Here’s a very unhappy looking King Richard III contemplating the murder of his nephews and possible rivals for the throne, or perhaps the latest headlines. While the latest cases on accessibility law don’t usually look like light reading, right now they are a cheery diversion from the rest of world events. Here we go:
ADA Litigation Procedure
Quick Hits – Making a list and checking it twice edition
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 Litigation Procedure, FHA, FHA design/build litigation, FHA Reasonable Accommodation, Internet Accessibility, Title II Tags: ADA defense, ADA Mootness, ADA Website Litigation, Bike share programs, Dana Bowman, Eric Calhoun, FHA Defense, Peter Strojnik, unruh act
Christmas is over with lumps of coal and sugar plums distributed in ways that often seem unrelated to who has been naughty or nice. Regular readers will see just how little has changed in the course of 2019 despite some important defense victories in the Sixth and Eight Circuits. With most ADA litigation centered in New York, California and Florida the serial litigation business will almost certainly continue to thrive in 2020.
Personal jurisdiction over website owners
Another ADA case heads to the Supreme Court – City of Trinidad v Hamer
By Richard Hunt in ADA, ADA Litigation Procedure, Public Facilities, Title II Tags: ADA defense, ADA Title II, continuing violation, FHA Defense, Hamer v Trinidad, repeated violations, Statute of limitations, Supreme Court, Tenth Circuit
I blogged about the 10th Circuit’s decision in Hamer v City of Trinidad earlier this year.* The City has now filed a Petition for Certiorari that may well take the case to the Supreme Court because the issues and conflict between the Circuits are well defined.**
The heart of the dispute concerns a novel doctrine invented by the Tenth Circuit, the “repeated violations doctrine.” Under this doctrine every Title II entity has an immediate obligation to fix every problem with accessibility everywhere, and its failure to do so constitutes a new ADA violation every day. The age of the facility doesn’t matter because the obligation is to fix things regardless of when they were built. A sidewalk built a century before passage of the ADA must be fixed in the same way a sidewalk built last week must be fixed. Other Circuits have refused to impose this kind of endless liability, tying the limitations period either to the when the facility was built or renovated or to the date the plaintiff first suffered an injury, and refusing to find a generalized obligation to fix things that did not violate the law when they were built. More
Quick Hits – Halloween Candy edition.
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - Hotels, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Attorney's Fees, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA Mootness, ADA regulations, ADA Web Access, ADA Website Accessibility Tags: ADA defense, ADA reasonable accommodation, ADA standing, FHA Defense, Strojnik
Halloween is a month away, but the candy is on the shelves at our local grocery stores and the courts are already delivering tricks and treats for those of us concerned with accessibility lawsuits.
The complexities of accessibility in federal programs.
Ramos v. Raritan Valley Habitat for Humanity, 2019 WL 4316575 (D.N.J. Sept. 12, 2019) contains more law than can be easily summarized, covering:
- HUD and federal sovereign immunity under the ADA, FHA and Rehabilitation Act
- Standing for complaints of administrative action where federal sovereign immunity is waived.
- State sovereign immunity under the ADA and FHA
- The elements of a failure to accommodate claim
- And of intentional discrimination claims.
The most interesting thing to me about the case is the facts that gave rise to it, for the complaints that will ultimately go forward seem to reflect the state agency’s stubborn refusal to be helpful to a disabled couple. If the allegations are true the state would not provide forms and letters with a font big enough for the vision disabled plaintiffs to read them and refused to meet either at their residence or by video conference to accommodate their inability to travel. This, by the way, was after the parties had reached a conciliation agreement that supposedly resolved the matter. Agencies, landlords and others who want to stay out of court should think of the accommodation process as a shared effort to solve a problem, not an adversary proceeding to be won or lost.
Bone v. U. of N. Carolina Health Care System, 2019 WL 4393531 (M.D.N.C. Sept. 13, 2019), like Ramos, has a complicated set of facts and an equally complicated series of rulings on issues that include associational standing and liability for the acts of contractors. It also shares the appearance that nobody associated with the defendants was really paying attention, which is always a problem in a bureaucracy. It’s quite possible the low level employee charged with delivering braille invoices to the plaintiffs thought a few months was reasonable turn around time given the seemingly eternal delays associated with hospital billing and reimbursement, but from the plaintiff’s standpoint getting collection notices for invoices he couldn’t read was disturbing. One question, however, is never raised or answered. There are a large number of handheld text reading devices available for the blind, and it would seem such devices could be a reasonable substitute for braille. At what point does the refusal of a disabled person to take advantage of new technologies make his or her request for accommodation unreasonable? More
The role of experts in Title III website litigation – what purpose can they serve?
By Richard Hunt in Accessibility Litigation Trends, ADA - drive-by litigation, ADA - serial litigation, ADA - Standing, ADA Internet, ADA Internet Web, ADA Litigation Procedure, ADA Website Accessibility, Internet, Internet Accessibility Tags: Accessibility tools, ADA defense, ADA experts, ADA Website Litigation, Diaz v General Nutrition, Diaz v Lobel's
Two weeks ago I wrote about Diaz v. Lobels,* a case I think exemplifies some of the confusion concerning just what an accessible website should be. Today I want to take a harder look at the Court’s exclusion of testimony from the plaintiff’s expert to ask the question: Just what should an ADA expert testify about? The issue has come up in only three reported cases, each of which has its own take on the matter.
The exclusion of the plaintiff’s expert testimony in Diaz v. Lobels was based on two failings. The Court found the expert, Michael McCaffrey, failed to sufficiently describe his methodology and process, and failed to establish the methods were widely accepted or standard in the field. The Court did not reject the assumption underlying the report because the plaintiff and defendant stipulated that compliance with WCAG 2.0 or 2.1 would make the website accessible for ADA purposes and that non-compliance would make it inaccessible. Instead the Court focused on the “high level” description of the methods used by the team of individuals working for the expert, which the Court found insufficient when combined with a lack of testimony concerning the standards used. More