Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

Tony Parrille introduced our speaker James S. Link. Jim has been a member of the California Bar since 1980 and has practiced in Pasadena for the past 9 years. About half of his time is defending ADA cases brought against businesses. Many of the cases are scams to get business to pay to settle an ADA claim. ADA was passed in 1990 as a federal law and it was meant to allow disabled persons to get access to most business places. California passed a state law that further the ADA requirements in California, called the Unruh act which allowed damages to be assessed in ADA cases. What has happened is that some individuals and their attorney’s have used the Unruh law to scam businesses with lawsuits to get businesses to settle their cases.

As an illustration he cited a case that he was involved with.  The case name was Jankey vs. Los Burritos. The restaurant was built in 1968 and resembled an Old In and Out Burger restaurant. It had no inside dinning just pickup or eating in an outside patio. It was purchased in about 1980 by the current owner. It was grandfather under the ADA law. However the California law had a different standard that required changes to conform to ADA had to be “readily achievable”. So one day Jankey comes to restaurant ( he has a wheel chair) parks, goes to the restroom and goes in and eats. A little later a lawsuit is served on the business by Janky’s attorney saying parking; bathroom and restaurant door did not comply with ADA requirements and his client had scrapped his knuckles one the restaurant doors.. It was a surprise to the business in that was not preceded by verbal complaint or a letter – just the lawsuit was dropped on the business.

It turns out Janky had filed about 40 complaints and was awarded over 5 years some $140,000 damages. The business did what it could do to be “readily achievable” repairs and changes. ADA changes it made were (1) striped a handicap parking spot (2) widen the front door to 32″ and applied other signage. The business could not make the bathrooms compliant as the building was too small. They spent $2,300 to do the repairs (luckily most covered by insurance because of the medical insurance coverage for the scrapped knuckles). The attorney would not drop the case because they wanted the damages awarded (estimated at $4,000). Jim was able to prevail and win the case but it was time consuming and expensive case for the business to respond to the scam.

His suggestions to avoid such scams.
1) Have the parking lot in pristine condition stripped and properly signed for handicap use. If things look good on the outside the scammer will  likely to pass you by.
2) Have the front door the proper size at least 32″ wide. If you have double doors most won’t be compliant because they are 30″ wide, one needs to be at least 32″!!
3) If the bathroom does not comply and you don’t have to provide one in your line of business don’t use it and  board it up.
4) If you have old counters they are usually 32″ high you need to have a section that is no more then 20″ high.

Jim’s talk was informative and gave our members useful information in this troubling area.