$29 Billion

    The cost of
ADA Access Lawsuits
       is climbing

"Most newer insurance policies exclude or limit coverage for litigation based on allegations of access violations."

"In state court, plaintiffs can also be awarded punitive damages and damages for emotional distress."

The Americans with Disabilities Act is a two part law. The first part intends to protect the civil rights of Americans with disabilities. The second part describes the requirements to which businesses must adhere to allow those with disabilities to easily participate in all aspects of society. The ADA has been around for 15 years, and business and property owners have little excuse for not complying with the requirements. However, because of the complexity of the law, non-compliance is inevitable for small and large businesses alike. Companies can even be sued if their website is not ADA compliant!

Many people consider the law to be flawed since it is difficult for some small businesses to comply with the sometimes ambiguous requirements. If there is a complaint, there is no opportunity for those businesses to remedy their non-compliance. Knowing that many small businesses without the financial resources to fight lawsuits will often settle out of court, ADA abusers have perfected the art of extracting settlements in exchange for dropping costly legal cases. Many of these lawsuits are not pursued with the primary intent of rectifying a wrong but are filed solely in pursuit of money. In the end, the business pays the lawyer, the lawyer drops the suit, and the "problem" goes unfixed. While a lot of these actions are legitimate, many people feel that the law is being abused.

A building owner determined to identify which access laws apply to a given property may reasonably believe a property is fully compliant when it is not.

The Department of Justice does not allocate significant resources to enforcing the ADA; “citizen” lawsuits to enforce it may yield only a court order for injunctive relief, usually to remove an identified barrier. The reason ADA citizen suits are so prevalent in California is that, unlike in most other states, a litigant can add a companion state-law claim and recover both penalties and damages. California's Unruh Civil Rights Act (CC §51) and Disabled Persons Act (CC § §54—55.2) authorize a statutory penalty against business establishments for discrimination against persons with disabilities. Since 1992, the Unruh Act has defined any ADA violation as an act of discrimination. CC §51(f). Neither intent to discriminate nor actual harm is required, and the amount of the penalty is $4000 per violation. CC § 52(a). Courts have discretion to set the statutory penalty by multiplying $4000 by the number of times a litigant was discouraged from using a business establishment because of an ADA violation, leading to significant sums being awarded.