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Small businesses hit with handicapped-access lawsuits
http://www.pe.com/articles/access-750909-lawsuits-california.html
Reforms fail to decrease legal actions against small businesses.
Kuma Tire & Wheel could not be more prominent in Riverside’s Magnolia Center – occupying for decades a triangle of property bordered by Magnolia, Brockton and Central avenues.
But it wasn’t until 2013 that someone noticed that David Kuma’s business did not have a marked handicapped parking space, as required by both the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s handicap-access laws.
“I never even saw the person; for all I know they could have Googled my parking lot,” Kuma said.
There was no face-to-face, “Hey, buddy, you don’t have a parking spot for me” complaint from a potential customer, Kuma said.
Instead, Kuma was named in an October 2013 lawsuit that demanded $12,000 in damages, as well as a disabled parking space.
Recent state reform laws were supposed to reduce the number of disabled-access civil rights lawsuits that some criticized as nothing more than shakedowns of small businesses.
One law passed in 2012 reduced minumum statutory damages and penalties under certain circumstances. It also prohibited lawyers from demanding money in letters to businesses that sometimes came across like extortion: “Send us money or we’ll sue.”
But the lawyers simply skipped the letters and filed the lawsuits, lots of them. The number of suits increased in 2013, according to the California Commission on Disabled Access, which said there were 627 federal cases, 2,078 state cases and 342 demand letters from September 2012 to December 2013.
“The reforms have not made much difference. They have led to more lawsuits, rather than fewer,” said San Diego attorney David Warren Peters of Lawyers Against Lawsuit Abuse and California Justice Alliance.
Scores of access lawsuits have been filed Riverside County. Just two separate defendants filed a total of 48 such suits in 2013-14, naming restaurants, cafes, apartment buildings, motels and other businesses.
Peters, who consulted on state legislation in 2008 and 2012, said his own investigation showed that about 40 percent of the nation’s disability lawsuits are filed in California, where plaintiffs can recover damages and compel businesses to make accommodation fixes.
He said he warned state lawmakers that the legislation would be ineffective.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys counter that lawsuits seem to be the only way of ensuring ADA compliance.
Kuma said he shelled out $1,000 for an attorney and another $7,000 to settle with the San Diego-based law firm that sued him.
Then he got the specifications for a handicapped parking spot, plus the correct paint and signage, and one Saturday, he did the job himself.
He took a picture of the parking spot and sent it to the law firm as proof he had met the conditions of the settlement.
That part – fixing the actual problem – only cost Kuma about $300, he said.
“If they came in and said, ‘You have six months to comply,’ that would be nice,” he said. “It could have been easily done.” Kuma said he had no problem making the changes.
Kuma also looked into other access specifications not cited in the lawsuit and made additional changes at his business.
http://www.pe.com/articles/access-750909-lawsuits-california.html
Reforms fail to decrease legal actions against small businesses.
Kuma Tire & Wheel could not be more prominent in Riverside’s Magnolia Center – occupying for decades a triangle of property bordered by Magnolia, Brockton and Central avenues.
But it wasn’t until 2013 that someone noticed that David Kuma’s business did not have a marked handicapped parking space, as required by both the Americans with Disabilities Act and California’s handicap-access laws.
“I never even saw the person; for all I know they could have Googled my parking lot,” Kuma said.
There was no face-to-face, “Hey, buddy, you don’t have a parking spot for me” complaint from a potential customer, Kuma said.
Instead, Kuma was named in an October 2013 lawsuit that demanded $12,000 in damages, as well as a disabled parking space.
Recent state reform laws were supposed to reduce the number of disabled-access civil rights lawsuits that some criticized as nothing more than shakedowns of small businesses.
One law passed in 2012 reduced minumum statutory damages and penalties under certain circumstances. It also prohibited lawyers from demanding money in letters to businesses that sometimes came across like extortion: “Send us money or we’ll sue.”
But the lawyers simply skipped the letters and filed the lawsuits, lots of them. The number of suits increased in 2013, according to the California Commission on Disabled Access, which said there were 627 federal cases, 2,078 state cases and 342 demand letters from September 2012 to December 2013.
“The reforms have not made much difference. They have led to more lawsuits, rather than fewer,” said San Diego attorney David Warren Peters of Lawyers Against Lawsuit Abuse and California Justice Alliance.
Scores of access lawsuits have been filed Riverside County. Just two separate defendants filed a total of 48 such suits in 2013-14, naming restaurants, cafes, apartment buildings, motels and other businesses.
Peters, who consulted on state legislation in 2008 and 2012, said his own investigation showed that about 40 percent of the nation’s disability lawsuits are filed in California, where plaintiffs can recover damages and compel businesses to make accommodation fixes.
He said he warned state lawmakers that the legislation would be ineffective.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys counter that lawsuits seem to be the only way of ensuring ADA compliance.
Kuma said he shelled out $1,000 for an attorney and another $7,000 to settle with the San Diego-based law firm that sued him.
Then he got the specifications for a handicapped parking spot, plus the correct paint and signage, and one Saturday, he did the job himself.
He took a picture of the parking spot and sent it to the law firm as proof he had met the conditions of the settlement.
That part – fixing the actual problem – only cost Kuma about $300, he said.
“If they came in and said, ‘You have six months to comply,’ that would be nice,” he said. “It could have been easily done.” Kuma said he had no problem making the changes.
Kuma also looked into other access specifications not cited in the lawsuit and made additional changes at his business.