to bring the lawsuit, which is frequently dubious at best. In most cases remediation and settlement is the best choice because the cost of defending the lawsuit and winning is more than the cost of remediation. Sometimes, though, a plaintiff just won’t settle. He or she may insist on work that the ADA doesn’t require or attorneys’ fees that are too high for the settlement to be reasonable. When that happens, and a legal battle is inevitable, choosing the right strategy is the key to minimizing expense while achieving a good outcome. A California case, Feezor v Patterson, 896 F.Supp.2d 895 (E.D.Cal. 2012) shows how patience worked to the defendant’s advantage and lead to a complete win without unnecessary expense. More
Monthly Archives: August 2013
Reminders – the same news, some good, some bad.
By richardhunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA, ADA FHA General, ADA FHA Litigation General, Restaurants, Retail, Shopping Centers Tags: ada litigation, ADA pleading, ADA standing
A couple of recent cases caught my eye because they serve as reminders of the persistence of certain strategic considerations in ADA defense. The first, Taylor v. Wing It Two, Inc., 2013 WL 3778315 (S.D. Fla. 2013) demonstrates the perils of a settlement that isn’t followed by complete remediation. The defendant had settled a previous ADA lawsuit but had not, it appears, actually remediated every ADA violation. The Court rejected the argument that this settlement bound the new and different plaintiff in part because the new plaintiff sued for violations that were not part of the earlier settlement. A settlement without full remediation is a flimsy shield against later lawsuits. More