Helping Freedom Win: Legal Bullies –- Destroying Small Business — Beware, this Threatens you

What is a Legal Bully and How Does He Threaten Our Country?

A legal bully is a lawyer who uses “the law” purely for financial or other personal gain and twists the law’s intent so much that it now threatens the survival of every innocent and good business. Just think of the thugs in the days of Al Capone.

What would have happened if our country didn’t get rid of the mob’s open extortion of innocent businesses back in the day?

Our Country RIGHT NOW is Threatened by Another Kind of Mob (Legal Bullies)

Schwabe summarizes the legal-bullying I’m talking about in this article.

Have a visual disability? The obvious and most sincere option for a visually impaired person having trouble navigating a site would be to simply ask for help. Call or write the company, requesting they do something to make the website more accessible to them. But here is what is happening instead.

• An increasing number of lawsuits are being filed by a few law firms (bully-types) representing visually impaired people, accusing. companies’ websites of violations of public accessibility laws.
• These are brought against a company (often a small company, such as a small online store) without notice or requests to cure the alleged violations.
• The complaint alleges that there is a set of standards that the website should adhere to in order to be sufficiently accessible to visually impaired people.
• The company’s website, as alleged, fails to meet that standard. Accordingly, the blind person was unable to order the desired bottle of shampoo (or some other product).
• The complaint names numerous causes of action all related to public accessibility laws: perhaps the ADA (American Disabilities Act) or a variety of New York state and municipal causes of action, including the New York State Human Rights Law, the New York State Civil Rights Law, or the New York City Human Rights Law.
• The company receives the complaint, and summons and retains an attorney. Companies cannot represent themselves in court, so they can’t save money by defending themselves.
• The normal routine is for the attorney to reach out to the plaintiff’s counsel — perhaps to ask for an extension of time to respond and a settlement.
• A telephone call is arranged, and the plaintiff’s attorney cuts to the chase — the plaintiff is willing to settle the case for what usually amounts to something like twenty-five thousand.
• And the vast majority of companies will settle, because the cost of litigating is much higher than the value of the settlement demand. Notably, the bottle of shampoo is never demanded.
• If the company (defendant) doesn’t make enough money to pay the demand, the company’s financials are requested at which time the plaintiff says they will consider making a “more reasonable” offer.

Now Here Comes the Killer

Even though thousands of these cases (and the number is ever-growing) are bombarding the courts, and all kinds of website owners, there is nothing to say that any and every company already sued and settled can’t be sued by the next visually impaired person down the line. Also, since pretty much everyone is online these days, there’s nothing to say that everyone in the US couldn’t be faced with a lawsuit like this in the very near future. It’s small business owners now, but who’s to say this couldn’t be expanded to everyone with a website of any kind?

Could you imagine a company having 5 of these cases to settle? (I actually know one person who had to settle five identical cases just last year. He was hit with all in a very short time of each other.)

Why is New York the Focal Point of These Cases?

These kind of legal-bullying cases are especially prevalent in New York courts. The reason is that an insufficient number of cases have actually made it to trial. They all settle. You have to make it to trial for precedents to be set.

So, right now, with New York visually impaired residents, pretty much anything goes. But who is to say that other states won’t copycat the NY state laws and offer more of the same “for” their residents.

So far, there are really only a few legal firms abusing the law this way. But there are thousands upon thousands of cases. They seem to stay under the radar by…

1. Strictly alleging the NY laws were violated. (They stay away from ADA, because too many restrictions on how much the lawyers can make have been put in place with ADA cases.)
2. They file complaints against small website-only Mom & Pop shops (who have enough money to settle, but probably don’t have enough money to actually try the case in court).

Was a Law Broken by the Defendant?

No. First of all, the defendant (website owner) had no intention to discriminate and would have happily helped the visually impaired “customer” if they were given a chance. (Help, was obviously not what the visually impaired person wanted.)

The claim that accessibility guidelines have been violated is also bogus. There are no legal guidelines set by US or state governments regarding the state of accessibility (or how to achieve it) of websites. The “guidelines” that are claimed to exist are just suggestions, practically impossible to achieve, and are also not very well known by web-developers (who are the ones who “build” the websites).

It’s not like building codes. Website technology is new and varied enough to actually have no actual “codes”. Yet, this fact doesn’t stop the ongoing spread of litigation when the promise of a good pay-day is involved.

Are you a website owner? You could be the next “defendant” – I’m very serious.

Did the Visually Impaired Person Violate the Law?

No, or it’s at least not provable. People can sue if they have a grievance. They don’t have to actually tell you their grievance in many cases either. It depends on the wording of the law and whether any precedents have been set for litigation protocols.

Are the Lawyers (Legal Bullies) Guilty of Violating the Law?

This is actually a strong possibility. “In that fleeting moment on the telephone call, when a five-figure sum was demanded, a federal crime may have taken place.” (Another quote from Schwabe)

• That five-figure sum exceeds the reasonable value of the lawsuit — it is substantially more than the statutory damages, and significantly more than the attorney fees spent to date generating the complaint.
• Under federal and state statutes, the settlement demand was likely an act of extortion under the Hobbs Act, and may also constitute an act of racketeering — also a federal felony.

The likelihood of the small website-owner to use the plaintiff’s lawyer’s act of racketeering against them to make a counterclaim is probably zero. This would be like fighting “Al Capone.” To fight a case like this will take a very astute legal team and a very large sum of money, well beyond the means of an ordinary small business owner.

Have Any Other Laws Been Broken Here?

Yes, most likely. But again it would take a very smart legal team to bring this all up in the proper courts (or in Congress) and get it sorted out.

In the US we have interstate commerce laws. Online stores (which are only websites, with no physical presence) are engaged obviously in interstate commerce. That’s observably their only purpose.

It could be argued that as such they are 1) not a public accommodation by the definition of existing US laws and 2) interstate commerce has already been determined to fall under the US and not state government regulations.

How to Solve the Legal-Bullying Problem

I’m doing the first step in solving the problem by bringing it to the attention of as many ordinary citizens as I can (through my website and other information boards).

But beyond this there is much that can be done.

• Challenge the complaint in court: All it will take is for one legal team to challenge the NY courts in one of these cases. It will take a lot of funds, yes, but it’s worth it to help our world this way if you are financially able.
• The US Congress has the legal power (with the swoop of a pen) to invalidate any state’s attempt to usurp their jurisdiction over internet commerce or accessibility. Then, with another swoop of their pen they could do what they should have done years ago, which is to clarify the ADA to specifically remove online stores from the ever-growing threats of litigation.

So every person reading this article can write their representatives in both the US house and congress about this very real threat to all of us.

Share This Article

If you have your own platform for reaching ordinary citizens, you have my permission to copy/paste or link to this post (which ever works best for you) in order to spread the word. What if every US Congress-person got hundreds of similar requests to solve this problem?

Or, if you otherwise share this article somehow, we can reach more people.

People working together is what the foundation of our country is all about. By working together we become stronger, so much so that we potentially have the power to save our country from getting more broken. Together we are strong, separate and apart we are weak and vulnerable.

Helping Freedom Win

For more ways to help people in 2024, go to www.helpingfreedomwin.org

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