During the last years, many businesses have encountered a new legal challenge in the form of serial ADA website accessibility lawsuits. Furthermore, the significant share of these claims was initiated not by genuine plaintiffs who were interested in defendants’ services but unable to use them due to websites’ inaccessibility. Many ADA website accessibility demands were filed by serial plaintiffs and law firms preying on randomly selected businesses from all industries and niches, starting from restaurants and golf clubs and ending with multinational corporations, including Netflix and Amazon.
Given the proliferation of ADA accessibility claims, some people may wonder if ADA lawsuits or demand letters are scam. Others may even go as far as to ignore the demand letters or the summons for the ADA case in hopes that the judge will dismiss such a lawsuit as a frivolous one. If you are interested in learning more about the legal reasoning behind ADA accessibility lawsuits, the position of the courts and whether you should take such claims seriously, keep reading.
Legal Reasoning Behind ADA Accessibility Claims
The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits any public accommodation from refusing full and equal enjoyment of its services or facilities on the basis of a disability. Although ADA doesn’t have a specific regulation for websites, the U.S. Department of Justice has continuously maintained that websites are public accommodations that should comply.
The companies have long argued that ADA doesn’t have any provisions related to the websites. Meanwhile, the courts are split on the matter of whether websites are places of public accommodation.
However, this lack of uniformity among the courts doesn’t provide businesses with much relief. The serial plaintiffs and their law firms attacking businesses for non-compliant websites can just pick more favorable jurisdiction to bring their claims. New York has been especially notorious for ADA accessibility lawsuits, with serial plaintiffs filing hundreds of claims against randomly selected websites that returned errors to accessibility checker software.
Why ADA Accessibility Lawsuits Can Be a Scam?
Some ADA claims may look like a scam when they are filed by serial plaintiffs selected by law firms to attack businesses to generate income in the form of legal fees. These plaintiffs can file hundreds of simultaneous claims against all types of businesses on the pretense that they cannot fully and equally enjoy the services offered by the defendant’s website because of its inaccessibility.
The law doesn’t prohibit duplicative lawsuits, which allows plaintiffs to file simultaneous claims on closely related issues. Meanwhile, courts are disfavoring serial ADA lawsuits and are looking for concrete or particularized injury to a plaintiff when judging an accessibility claim.
For example, in Mendez v. Apple, Inc., the District Court for the Southern District of New York has ruled against the plaintiff who couldn’t provide the date of attempted access to the physical store and the goods that she was unable to purchase due to website inaccessibility. However, not all defendants were as lucky as Apple in the above case, and many businesses fell victim to serial plaintiffs filing hundreds of simultaneous ADA accessibility cases.
Why Should Businesses Take All ADA Accessibility Claims Seriously?
With that being said, some website owners may be tempted to think that if they receive a claim from one of the serial plaintiffs or their lawyers, the lawsuit would be dismissed as frivolous. Meanwhile, receiving such a letter or summons actually means that your website most likely has accessibility issues.
Even if the claim was made by a law firm that uses serial plaintiffs to send multiple ADA accessibility demands, it doesn’t change much. Such plaintiffs use automated checkers to identify accessibility issues and attack those businesses whose websites return errors.
Therefore, ignoring such demand letters or lawsuits altogether is a bad idea. It can lead to the judgment against you by default, where you will have to pay the plaintiff’s damages plus hefty legal fees.
Contact Us
If you have received a demand letter or a claim about ADA accessibility of your website, please don’t hesitate to contact Samuel Law Firm’s defense lawyers in New York. Our attorneys are well known among serial plaintiffs and their law firms for our robust defense strategies, which often result in prompt and favorable settlements. Call us at 646-663-4228 or send us an email at michael@thesamuellawfirm.com for a free consultation on how we can help you defend against ADA website accessibility lawsuits.
