Lawyers Find New Ways to Profit At the Expense of Businesses Using the ADA Act

According to Forbes magazine, law firms have started masquerading as non-profits in order to cash in on ADA-based lawsuits against a wide range of businesses. In the past seven months, 53 Florida businessmen have been hit with lawsuits alleging violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff: a seemingly charitable group representing a 12-year-old girl who uses a wheelchair. Across the state, at least 275 other companies have been hit with suits by three other nonprofit entities. Like the one speaking for the disabled girl, these nonprofits were formed with the encouragement, if not the active participation, of law firms that stand to profit from ADA litigation.

The rash of suits began last year when Grisel Martinez, the mother of the wheelchair-bound 12-year-old, got fed up with the problems her daughter had getting into public buildings -- a reasonable frustration and one that the ADA seeks to address by requiring that public buildings provide accommodations like ramps and parking spots.

But Martinez, with help from Robert Bogdan, an attorney friend, formed a nonprofit advocacy group and called it Citizens Concerned About Disability Access. On behalf of the daughter, the group started filing suits indiscriminately against local businesses, including a liquor store, pawn shop and swimming pool supply store. Most business owners settled the suits by making renovations.

In fact, businesses are typically willing to comply with the law's demands to remove physical barriers for handicapped visitors when written warnings are received. However, that would deprive lawyers of their fees: The ADA requires defendants in successful lawsuits to pay attorney fees. Bogdan, who says he's just trying to get businesses to comply with the law, charges up to $5,000 for each suit, though he typically accepts around $1,000 in fees. So far, he and his partner have received about $20,000 in fees for these essentially boilerplate lawsuits. The Miami Beach law firm of Fuller, Mallah & Associates, with a nonprofit called Advocates for the Disabled, filed about 200 suits in an 18-month period through 1999. It has raked in at least $340,000 in fees. None of this money goes to any disabled person on behalf of whom a suit is filed.

A bill has been proposed that would throw out such suits unless the offending business owner had been given a written warning and 90 days to make demanded changes. In the meantime, the litigation factories continue to churn. For more information on how to protect your business from such frivolous lawsuits, please call (800) 533-6547.

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