Does anyone happen to know the name of the organization that sued Clint Eastwood regarding his restaurant not being ADA compliant? Googling around, I have found links to articles that just use general terms, such as “ADA advocacy group”. Or, if those SDopers that may have a handicapped person or deal with the handicapped could provide names of such organizations that advocate for the rights of handicapped individuals, that would be a great help. Thanks!
What makes you think there was an “organization” at all?
I Googled clint eastwood sued ada and the stories i found all talk about an individual woman, Diane zum Brunnen, and her lawyers. There is no mention of a disability rights organization being involved as a party to the suit.
Examples:
Eastwood himself, in some of the articles, blames greedy and unscrupulous lawyers for the lawsuit, and he appeared in front of Congress in the same year, arguing for changes to the Americans with Disabilities Act.
I was watching a show about this recently. There’s quite a few lawyers working on these type of cases and I sure could see validity in changing how these lawsuits work. I could see a lawsuit to force a business to be compliant with ADA but I don’t see much validity in a one time customer being able to rake in cash because the parking was to far or a ramp was missing. Then there are the no time customers in the case of “drive by lawsuits”. And “drive by” might be getting antiquated, you can use Google Street View from the comfort of your office.
I used to commute to Washington DC with a woman who worked for the organization defending the ADA and was entrenched in pressuring Clint Eastwood to comply if not the lawsuit(s) themselves. Unfortunately, that was a long time ago. And, I don’t have her contact info any longer.
There are at least two reasons for allowing damages awards like these.
One is to really make it hurt, so that this business and other businesses are deterred from failure to comply with the law.
Another is to encourage private citizens to bring lawsuits like these.
Both these reasons are based on the notion that the government doesn’t have the staff, time, or money to make sure everyone in the world is compliant. That’s why the statute incentivized private citizens to police compliance in civil court.
I understand the second reason but as for the first, the government is perfectly capable of making penalties that hurt.
Absent the government acting as the police force, how will these government “penalties that hurt” get applied?
Or are you suggesting that citizens and lawyers will sue non-compliant businesses on behalf of the government and if they win the government will keep the settlement instead?
I’m not following what you might propose as an fully functioning end-to-end enforcement mechanism.
My personal belief is these types of “enlist citizens as civil law police” laws are very evil. The difference is that instead of that method I’m willing to pay for enough code enforcement officers and courtrooms to enforce each and every reg on the books. No lawsuits required; the officer writes the citation and the defendant appears in court.
Likewise the idea that the government can be a plaintiff in a civil suit is evil. Except in those narrow cases where the government was acting as a customer, not as a government.
So, your question was about as detailed and as well-researched as most of your GQ thread-starters. Good to know.
Yes, and one very effective way is to allow courts to award very large punitive damages in favor of civil plaintiffs. Indeed, in cases like this, that’s probably the most effective way of making a business hurt.
There’s nothing “evil” about it. These are laws for which criminal penalties like jail time are often inappropriate (how do you put a corporate entity in jail?), but civil damages are very effective and very appropriate.
Is this what you’re talking about ? Eastwood won the case .
I am surprised that the US service provider does not have recourse to defences such as ‘reasonable’ and ‘practicable’
It looks to me that the ADA is being interpreted as being close to an absolute duty - the one defence seems to be ‘readily achievable’ which is a far harder standard to defend.
In the UK, and EU (since our equalities laws must comply with EU standards), service providers must make ‘reasonable adjustments’.
Its that term ‘reasonable’ that generally forms the basis of a defence, huge implementation costs are not deemed reasonable, and if the adjustments impinge upon the heritage status of a building then this too can be ruled unreasonable.
With employers, there is often a requirement for the employee to notify their employer of a specific disability before recourse to further legal action of failure to provide facility, after all how can an employer know what is needed until they have an awareness of the requirement such as a ramp, handrail, lift etc.
The idea of a 90 improvement notice is something similar to what we have in the UK, and if it discourages lawsuits and actually generates improved accessibility then I cannot imagine why any group representing those with restricted mobility would take issue with it, except of course it might reduce ‘donations’ from successful claimants.
This is quite an old case, is this still the situation or does it vary state by state? I also imagine that this is one of those laws that will be high on Trumps list of obstacles to enterprise.
I think that those drive by lawsuit folk are going to regret their overuse of such provision if this law is significantly amended.
casdave, my understanding is that this is a California thing exclusively. Whether this has actually led to improved disability access compared to other states is unclear.
From the news article:
“Business owners have long complained that this landmark civil rights legislation, which demands disabled access to bathrooms, buildings and other public places, allows business almost no defense against lawsuits brought for unintentional or even trivial violations of the law.”
What gives you that idea?
The very news story that you are quoting makes clear that this case was litigated in U.S. District Court, a federal court, and the allegation was that Eastwood’s hotel violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, a federal law.