From Sea to Shining Sea – how different courts deal with serial ADA lawsuits.

August 23, 2019 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - Hotels, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Web Access, ADA Website Accessibility Tags: ADA defense, ADA drive-by, ADA serial litigation, ADA standing, ADA website, Maximilian Travis, Vaughn & Associates

Mountains near Telluride Colorado Today’s blog concerns a couple of cases reported to me by colleagues in California and New York. They give a snapshot of how courts at both ends of the country are thinking about ADA lawsuits. The snapshot at left is pretty much in the middle, near Telluride Colorado.

Welcome to the Hotel California

I was alerted to the California case, Whitaker v. ARS REI USA Corp., by Vaughn & Associates, who represent the defendant. The case illustrates the odd yin and yang of litigation in California, where the shifting tides of state law have altered the litigation landscape in recent years. To understand why requires a little background. California’s Unruh Act parallels the ADA but provides for statutory damages of $4,000 per violation. The ADA does not provide for damages, so an Unruh Act claim is better for the plaintiff. That damage remedy has driven ADA litigation at volumes that make California a clear leader in the number of ADA lawsuits filed if state and federal court cases are counted. More

Quick Hits – Presidents Day 2019 Edition.

February 19, 2019 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - Hotels, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, FHA Tags: ADA defense, ADA hotels, ADA Mootness, ADA serial litigation, ADA websites, FHA Defense, Scott Johnson, Starbucks

President Theodore Roosevelt at Yosemite It’s been a year and 43 blogs since last President’s Day and like Yosemite falls, the broad picture of ADA and FHA litigation in America remains about the same despite the passage of time. A huge majority of the cases filed are from serial litigants operating as part of a lawyer sponsored litigation machine whose goals have nothing to do with accessibility and everything to do with making money. Congressional action aimed at serial litigation was misguided and is now doomed. Individual judges are taking important stances against abusive litigation, but the overall landscape remains about the same. More

Quick Hits – the ADA and FHA Memorial Day edition

May 30, 2018 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Internet Web, ADA Mootness, FHA, First Fix Then Fight Tags: ADA defense, ADA drive-by litigation, ADA Mootness, ADA pleading, ADA serial litigation, FHA Defense

The last couple of weeks brought a variety of decisions, most falling in to one of the familiar patterns for ADA and FHA litigation, but one or two presenting novel defenses and interesting judicial reactions.

A very interesting question of standing.

Johnson v. Castro et al, 2:16-CV-00658-MCE-DB, 2018 WL 2329249, at *3 (E.D. Cal. May 23, 2018) makes a very interesting point about standing, one related to some of the standing questions raised by other recent cases dealing with the plaintiff’s ability to take advantage of the goods and services of a public accommodation.** In Johnson the plaintiff suffered from cerebral palsy and made various claims concerning entrances and access to the restrooms. In response to the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment the defendants provided evidence that the restroom issues had been remediated and challenging the existence of a problem with the doors. They added that the plaintiff’s disability was so severe he could not eat or drink without assistance from the restaurant owner, who cut up his food and fed him at the table. The owners argued that the plaintiff was incapable of taking advantage of the restaurant without help they were not obligated to provide and therefore could not prove any accessibility had caused him harm. The Court found this at least raised an issue of fact:

“Consequently, Defendants raise a question of fact as to whether Plaintiff legitimately could have eaten at the Restaurant without assistance going well beyond any accessibility requirements mandated by either the ADA. . .”

ADA standing and pleading – common sense from the 8th Circuit

May 7, 2018 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Litigation Procedure Tags: ADA drive-by lawsuits, ADA serial litigation, Doran v 7-Eleven, Steger v Franco

In Davis v. Anthony, Inc., 886 F.3d 674 (8th Cir. 2018) the Eighth Circuit adopted rules concerning standing that place common sense limits on the ability of serial plaintiffs to expand their lawsuits any time they are threatened with mootness. The decision is worth a detailed look because it rejects the “deterrent effect” doctrine created by the Ninth Circuit, refuses to expand the Eighth Circuit’s own precedent in Steger v. Franco, Inc., 228 F.3d 889, 894 (8th Cir. 2000), and carefully limits the plaintiff to her pleaded allegations. In doing this it points the way to a new more positive view of those with disabilities, treating them not as frightened children requiring the protection of the courts and lawyers, but as adults with a right to sue for real injuries, but no need to be patronized by the courts. More

Does motive matter in an ADA case? Sometimes.

February 2, 2018 By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation Tags: "drive-by", ADA serial litigation, ADA standing, ADA Testers

“Tester standing” is an area of ADA litigation that seems to create a good deal of confusion, so it is worthwhile to take a look at the 4th Circuit’s recent decision in Nanni v. Aberdeen Marketplace, Inc., 2017 WL 6521299 (4th Cir. Dec. 21, 2017). As is often the case, the decision illuminates the requirements for standing but contains the seeds of future confusion.

The Fourth Circuit’s decision concerned a motion to dismiss made at the very beginning of a lawsuit, but it is easier to understand the position of a tester under the ADA by starting at the end of lawsuit – the trial. That is when, as the saying goes, the truth don’t lie.

To prevail in an ADA case based on architectural barriers the plaintiff must prove that he was injured by an ADA violation before he filed suit and that he will likely be injured in the future unless that violation is remediated. Let us suppose that an individual like Mr. Nanni testifies that he went to a mall or store but had some difficulty getting out of his car because the parking space was not properly constructed. He then testifies that he is likely to go back in the future, and if the space is still not corrected he will have the same problem. Perfect. Injury before suit, injury in the future, he has standing.

Now let us suppose the plaintiff admits he went to the mall as a tester looking for ADA violations. He also admits that he has filed many lawsuits against businesses like the mall that are not close to his home. Given a long list of businesses he sued he can’t recall when if ever he returned to any of them. Nonetheless he claims that he will return to the defendants’ business in the future and will therefore be harmed by any barriers to access that are not fixed. The judge looks him in the eye and decides he is lying. This is what happens at trial – the judge or a jury decides who is lying and who is telling the truth. Because the judge doesn’t believes he will return the judge also thinks there is no likelihood of future injury. The plaintiff loses no matter how real the ADA violations might have been because without that future injury he does not have standing to ask for injunctive relief.

Now let’s wind back the clock to the beginning of the lawsuit. Same plaintiff, same history of lawsuits, but this time the judge is not listening to testimony at trial but instead reading the complaint. It says all the same things the plaintiff intends to say at trial. The judge throws the case out, saying that the complaint isn’t sufficiently persuasive to satisfy the requirements of Rule 8 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as interpreted in the Supreme Court’s decisions in Iqbal and Twombly.* That’s the case that went to the Fourth Circuit, which said two uncontroversial things:

Being a tester does not disqualify a plaintiff from filing a lawsuit because you can be a tester and still be injured by an ADA violation. The plaintiff may have been looking for ADA violations, but he still couldn’t get out of his car, and that is precisely the kind of injury the ADA was intended to prevent.
Being a tester didn’t mean the plaintiff did not intend to return. He said in the complaint that he intended to return and at the beginning of the case, before the judge looks the plaintiff in the eye and hears his testimony, the judge has to assume that what the complaint says is true.

The first point is one that is often mis-stated, with plaintiffs and others saying that “testers have standing.” The drive-by litigation boom has been fueled by the notion that claiming to be a tester and seeing a possible violation is sufficient, but there is no rational theory of standing that would allow this. Testers don’t have standing because they are testers, they have standing because they have been injured.

The second point is that while being a tester is not sufficient, but it also doesn’t disqualify the plaintiff. This is something the district court got right and it would have been helpful for the Fourth Circuit to confirm it.

The real controversy about testers is usually not whether there is a past injury, but whether there is going to be a future injury. What the district court said, in essence, was that with Nanni’s litigation history he would have to plead a lot of details to make a plausible case that he would return. The Fourth Circuit rejected this, observing that because being a tester did not disqualify a plaintiff there was no reason to think testers had an extraordinary obligation to provide details at the beginning of the case. This is not by any means a radical view.

Then, unfortunately, the Fourth Circuit says this: “At bottom, we reject the proposition that Nanni’s motivations in pursuing his ADA claim against Aberdeen deprive him of standing to sue in these proceedings.” 2017 WL 6521299, at *8. This is at best only half true. A plaintiff’s motives can deprive him of standing if, based on those motives, the court finds after a trial that there was no intent to return. Motives are important evidence about future behavior and are therefore relevant. What the Fourth Circuit should have said, and perhaps meant to say, is that motive does not necessarily deprive a plaintiff of standing. At the pleading stage a tester has no higher pleading obligation than any other plaintiff, but at trial a tester may have some explaining to do. It’s an important difference, and one that needs to be more clearly recognized.

* See our earlier blog “Iqbal, Twombly and the ADA”

It would be well worthwhile for any reader of this blog or our previous blog on internet accessibility cases to check the latest blog at williamgoren.com, which discusses the same issues from a different perspective.