There’s a new kid on the block in the world of serial accessibility demands.** It’s not a boy band, its “Legal Justice Advocates.” They’ve been sending demand letters to apartment owners, mortgage lenders and real estate agents claiming to represent an outfit called “Victims Awareness, Inc.” which, they claim, is a “national not-for-profit” with disabled members “throughout the nation.” Victims Awareness, Inc., they claim, uses experienced testers (who are not claimed to be disabled) to check on the accessibility of websites. The firm then sends a demand requiring remediation of unspecified defects and money for the lawyers. After seeing a few of these and getting calls from lawyers who saw more I thought it would be worthwhile to take a longer look at the firm and its supposed client. More
FHA Class Actions
Numerosity, the ADA and FHA Class Action Numbers Game
“How to Lie with Statistics” by Darrell Huff is one of my favorite books, because statistical analysis is often critical in ADA class action and other kinds of civil rights litigation, and statistics are so often abused in these cases. The difference between the manageable defense of one or two properties and an unbelievably expensive defense involving hundreds or thousands can turn on whether a particular class meets the “numerosity” requirement in Rule 23(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. That requires the use, and often mis-use, of statistics. More