Two Portland lawyers file dozens of ADA lawsuits against businesses | The Story | May 16, 2024
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- čas přidán 15. 05. 2024
- May 16 on The Story: Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, businesses are supposed to be equally accessible to people with disabilities. Businesses that don't comply - or that aren't completely in compliance, at least - can find themselves open to legal action. Within the last few months, dozens of Portland businesses have found themselves in that position. A KGW investigation found that two lawyers have sent out a flurry of demand letters, telling small business owners that they are violating some technical aspects of the ADA. If the businesses play ball, they must agree to a settlement that includes becoming compliant and paying attorney's fees - as much as $10,000 in some cases. Businesses that don't agree might find themselves in court. Thirty-five have been sued since September.
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Good for these attorneys!!! I JUST settled an 8 month long ADA dispute last month where I had to obtain an attorney (in another Oregon city) due to my apartment complex property manager refusing to provide me with a requested ADA accessible parking space close to my apartment. By law, the property manager is required to accommodate my request. For 8 months the PM made excuses, didn't reply to my communications, and finally just flat out refused to accommodate me. Finally, after 6 months of discussions, my attorney made it perfectly clear what the legal consequences would be for the PM if he did not accommodate my ADA request, and the PM decided to comply...and it only cost him the price for half a can of spray paint. As a legally codified disabled American, I should NOT have to obtain an attorney to force a non-compliant business/property manager to follow a decades old federal ADA law. So much for Oregon's equity and inclusion for the disabled. Apparently everyone anymore has to be either sued, or threatened to be sued, in order for them to follow the laws that accommodate seniors and the disabled. There's no reason for businesses with a storefront, regardless of size, to not know the ADA laws they are responsible for complying with. Waiting for a disabled person to complain about an ADA violation is just $hitty business.
The worst kind of ambulance chasers….Disgusting.
Wait, so these businesses are violating the ADA, a law that's been on the books for decades, and we're getting mad at the people who are trying to get these businesses to comply?
Yup, Wow...
KGW made a google forum on their website to ask for more businesses to report this plausible deniability. There wasn't any resources provided, so it seems that lawyer is right, and there really isn't any other protections other than "ask me bro" when it comes to not being actively discriminated against as a disabled person through lack of access in Portland. Being a victim shouldn't be the predicate to being your educator. Accidents don't simply create teachers.
On that note, did you get a release for the homeless people you filmed, but couldn't bear to mention? Or do you lie to bend the law around this, and say, "well technically, they walked in front of my camera, its public space and they happen to be there, so this is legal." You do that, yet you would call the cops if I just filmed you in 4K all day outside your door. Just an example of how you see the homeless as something different than the human you are, rather than the same.
You're no stranger to seeing the homeless as subhuman and this story took it to a whole new low when you refused to even SAY it. You'll show the footage, but homeless people, are not even worth the tip of your tongue. Despite being worth it to have your Van crew pile out to capture B-roll. How can you claim to be doing anything but racketing businesses? What you care about is that this lawsuit money isn't being spent on buying, just making disabled people happier. Why is that so offensive to you?
Because if you started giving disabled people rights, you'll give homeless people rights, because many homeless people are disabled. And there we see the true reason you're reporting this story. Further driving American divisions between disabled people, through a class war of their rights, as measured by their housing status.
In Conclusion, KGW, you're filming homeless people, without their consent, for the purpose of taking their rights away in this news story. I don't think that's ethical.
The only disabled people that matter to you are the ones with the housing, and access to sue the city, using the very ADA protections you're now calling litigious. A demand letter is instead of a lawsuit, but you're conflating the two to make these accurate violations seems more extreme.
You hate homeless people so much you're bending over backwards with this story to justify filming homeless people, yet not recognize the insight you could have had in doing so, and realizing those people are disproportionally disabled. Then, after realizing what you've done, you should issue and apology.
Especially when otherwise, you are the media, and are not choosing this story as a part of your ongoing ADA coverage. It's your ongoing homeless-hate coverage. If you really cared about disabled people, where is you continued empathy helping those paraplegics "nicely ask" the businesses to stop being implicitly biased against disabled people? You created a mechanism, the google forum, with the intention of the opposite, to create FUD around filing ADA claims.
Even this prolific lawyer often fails, per your own coverage. Doesn't that beget that even the ADA laws themselves are lacking? Or like you mentioned, that there lacks mechanisms for disabled people to have their voice heard? You are creating the problem in this matter by not elevating the voice of the disabled, but the businesses that, I understand while they're not morally, sometimes, in the wrong, these businesses ARE in fact violation.
And Major Gas Stations backed by Oil Companies, or other mecha-landlords in Portland, are not really the "small business" anyone can sympathize with. That's why other commenters are completely correct to invoke that these property owners are both gifted the privileges, and the responsibilities, of land ownership.
Why you then attack the lawyer's credibility, as a means to, in proxy, attack the legitimacy of this plaintiffs disability, claiming they just want a payout, you are creating the very systemic discrimination that make it so that disabled people had to codify their rights into law to signify they, too, are humans who deserve respect. The lawsuits are otherwise entirely accurate, and you have no reason to become incredulous at the legitimacy of this person's disability.
You are creating fakebook content ripe for dividing disabled people on the merit of their access to housing. If you cared about disabled people, you'd not refuse to mention that the homeless you cleared, are often there because they are disabled too, and are unable to get the same help this woman got under the same ADA laws, because they have no housing.
Thanks for taking away what little rights disabled homeless people have, by actively creating a form and running a defense, giving all businesses plausible deniability to discriminate against anyone they would like under a "just ask me bro" policy which in reality, only upholds entrenched ideologies.
Your story isn't just wrong, it's actively harmful, should be removed, and you should apologize.
The issue is really the timeline involved. Two weeks from what I understand to make all modifications is not much time before being hit with a fine.
What a kookie city.
The old joke still applies. "What do you call 1000 attorneys at the bottom of the sea? A good start!" 🥴