Today’s Google news brought another batch of outraged articles about serial ADA plaintiffs and legislators looking for solutions to the ADA litigation epidemic. The serial filer was in the Wichita, Kansas area, and the legislators were in Colorado, but otherwise the stories were pretty much the same as the stories last week, and the week before, and the week before that. Business owners say they were surprised to find that they were not ADA compliant, and lawmakers say the law should require a pre-suit demand so businesses have a chance to fix their problems before they get sued. The plaintiff, or his lawyer, always points out that the ADA has been in effect for 25 years, so it shouldn’t really be news. More
Counter clutter – Is it a barrier or a bad policy under the ADA?
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA Point of Sale, Restaurants, Retail Tags: ADA Policies, Point of Sale, POS clutter, POS Marketing, Reasonable modification, Starbucks
Point of sale merchandising has ADA implications that many retailers overlook. POS devices that are not accessible by the blind are claimed to violate the ADA and have attracted the attention of major disabilities rights groups.* A recent case from California, Johnson v. Lababedy, 2016 WL 4087061 (E.D. Cal. Aug. 2, 2016) serves as a reminder of how more mundane sales efforts also have ADA implications, and that just how the ADA applies may require some careful analysis for both plaintiffs and businesses. More
Arizona Attorney General Intervenes to stop abusive ADA litigation
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation Tags: ADA lawsuit abuse, Arizona Attorney General, serial litigation, Steven Trotten, Strojnik
This is just a quick note about a major development in the story concerning thousands of lawsuits filed in Arizona by a purported disability rights group. The attorney involved, Peter Strojnik was mentioned in two of my blogs earlier this year. The Economist covers serial ADA litigation – Hunt quoted and Cheap Standing under the ADA. After investigations by the press and local authorities the head of the plaintiff organization has resigned and the Arizona Attorney General has intervened in an effort to shut down the litigation mill. You can read the most recent in a series of stories by Steven Trotten HERE and read the Motion to Intervene HERE. More
Good news for the Fair Housing Act: TWC puts a dent in dialing for dollars
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA FHA General, ADA FHA Litigation General, Apartments, FHA, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Reasonable accommodation Tags: City Vision, dialing for dollars, Fair Housing Advocates, HUD complaint, Patrick Coleman, Texas Workforce Commission
I’ve written before about the dialing for dollars phenomenon in Fair Housing Act claims (click here) and about how cheap standing facilitates litigation aimed more at profit than progress (click here). There is good news on both fronts from the Texas Workforce Commission, which recently dismissed several FHA complaints because the organization that filed them, a private corporation called Fair Housing Advocates, could not demonstrate it had standing. Fair Housing Advocates is operated by Patrick Coleman, one of the two owners of City Vision, a similar organization devoted to making money by means of HUD complaints. Citi Vision appears to have abandoned the dialing for dollars business earlier this year, probably because TWC started dismissing its complaints for lack of standing. More
Does DOJ’s new definition of disability matter? Maybe.
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA FHA Legislation, ADA Policies, ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, ADA Web Access Tags: ADA regulations, ADA rulemaking, definition disabled, Department of Justice
On August 11, 2016 the Department of Justice finally issued its regulations implementing the expanded definition of disability contained in the 2008 Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments. The actual content of the regulations, which apply to Titles II and III of the ADA, will already be familiar to most businesses because they are intended to be consistent with the EEOC’s 2011 regulations implementing the 2008 ADAA for Title I. Equally important, they appear after eight long years of lawsuits brought under the 2008 ADAA in which the courts and litigants had to wrestle with the meaning of the statute. More