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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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My father in law was the target of these type of shitty lawsuits. He is a farmer who got tired of buying seed every year, so he bought a local seed company. He just sells to the other farmers in his region. They asked him to set up a website so they can order from there. Not even six months after seeing up the website he gets sued in federal court by a blind guy living in New York city for his website not being ADA compliant.
I looked up the plaintiff, he had dozens of these suits, all targeting small seed businesses that sell primarily to farmers. He had the same lawyers on every suit as well. Highly unlikely a guy living in NYC is doing a lot of farming. This was just using the courts to extort small businesses.
Now you have a similar scheme targeting small hotels that could erase protections for those that actually need them, all to extort money.
What ended up happening with the lawsuit?
I don't have all the details, this is just my understanding. Fortunately, my father in law had a good lawyer and a sympathetic judge. The lawyer had him pay a guy $300 to make the website compliaint, then they presented the changes and story (father in law has glaucoma) to the judge who agreed that the results should satisfy the plaintiff. I do know that my father in law sent a sample of their most popular seed products to the plaintiff after the case. Most are not suitable for "home growing," lol.
Glad it turned out that way. I think all such judgements should go towards creating access for all rather than enriching the individual.
Honestly, not a single bit of this anecdote sounds like injustice. Business owner ignored the law (or was ignorant of it) and got sued by someone because that's how the ADA works. The consequence is that the business owner was forced to bring their business into compliance with the law. In this case, they had to spend a trivial amount of money.
This is exactly how the ADA is supposed to work. That was the plan all along. It's intended consequences.
The plaintiff wanted money over a service they didn't even require access to. That's what makes it frivolous, especially when you see they specifically target small regional seed companies.
The real problem is that the ADA has no mechanism of enforcement except lawsuits. There's no ADA regulators out there, the way there are for food safety for instance. At least in my city, the restaurant inspectors work with the restaurants to get them up to food safety compliance, which is good for everyone. If that kind of structure had been built into the ADA, your friend's website would have been accessible from the start, or easily fixed, because during these decades a market would have been created for the necessary software. (And a person in a wheelchair wouldn't have to enter so many restaurants by pushing past the dumpsters and toilets and wheeling through the kitchen, which tends to dull the appetite, btw.) Instead the market has been created for assholes to exploit small businesses with frivolous lawsuits and very little benefit has gone to people with disabilities.