A federal jury in Detroit has awarded $300,000 in punitive damages and $14,209 in actual damages to Joyce Grad, saying the Royalwood cooperative apartment association in suburban Royal Oak violated her rights under the federal Fair Housing Act when it declined to waive its no-pets policy to permit her to bring in an emotional-assistance dog. Grad suffers from mental and emotional ailments that include severe depression. One of the services on which Ms. Grad has come to rely on the dog is in making sure she gets up in the morning: “I’ve trained her that if I don’t get up by 7, she is to go to [the] door and bark until help arrives.” Perfect for the neighbors! (David Ashenfelter, “Disabled woman’s dog has its day”, Detroit Free Press, Feb. 23). For more on the steady expansion of demands that legally protected status be accorded to “emotional-assistance” animals, see Oct. 25 and Dec. 2, 2004. For more cases in which disabled-rights-in-housing have led to noisy results, see Aug. 21-22, 2000 and Apr. 5-7, 2002.
Posts Tagged ‘disabled rights’
Able-bodied applicants only? Mr. Trump, you’re sued
Latest disabled-rights suit against a reality TV show: “‘The Apprentice’ may be entertainment, but it also amounts to a protracted job interview, says James W. Schottel Jr., who filed a federal case in St. Louis claiming that audition rules demanding ‘excellent physical’ health are discriminatory.” (Peter Shinkle, “Trump’s show discriminates, lawsuit says”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Feb. 8). In an earlier lawsuit, deaf and blind plaintiffs alleged that ABC violated accessibility rules by requiring the use of a touch-tone phone in the application process for its show “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” (see Jun. 21-23, 2002). Update Mar. 23: case settles.
Eastwood, lawsuits, and “Million Dollar Baby”?
(Links have spoilers, but this post doesn’t.) Activists are suggesting that Clint Eastwood’s bad experience with a lawsuit of a particular flavor has influenced the ending to Oscar nominee “Million Dollar Baby” and cite his tort reform testimony before Congress as evidence. (Michael Miner, “Dubious Conclusions”, Chicago Reader, Jan. 28; Jack Mathews, “Times is not right to spoil ‘Baby’ end”, NY Daily News, Feb. 4). Unfortunately, the stories uncritically quote activists who suggest incorrectly that Eastwood’s proposed reform would gut the law.
“Public-interest lawyers cash in on classroom suits”
“Lawyers who recently won a very big public-interest lawsuit to make San Francisco schools more accessible to the disabled apparently hope that the case will produce some very big benefits for themselves as well — like $9 million in fees….
“Jose Allen, a partner at the San Francisco firm Skadden Arps, is asking for $810 an hour…. Allen is a local partner of the giant, New York-based Skadden Arps firm — whose Web site touts its commitment to pro bono law work.” City officials are protesting the fees as exorbitant, but lawyers say the city can if necessary sell off surplus property to pay the bill. (Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 17).
Update: Molski, Frankovich unabashed
In California last month (see Dec. 12) federal judge Edward Rafeedie ruled that perennial ADA plaintiff Jarek Molski is a “vexatious litigant” who runs a “scheme of systematic extortion” by filing mass disabled-rights complaints; Rafeedie also sharply criticized Molski’s lawyer, Thomas Frankovich. But that doesn’t seem to have cramped the duo’s style much: Frankovich says he intends, on behalf of Molski, to “refile a lawsuit against Peachy Canyon Winery within two weeks in state Superior Court, asking for money because the tasting room didn’t comply with the ADA when he visited in 2003. ‘We’ve got to get compensated for the work we did to fix it,’ Frankovich said. ‘We went out and had an expert inspect it, told them what was wrong and tried to get a settlement.'” The winery’s lawyer says it is now in compliance with ADA standards, but Frankovich says that wasn’t the case in 2003. (Ryan Huff, “Winery will face ADA suit again”, San Luis Obispo Tribune, Jan. 5). (& letter to the editor, Mar. 15 (another frequent Calif. ADA filer)).
Update: judge restrains frequent ADA filer
In California, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie has issued an order labeling Jarek Molski of Woodland Hills a “vexatious litigant” because of patterns of abuse in his filing of hundreds of disabled-rights lawsuits against restaurants, bowling alleys, wineries and other businesses in the state (Sept. 21, Nov. 27, etc.). If upheld, the ruling would bar Molski from filing further suits without permission of a judge, who would have to be informed of Rafeedie’s order. “In three separate suits filed last year, for example, Molski, a law school graduate, claimed to have suffered identical injuries at three restaurants, all on May 20, 2003 — ‘highly unusual, to say the least,'” the judge wrote. The use of vexatious-litigant orders is considered rare; among legal professionals interviewed by the L.A. Times, Eve L. Hill, a visiting professor of law at Loyola-Los Angeles and executive director of the Western Law Center for Disability Rights, called Judge Rafeedie’s order “outrageous”, while Stanford law prof Pamela Karlan said it made “perfect sense” in that allowing misuse of the disabilities act risks generating a public backlash against it. (Henry Weinstein, “Disabled Man’s Suits Restricted”, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 11; “Lawsuit spree angers judge”, AP/Monterey County Herald, Dec. 12)(via Kemplog).
Judge Rafeedie also had harsh words for Molski’s attorney, Thomas E. Frankovich of San Francisco, saying he and his law firm had “aided and abetted” Molski’s “abusive litigation practices,” and “issuing an order that Frankovich’s firm and an organization affiliated with Molski called Disability Rights Enforcement Education Services had to come to court and show why they also should not be sanctioned.” Recently Frankovich filed five more lawsuits against businesses in the Central Coast town of Cambria, but this time the plaintiff is Nicole Moss rather than Molski. (Cynthia Neff, “New ADA lawsuits target Cambria”, San Luis Obispo Tribune, Nov. 11).
More from the Santa Maria Times:
A provision of California state law known as the Unruh Act allows Molski to demand $4,000 in damages per violation, per day.
Molski has said in the past that an average settlement is $20,000. He testified in the Los Angeles trial that he personally nets an average of $4,000 per settlement, after paying attorney’s fees, [Bakersfield attorney Craig] Beardsley said.
“There appeared to be 200 active cases ongoing at a time. You could extrapolate that out to $800,000 a year,” Beardsley said.
(Erin Carlyle, “Restaurant ready to fight lawsuit”, Santa Maria Times, Dec. 5).
ADA filing mills defended
And now, by way of giving our opposite numbers their say: the disabled-rights magazine Ragged Edge is out with a pair of articles defending the accessibility filing mills that roam the land grinding out lawsuits against restaurants and other small businesses, with demands for legal fees an important part of the negotiations (see Jul. 9, Mar. 9, Jan. 14 and links from there). The main article gives us a mention (Mary Johnson, “The Lawsuit Dilemma”, Nov.). A shorter companion piece includes the following interesting comments:
With a lawsuit, the disabled person has [a] lawyer (and the lawyer will, in the end, be paid by the defendant). With a lawsuit, their attorney can hire an ADA consultant, who will also be paid by the defendant. The costs of preparing for negotiating, the costs of drafting settlement agreements, the costs of mediation (including paying the mediator) can all be paid by the defendant. With a lawsuit, there is money to pay for these things. Without a lawsuit, there is no money. …
By suing. we are in the driver’s seat. …
Nonprofit groups handling ADA compliance efforts can be funded through lawsuits. One of the more active disability rights plaintiff organizations in this country has been able [to] do its work because it receives donations from the lawyers who earn fees representing the organization’s members in ADA lawsuits.
(Fred Shotz, “Why Suing is Important”, Nov.)
Jurors gone wild
Shirley McClure wanted to open a chain of six residential homes for Alzheimer’s in Long Beach. She had “no experience in elder care,” “ignored a number of Department of Social Services requirements for such facilities,” and also disregarded a number of city ordinances. As a result, complaints were so widespread that the city eventually shut down the projects for failing to meet code and brought criminal charges, and McClure declared bankruptcy — and sued the City for “discriminating” against Alzheimer’s patients. She also blamed her lupus on the City’s actions. It’s bad enough that the case took twelve years to litigate, six months of trial time in federal court, and cost the cash-strapped city nearly $4 million in legal fees. Five months of juror deliberations (made more lengthy when the jurors lied to the court to get a day off to go to the racetrack) resulted in a $22.5 million verdict. The Long Beach Press-Telegram has a lengthy and jaw-dropping description of the jury deliberations worth reading. (Wendy Thomas Russell, “Judging the Jury”, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Nov. 15; Jason Gewirtz, “Nothing in 12-year-old case easy; Jurors tell of ordeal as experts say months-long deliberation may be state record”, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Aug. 6; David Rosenzweig, Aug. 6) (via Hit and Run).
Accommodations in the emergency room
Virginia Postrel is writing in Forbes (Nov. 1, summary) about claims that it’s unlawful for professional gatekeepers to discriminate against medical students who are slow readers. For more, see Nov. 13, 2003 and other posts. (& letter to the editor, Dec. 20).
A right to assistance pets
Under established disabled-rights law, store owners and other business people very seldom have a right to exclude the “service animals” that accompany blind and deaf visitors. Relatively few inconveniences ensue, in part because such animals tend to be few and extremely well trained. However, the idea has begun to catch on that persons disabled in other ways also have a right to the company of assistance animals; California regulators issued such a ruling as to dogs two years ago. Now a rapidly rising number of San Francisco residents are applying for tags for assistance dogs; the city has issued 658 tags for them. “‘The bottom line is that we’re seeing a lot of people come down here with notes from their doctors saying they need a companion dog to improve their quality of life,” said Carl Friedman, director of the city animal control agency. ‘Now we’re seeing a lot of people applying for the tags who have psychological issues.”’ Landlords and restaurants are not allowed to enforce no-dog policies against a registered animal. As for the pets’ required “training”, that “can be done by the owner and can be as simple as teaching the dog to wag a tail and lick a face if that’s what it takes to make someone with a diagnosed depression feel better.” (Rachel Gordon, “‘Assistance dog’ designation opens doors for pooches”, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 19). We were on to this trend very early: see Jul. 9, 1999.