Lawyers Use ADA to Loot Small Businesses
Even the libs at the New York Times have begun to notice that the Americans With Disabilities Act is a corrupt abomination. Here’s how vampires use it to exsanguinate small businesses:
A small cadre of lawyers, some from out of state, are using New York City’s age and architectural quirkiness as the foundation for a flood of lawsuits citing violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.
The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses.
Every business has to be designed to cater to every conceivable handicap. There’s no use going after big national chains that can afford this gargantuan and mostly pointless expense. So it’s the mom and pop businesses that get rolled.
Few, if any, cases have gone to trial, according to a review of electronic court records; the defendants usually agree to settle … lawyers typically do not give the businesses a chance to remedy the problem before filing suit.
These are shakedowns, pure and simple, coated like most particularly contemptible crimes with a shiny gloss of bleeding heart moonbattery.
On America’s version of Animal Farm, no animal is quite as equal as the disabled — except the disabled’s greedy lawyers.
On a tip from Sean.
John Stossel had an excellent piece on that. Unreal.
It was noted that the percentage of disabled people working has fallen from over 50% employed to around 30% due in no small part to fear by small businesses of being sued if a doorway is 1/2 inch to narrow or mirror 1/4″ too high.
If Moses had cursed Pharaoh with swarms of lawyers instead of locusts, his people never would have had to flee.
I saw that Stossel piece, and I asked my torts prof about the lawyers finding clients in order to initiate these suits – he said it was absolutely unethical, and such attorneys should certainly be reported to the State Bar.
Bwahhaaa. The State Bar doing something. Sure, collect a fine that becomes a business deduction.
Lawyers’ self policing; best joke of the day.
(And now you know the difference between academics and the real world.)
Henry, what typically happens in these shakedown rackets is that the trial lawyers (most of whom are heavily Democratic) will troll around the community, letting it be known they’re in the business of disability lawsuits. They can even let it slip in casual conversation that they’ve seen many violations subject to legal action. Word gets back to the disability “advocates”, who then recruit serial plaintiffs.
Yeah, I get how the scam works – so does my prof. I realize there’s basically no way to prove that’s what these attorneys do. I realize the State Bar is going to do absolutely nothing about it. (A fine? lol, not even.)
Yet, it’s still unethical and it should be reported to the State Bar.
So much for these lawyers helping anybody but themselves. Not only has employment of the disabled fallen off, the regard for their human dignity has declined as well. As the parent of a severely disabled child, I have been the focus of (not always) subtle disdain for deigning to bring this “drain on society” into the world. And we don’t even accept gov’t “services”. It seems to all be part of a larger issue, tho, of pitting people against each other and losing all memory of Judeo-Christian manners and ethics.
This is no different from the protection racket that small time thugs used to pull on small businesses. I think they were thrown in prison if they got caught. What do crooked lawyers get?
Kill all the lawyers. Who said that?
Recent article effectively predicting half of all swimming pools in the US would have to close this summer if forced to install special lifts for (out-of-town or out-of-state) handicapped people:
“There is no way all 300,000 pools can install permanent lifts … each lift costs between $3,000 and $10,000 and installation can add $5,000 to $10,000 to the total … The result will be a huge payday for enterprising trial lawyers everywhere.
“The enforcement is going to be by litigation,” said Kevin Maher, SVP for the American Hotel & Lodging Association. “A lot of DRIVE-BY LAWSUITS [LULZ] against business by law firms that are set up file to file spurious ADA claims…”
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2012/03/thursday-poolmageddon-trial-lawyers/367846
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As I’ve posted here before, the college I work for moved into a new ADA-approved building last year. The elevator has an annoying chime for blind students, and NO partitions in the rest rooms for students in wheelchairs. We offer degrees in Medical Assisting, Surgical Technician and Paramedic, courses that no blind or handicapped person could hope to complete.
I processed the financial aid for a prospective MA student who wore crutches for her severe limp. Two days before orientation our Director of Education (and our legal team) finally had to explain to her that she had no chance to successfully complete that program or ever obtain appropriate employment after graduation. Steering her into a Business or Accounting program would’ve been the ethical thing to do, but we were told to take her application fee and shut up. She never started school.
We got a lawyer here in San Diego, and I believe he’s been the subject of a national news story, who goes around to small towns and then goes into all the small businesses looking for ADA violations. He then sends them a letter demanding huge payoffs or else he’s going to sue them and most businesses wind up, to avoid the costs of litigation, paying the money he’s extorting from them.
http://adaabuse.com/
Alan says: April 18, 2012 at 6:41 pm
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Though I don’t disagree with what you said about the prospective MA student and in general about the courses “no blind or handicapped person could hope to complete”, how dare you try to say that about the handicapped!
Why that is just bigoted against people with disabilities and it’s exactly why they need to be given so much at such great expense, even to the point of bankrupting businesses, states and even the Federal Government.
/sarc off
I feel for ya!
[...] is just one of the many examples of what is wrong with excessive regulations (hat tip Moonbattery): A small cadre of lawyers, some from out of state, are using New York City’s age and [...]
“On America’s version of Animal Farm, no animal is quite as equal as the disabled — except the disabled’s greedy lawyers.”
…or a gay disabled’s greedy gay lawyer.
Ethics boards are functionally useless. We learned this in Wisconsin where doctors handed out fake sick notes, only to be lightly reprimanded.