Source: http://accessdefense.com/?cat=220&paged=10
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 23:14:45+00:00

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ADA testing and ADA exploitation are not the same – the courts are getting it.
The broad sweep of ADA litigation history runs from early cases in which serial litigants (also known as “drive-by” litigants) were given the benefit of the doubt as crusaders for civil rights to more recent cases in which courts have found reasons to restrict this kind of abusive litigation. Many courts are awarding minimal attorneys fees on default judgment, imposing semi-objective standards for determining intent to return as an element of standing, and otherwise making it difficult for those who file for profit difficult to do so.
And while there is no doubt that a “tester” plaintiff can have standing under the ADA, Betancourt, 735 F. Supp. 2d at 605, Deutsch is far from being a “tester.” He sued 385 business in 306 days (and those 306 days include all of the intervening Saturdays, Sundays and holidays when the courthouse was closed). He did not provide the businesses pre-suit notice or allow them to cure the deficient parking before suing, and his attorney demanded payment of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees before he would dismiss the suits, even when the problems were quickly remedied. See, e.g., Dkt. No. 6–1 in A–15–CV–1198 LY.
This is the kind of practical appraisal of a plaintiffs’ conduct in which courts must engage if the exploitation of the ADA for profit is to end. “Tester” standing was first recognized in only limited circumstances based on the right of racial minorities to be given truthful information, regardless of their intent to buy or rent. See, Havens Realty Corp. v Coleman, 455 U.S. 363, 102 S.Ct. 1114 (1981). In Havens the question whether a person was entitled to truthful information about a rental even if he did not intend to rent. The Court found that the word “person” in the relevant section of the Act embraced individuals who did not intend to rent, and so providing false information was a violation of the statute. The tester’s standing came from nothing more than the breadth of the word person and the very clear statutory prohibition against providing false information. Unfortunately, “testers have standing” was soon elevated to a principle of law applied without regard to the existence of a specific statutory harm. Instead testers were given standing based on the notion of dignitary harm suffered when a disabled individual merely sees violations of accessibility standards. See, Smith v. Pacific Properties and Development Corp., 358 F.3d 1097 (9th Cir. 2004).
This dignitary harm is a legal fiction, and because it is fictional the courts have had to draw arbitrary lines to provide some minimal restraint on serial litigation. For example, a plaintiff has standing to sue with respect to violations he or she has never seen, but only if he or she has personally confronted at least one violation at the same premises. See the discussion in Brooke v. Clay Andro Peterson, 2016 WL 2851440 (C.D.Cal. May 13, 2016). Merely seeing pictures of a violation without personally visiting the premises is not enough, though it isn’t clear why the dignitary harm of confronting a violation in person is worse than seeing a picture or reading a reliable report. The distinction is arbitrary because the harm is fictional.
Deutsch points toward a more rational basis for finding that a disabled person has suffered harm; that is, was the person actually denied access to the premises. The purpose of the ADA and the disability provisions of the FHA was to make facilities accessible, not to make disabled individuals feel good about society’s efforts on their behalf. A drive-by litigant like Deutsch who never intended to get out of the car suffers no harm because, never desiring access, he was never denied it. The weight of authority goes against this idea, but the massive abuses of the ADA in Arizona and lesser abuses elsewhere may convince courts that the concrete, imminent harm required by the U.S. Constitution and by both the ADA and FHA can come only from a denial of access, not from merely feeling bad about seeing a barrier to access.
Victory and confusion in ADA internet litigation – what next?
ADA defendants just won two significant victories concerning internet accessibility. In a March 20, 2017 decision in Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC, Case No. 2:16-cv-06599, (C.D. Cal.) Judge Otero dismissed a claim concerning the accessibility of Dominos’ web site and mobile app based on a due process objection. The Court found that DOJ’s failure to issue regulations implicated the holding in United States v. AMC Entertainment, 549 F. 3d 760 (9th Cir. 2008) that a failure to give fair notice of what was required violated due process. In Gomez v. Bang & Olufsen America, Inc., Case No. 1:16-cv-23801 (S.D. Fla) Judge Lenard adopted a rule derived from earlier cases in the 11th and 9th Circuits that that a claim under the ADA exists if “a website’s inaccessibility impedes the plaintiff’s “access to a specific, physical, concrete space.” He then dismissed the complaint because the plaintiff failed to allege with sufficient specificity that his access to the brick and mortar stores had been impeded. The holding seems more restrictive than the case on which he relies, National Association of the Blind v. Target Corp., 452 F.Supp.2d 946, 956 (N.D. Cal. 2006), but the differences are not explored in the opinion.
A few weeks earlier one of the leading plaintiffs’ firms in the field of internet accessibility entered into an agreement not to sue banks in Texas as part of a settlement of a barratry case brought by a banking trade association, another victory that shows one way to deal with serial or “drive-by” lawsuits. The Texas legislature is also considering an anti-troll law that would make bad faith ADA demands a violation of the law. If such a law survived a preemption challenge it might also help eliminate such lawsuits.
Hooray! Or maybe not. The two district court decisions only have persuasive value with respect to other district courts, and Judge Lenard’s decision turns on a defect in pleading that could be cured by amendment. The Texas bank settlement is just that; a settlement, and it was based on procedural rather than substantive issues. Judge Otero’s decision will certainly act as a roadmap for those who want to mount a vigorous defense to the next ADA internet claim, but it rests on 9th Circuit case law that might not be accepted in other circuits and its reasoning has already been rejected in other districts. At the end of the day these decisions represent nothing but the ordinary ebb and flow of ADA decisions in which defendants win some and lose some and then usually settle.
The state of law, in the meantime, remains mixed. In the 9th Circuit and 11th Circuit a pure internet business is not covered by the ADA. In the 9th and 11th Circuits a business with a physical presence and a web presence may be subject to the auxiliary aids and services requirement of the ADA, but the needed connection between the website and the physical store remains largely undefined. Finally, in some courts and circuits it appears the ADA applies to every website, regardless of its relationship to physical store. Because internet business is at least national most potential defendants will find their liability depends on where they are sued.
Continuing to move toward website accessibility is the most prudent strategy for any business that can afford it. Smaller enterprises that find the cost prohibitive may choose for strategic reasons to wait until the software tools improve and costs go down, but even smaller businesses should take the handful of relatively cheap steps available to improve accessibility, including the provision of a toll-free customer assistance number like that provided by Dominos Pizza. Recent victories are nice, but until the Supreme Court rules on the ADA and internet the state of the law will remain confused, and litigation avoidance will be the best strategy.
A December 30 opinion from the Eastern District of New York should remind businesses that the obligation to comply with the ADA does not depend on the moral quality of the plaintiff. While judges do not like plaintiffs and lawyers who merely exploit the ADA for profit, they also understand that the law is the law.

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