From the Denver Post Oct 2020 — Douglas County man represented by New Jersey firm has filed 52 nearly identical lawsuits since December
James Blanchard had just reopened his Denver winery this summer after being shut down for months because of COVID-19 when he got hit with a different kind of challenge — a surprise lawsuit alleging the website for his family business violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The lawsuit said David Katt, a resident of Douglas County who is blind, couldn’t use the downtown winery’s website because it was not compatible with screen-reading programs that allow people who are visually impaired to navigate online.
“We were caught out of the blue by this lawsuit,” Blanchard said. “There was no advanced warning, no contact, no communication from the plaintiff or their attorneys, it was just served on the front door of my apartment.”
Now he’s facing a potentially expensive legal fight at a time when sales at his 2-year-old Denver winery are down 30% because of the coronavirus — and he’s not the only one. The same Douglas County man, represented by a New Jersey law firm, has filed 52 nearly identical lawsuits against companies operating in Colorado since December.
From banks to mattress manufacturers to marijuana dispensaries, all sorts of businesses are facing lawsuits from Katt over their websites’ ADA compliance in what some attorneys say is a predatory pattern designed to push businesses into agreeing to quick cash settlements in order to close cases without racking up big legal bills.
“Plaintiff is not a bona fide patron, but a serial plaintiff who filed this lawsuit to try and extort a monetary settlement,” attorney Alice Conway Powers wrote in response to one of Katt’s lawsuits, in defense of an eyeglass shop.
Katt could not be located by The Denver Post, and his attorney, Ari Marcus of the law firm Marcus and Zelman, did not return multiple requests for comment.
“A black eye”
Such “drive-by” or “click-by” lawsuits over the ADA are a growing trend, disability advocates say, and while the lawsuits can highlight real problems — it is difficult for visually-impaired people to navigate many websites — they’re often ineffective at generating widespread change and create backlash against people with disabilities who are bringing more legitimate ADA claims.
“It gives a black eye to those of us who have been working in this profession for many years and who have gained and garnered the respect of the court because they know we don’t do that sort of thing,” said Kevin Williams, legal director at Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, an organization that advocates for disability rights.
Lawsuits are a critical tool for people with disabilities to force companies to comply with the ADA, said Scott LaBarre, a Denver attorney who is blind and serves as the Colorado president of the National Federation of the Blind.
Read full article From the Denver Post Oct 2020
