It's time to put an end to a new breed of frivolous lawsuits

By Victor Gomez, Executive Director, California Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse

You have to just love how using websites can make life so easy. You no longer have to leave the house to shop for a new car or dress. Instead, the internet has also become the breeding ground for those targeting small business owners for technical website violations, suing them with American Disability Act lawsuits.

The technical law allows anyone wanting to scam the system to sit in front of a computer at the kitchen table in the middle of North Dakota, look for technical violations, and file as many ADA website lawsuits against businesses anywhere in the country, seeking to disrupt the livelihood of small business owners for their financial gain. These individuals have realized it's much easier to file digital complaints; it greatly expands their targets, and they are no longer regionally tied to justify barriers.

We all pay the price for higher goods and services, lost jobs, and closed businesses when small businesses get sued for technical violations when no one experienced actual harm. Many business owners have told me those abusing the system do not care about actually buying something online from the store, as their purpose is only to send costly demand letters to thousands of business owners with the hopes that many of the defendants will just send the money to make these suits go away. Sadly, many do, fearing defending themselves would cost even more.

Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week is October 7 through 11th, 2024. Let's do something to protect small business owners from unscrupulous plaintiffs scouring websites in search of faults to pursue lawsuits against businesses. In California, penalties for website violations are much higher due to the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which provides for a fine of $4,000 per violation, a fine that other states do not have, plus attorneys' fees. Often, these so-called "violations" are color contract issues or visual issues that do not have proper programmatic labeling. This malicious legal activity is also known as drive-by lawsuits.

Like most lawsuits, it's far too easy to sue a business for website violations. Attorneys can utilize automated technology to scan websites, and if they come up with a certain number of arbitrary violations on a website, they find a plaintiff and sue. Easy as that.

It doesn't take too many infractions to file a claim, either. It's much too easy for those wishing to game the system to troll websites looking for minor violations actively, even if these violations may not impair access. They aim to "stack" these minor violations to force the defendant to pay a large settlement.

California is also seeing a jump in website accessibility lawsuits, with 359 filings in 2021 compared to 223 in 2020. Website accessibility filings have increased by more than 3,000% since 2018. Serial plaintiffs specifically target California hotels, alleging that the accessibility information provided on reservation websites is not sufficiently detailed for the plaintiffs to decide whether the hotel meets their accessibility needs. Among the details the lawsuit claims should include are the dimensions of space under desks and sinks. The Department of Justice, however, has made it clear that "a reservation system is not intended to be an accessibility survey."

This Lawsuit Abuse Awareness Week, let's push our state lawmakers to address the abusive Americans with Disability Act lawsuit crisis impacting California businesses. Unwarranted ADA brick-and-mortar lawsuits are down because abusive website suits are rising. It's time to end both.

Lawmakers have to stand up and put an end to meritless lawsuits against small business owners, waged in the name of the ADA against both brick-and-mortar and website owners, where the plaintiff really hasn't been harmed. Serial litigants file hundreds of these suits a month.

It's only fair for business owners to have time to correct technical issues before being outright sued. Let's push to make stores more accessible rather than being cash cows for those trying to abuse the system. Our economy is already struggling with high taxes and inflation; we cannot afford to punish small businesses that can least afford this internet robbery!

Let's use the internet to call on lawmakers to fix the problem of abusive ADA lawsuits once and for all.