[conspire] Contact DOJ and tell them to blow it out their ass

[Paul Zander]

Earlier in this discussion, there was a reference to Assembly Bill 913 that was said to reduce frivolous suits.  When I searched for AB-913, what I found was a completely different topic.
However, I did find Senate Bill 269 which gives business the opportunity to correction certain problems.  It was passed and signed by Gov Brown May of 2016https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201520160SB269
http://sd31.senate.ca.gov/news/2016-05-11-calif-governor-signs-ada-tort-reform-billhttp://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/news/2016/05/10/governor-signs-bill-creating-ada-grace-period-for.html





      From: Ivan Sergio Borgonovo <mail at webthatworks.it>
 To: conspire at linuxmafia.com 
 Sent: Wednesday, March 22, 2017 2:44 AM
 Subject: Re: [conspire] Contact DOJ and tell them to blow it out their ass
   
On 03/22/2017 12:32 AM, Rick Moen wrote:
> Quoting Ivan Sergio Borgonovo (mail at webthatworks.it):

Premise: I do really appreciate your post because it makes me learn 
things that I didn't know about US legal system but if we can just talk 
about technicality without knowing where we would like to go there can 
not be any constructive discussion.

Those technicality are important if you've to go to court, but since we 
were discussing if giving a grace period to business would be an 
improvement, we were discussing about changing the law.

I'm aware that it can be pretty hard to write laws as you write 
algorithms, that's probably why we have courts.
But having a technical approach to thing, this would be one of the most 
important target when planning to write or amend a law.
And according to what everyone is saying on the list the main problem is 
understanding how to be ADA compliant is hard and how some requirement 
are nonsensical.
In my opinion giving a grace period to business opens another can of 
worms and doesn't fix the issue.

I'm not an expert and it is hard to compare complexity of legal system 
(number of laws, procedures, coherency, litigiousness...).
But we have our share of problems here too so you've all my 
understanding for how it can be hard to abide ADA.

> A public officer suing runs into the obvious roadblock of the legal
> concept of standing.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_(law)
> Plaintiff in civil litigation must be able to prove he/she is directly
> and personally harmed by the claimed tort (non-criminal wrongful deed).
>
> Public officers do not, in English-derived legal systems like the USA's,
> have a magic card to deploy that says 'I'm an important representative
> of the public, ergo I get standing automatically to represent the public
> interest broadly.'  Doesn't work that way.

OK, I got my mistake.
Public officers can't sue, but what if they could fine?
Now you want business to become compliant and if nobody is entitled or 
able to check, you'll have to trust on business good will.

So I think it is OK if citizens have an incentive to sue.
But that incentive has to be proportionate to many factors and not start 
at $4000 straight.

[snip]

> Suing (bringing a tort action under civil law) does not normally expose
> a plaintiff to risk other than the risk of expending the cost of
> supporting a lawsuit and getting nothing in return in a court judgement
> or settlement.  In rare cases, courts will assess a plaintiff's action

I'd consider this a risk if you sue people as line of business.

>> And remedies seems worse than the cure:
>> «His Assembly Bill 913 would clamp down on frequent filers»

> How to assess the merits of that proposal that would depend on what
> 'clamp down' means.

I see the problem in "frequent". Frequent doesn't say anything on the merit.

> 1.  Most people assume that once a business is ADA-compliant, it will
> continue to be so.  That seems like a reasonable assumption, because
> otherwise the country is putting a large and unexpected burden on
> (mostly) small businesses to re-educate themselves continually and
> periodically do new work.  Well, surprise!  My understanding is that
> the regulations and standards (the Americans With Disabilities Act
> Accessibility Guidelines) periodically change _and_ that new
> requirements _do_ fall with full force onto ADA-non-exempt businesses
> even if they have not had new construction, modifications, or
> alterations.
>
> Therefore, businesses that have historically been fully ADA-compliant
> can easily find themselves ADA-non-compliant without doing anything
> different -- and the first indication they typically have of this new
> problem is being on the pointy end of a civil lawsuit.

You can't fix the problem of competitiveness of small business that way.
You'd better write requirement that can be followed and are actually 
effective or create a market for consulting firms that's enough 
interesting to lower the price of consulting.

[snip]

> Permitting allegedly infringing businesses a 90- or 120-day grace period
> to fix alleged violations before a plaintiff is permitted to file a
> lawsuit would still leave businesses highly motivated to fix problems
> but prevent people like Gerardo Hernandez from being able to coerce tens
> of thousands of dollars in ADA damages from countless small businesses
> (in addition to the cost of court action and renovations work) for
> violations they didn't even know they were commiting.

I point again to:
“Forty percent of the cases in 2015 were filed by just two firms who are 
exploiting ADA lawsuits for their own personal gain."
So probably it's not a problem of some Gerardos.

> I rather suspect that your perception that a bit of courseware was more
> promotional than educational would be of little interest to the court in
> this legal matter.  It's not what would be adjudicated.

Oh well but it could be interesting for MIT... they could just take it 
down. But wait, they probably do it for advertising not pro bono ;)

Yeah I'm aware that my experience is not yet statistically relevant, but 
enough statistically relevant for me to avoid investing further time in 
making it statistically relevant for everyone else.
But I got the impression that if the focus was seriously "free public 
education" there wouldn't be such competition between people that can't 
afford university and people with disabilities.

So going back to the technical problem of giving people an education... 
what kind of tools and materials would you give to people to learn 
Computer Science for example?
My gut feeling is that solving the problem to teach CS online to anyone 
is no different than teaching it to blind or deaf people. And that could 
be true for many subjects and different disabilities.

Probably teaching a blind person how to become a surgeon is harder and 
possibly moot.

Now when institutions that have to comply to ADA have to decide where to 
put their money and resources and they put online advertising stuff 
disguised as courses well it is their choice.
Is advertising deducible in US? ;)

I really doubt this has any impact on "public education".
Nevertheless, to come back to the original issue, I think everybody 
should care if educational materials are accessible.

-- 
Ivan Sergio Borgonovo
http://www.webthatworks.it http://www.borgonovo.net


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