[stanferder]

When one person associated with the attorney is a plaintiff in 200 lawsuits, it does start to seem opportunistic.

Nevertheless, I can't understand why someone would open a cafe in 2007 at a site that wasn't compliant with a 1990 law without budgeting for bringing it into compliance.

[Pfhreak]

> When one person associated with the attorney is a plaintiff in 200 lawsuits, it does start to seem opportunistic.

Wait, why? Certainly one would expect that a lawyer might have a specialization, say, ADA compliance. And you'd equally expect that a person in a wheelchair who is more likely to notice/care about ADA compliance.

It doesn't strike me as that odd, it just seems like, "Hey, why is the city I live in so busted for me? I thought there was a law that was supposed to give me access? Why is no one paying attention to that law?"

[alistairSH]

The problem is CA has opted to allow "citizen enforcement" via cash settlements instead of allowing grace periods or some other means of remediation. As noted in the article, if the goal was bring businesses up to code, in many cases a simple letter from the lawyer would suffice. But, that doesn't make money for the lawyer and her husband (who faked disabilities in order to sue).

[oh_sigh]

Because the lawyer allegedly had her ex-husband pretend to be disabled in order to file the lawsuits.

Lawsuits require standing, which is defined as basically injury or adverse effect done to the suing party. Without that, you cannot sue(and expect to win).

[Pfhreak]

That's a different concern though. 200 lawsuits in and of itself isn't a problem. Pretending to be disabled to try and get standing is.

[oh_sigh]

OP said it starts to seem opportunistic, which I think is true, even if the party is actually disabled. Because the odds that a regular disabled person would encounter 200 unique buildings over a year that they couldn't access because of their disability seems quite slim.

And the opportunistic part comes in because these lawsuits are almost always "Fix the problem for $5*X, or pay me personally $X and I will drop the suit".

[Pfhreak]

> Because the odds that a regular disabled person would encounter 200 unique buildings over a year that they couldn't access because of their disability seems quite slim.

I would guess the opposite, that 200 buildings seems low for what a person might encounter in a year that failed to be accessible. That's basically saying, "It's a roughly 4-5 buildings a week" which absolutely seems in the realm of possibility to me. Especially in a older part of town.

[Dylan16807]

I don't know if very many people visit 200 unique buildings in a year period, let alone ones with accessibility problems.

[stanferder]

I think you're underestimating the size of 200. ADA compliance is a worthy cause, but at that level of effort I think it would make more sense to create an advocacy group and try to bring about compliance through public pressure than individual lawsuits.

Nevertheless, I don't have a lot of sympathy for the business owner in this case. If you open a business in a non-compliant site 17 years after the ADA went into effect, and 13 years later still can't build a ramp, it might be time for another business to occupy that site.