Are lawyers abusing the law?

[mark handler]

A wave of ADA lawsuits has hit Chicago. Are lawyers abusing the law?
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...e-lawyers-abusing-the-law-20160603-story.html

Tribune recently reported on an Americans with Disability Act lawsuit involving a plaintiff from New Orleans who believes the McDonald’s company late-night drive-thru policies discriminate against the blind because only motorists are served there during late-night hours.

The lawsuit has been filed in federal court in Chicago. This is really not surprising, because we have seen a wave of ADA lawsuits coming to the Chicago area.

One woman, who owns a flower shop on North LaSalle Street in Chicago, saw her neighbor hit with an ADA lawsuit, and then her store was hit as well. All told, 14 shops in her neighborhood were targeted with ADA lawsuits.

These lawsuits often come in bunches. Lawyers find individuals with disabilities to patronize businesses and look for ways that particular business may not be in complete compliance with ADA rules and guidelines. These plaintiffs go block-by-block, looking for any and all possible ADA non-compliance issues and their attorney friends strike with lawsuit in hand.

According to recent media reports, about 77 of the 94 Title III lawsuits filed in 2015 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois were filed by eight plaintiffs represented by the same legal counsel.

The McDonald’s lawsuit is just another example of this alarming trend. It is time we paid attention to the abuse of our courts in Illinois and enact meaningful lawsuit reforms. If we do nothing, we are only inviting more and more lawsuits to come to the Land of Lincoln.

 

[conarb]

Why blame the lawyers? Better to blame the poorly drafted law that gives the disabled a private right of action,

 

[ICE]

Why blame the lawyers?

Lawyers crafted the law because lawyers are crafty. If it weren't for the lawyers the thievery wouldn't be happening.
If not the lawyers, whom then?...the victims? Oh but wait a minute....the victims have had years to comply....well unless they are new to the enterprise but that's a diversion.
The victims are like schooled fish. Along comes a barracuda and snags a few. No big deal...after all they are fish right? That's the nature of being a fish. Some will get eaten. The other fish get excited and hang in the school. And the barracuda, he knows that he shouldn't eat them all so he sits back and looks for another school.

 

[ADAguy]

If it looks like a shark and smells like a shark and you choose to swim in its waters, you will eventually get bit.
As to laws, they are not written clearly enough to allow for empowering (enforceable) regulations with which to impliment them.
The legislatures only seek to have their names attached to the laws but seldom involve themselves in the drafting of enforceable regs.

 

[Timo]

When it comes to blood-sucking lawyers, ALL laws are "poorly drafted." Take the US Constitution's one about the "right to bear arms." Does that mean to bear a black powder muzzle-loader (as in Jefferson's day)? Or an arsenal of intercontinental thermonuclear missiles capable of wiping out the Earth?

 

[ADAguy]

Imagine (hard to) if todays attorneys were to draft our Constitution? It would still be in revisions and incomprehensible.
Simpler times created simpler measures of governance (of a free society, no longer a monarchy) and even those remain arguable today.
When is "free" expensive? Class Actions, etc.

 

[conarb]

When I was in law school we were seated in a teared classroom, at the time of the midterm exam in constitutional law the professor started walking through the tiers distributing the exams, usually students couldn't open the exam book until all were distributed so those receiving their exams early wouldn't get an advantage, this time the professor said we could open and read but not start writing. As we walked through the tiers students started gasping, girls started crying, soon he turned around and asked: "What's wrong, is it unfair?" Several students said "Yes", the exam was one question that had nothing to do with anything in our text books or anything to do with the lectures. He said: "This is to teach you a valuable lesson, laws are not fair, laws are not good, laws are not designed to be fair or good, laws are written by legislators paid by lobbyists for special interest and activist groups, now write me a good exam on the constitutionality of laws.

ADA "law" is for the most part regulations written by the Department of Justice, Justice Departments change with every administration, Justice Departments write regulations to enforce political agenda, regulations can and do change with every administration,

Obama's Justice Department is probably the most corrupt in the history fo this country, the FBI has spent months and has assigned 147 agents to investigate Hillary and the Justice Department has not brought charges, it's come out that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have given her billions of dollars yet they won't indict her, if Trump is elected he will appoint a new Justice Department and they undoubtedly indict her, so as you can see the whole thing is political.

In the news today is an article about the IRS colluding with the Justice Department to achieve a political result:

IRS official Lois Lerner didn't merely target conservative groups to take away their tax-free status, as first suspected, but also handed over more than a million pages of tax returns to the Justice Department. That's a crime.

It's now apparent, if it wasn't before, that the Internal Revenue Service -- which was created solely to collect revenues due the government, not to persecute the administration's political enemies -- has become a kind of rogue agency.

Its chief, John Koskinen, is being threatened with impeachment for not telling the truth in testimony before Congress. But Lerner, more than even Koskinen, has become a symbol of IRS arrogance and illegality.

As Eliana Johnson of the National Review reported this week, Lerner transmitted some 1.25 million pages of tax returns of mostly Tea Party and conservative groups to the Justice Department in October 2010. In Johnson's words, this was "likely the largest unauthorized disclosure of tax-return information in history." ¹

I don't see how you guys can enforce the laws of such a corrupt government.


¹ http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/irs-scandal-no-end-to-lois-lerners-lawlessness/

 

[mtlogcabin]

I don't see how you guys can enforce the laws of such a corrupt government.

Selectively

 

[conarb]

Selectively

Exactly, you're a good man Charlie Brown.