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

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> I, for one, have found this an interesting discussion.  I also was
> thinking along the lines of giving several month of notice before
> court proceedings could commence. Somehow, in my mind, I was thinking
> that the building department having jurisdiction should also be
> notified.  And maybe 90 days should be longer. Or if the business is
> not open on the 91st day, proceedings can not begin until it is open.
> The remodel might be in progress or the owner has decided to
> permanently close or ...

That was the model I was trying to describe.  E.g, plaintiff does not
qualify as having standing unless the complained-of non-compliant
conditions are still impairing plaintiff's use of the public
accomodation 90+ days after giving said business appropriate notice of
particular and intent to sue.

> In small claims court, one must make an attempt at settlement before filing.
> How did CA come to have the minimum $4000 + costs law?

OK, I've only barely attempted to research this, but this appears to be
the California Unruh Civil Rights Act of 1959, as amended.  (Jesse M. Unruh
was for many long decades a famous California politician in the 1950s
and 1960s, but now little remembered by Golden Staters.  Sic transit
gloria mundi.)

After the 1990 (Federal) Americans with Disabilities Act, in 1992, the
Unruh Act was amended, adding new section 51, to incorporate ADA
standards, declaring that a violation of the ADA would also constitute a
violation of the Unruh Act.  To prevail on a section 51 claim, a
plaintiff must plead and prove that the defendant’s violation was
intentional, unless the action is predicated on a violation of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, in which case intent need not be
proved.  Damages are available under section 52 to prevailing plaintiffs
in the amount of up to three times the actual damages and no less than
$4,000 in statutory damages.

(Above answers my Preemption Act question, upthread.)

Wikipedia elaborates:

  Disability litigation

  Since the passage of the federal Americans with Disabilities Act,
  disability access violations count among the practices that run afoul of
  the Unruh act.  Combined with the California Disabled Persons Acts,
  disability access plaintiffs are allowed to tack on state claims for
  money damages onto requests for injunctive relief in ADA lawsuits.  The
  act allows plaintiffs to claim treble damages with a minimum of $4000
  per access violation plus attorneys fees.  In most states, plaintiffs are
  entitled to only injunctive relief, having the disability access issue
  fixed.  As a result of the damages claimed under Unruh Act, California
  accounts for 42% of all ADA litigation nationwide.  However, in
  California, damages may be reduced in certain cases to $2,000 or $1,000
  if construction related accessibility violations are corrected within
  30–60 days of being served with a complaint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act#Disability_litigation


> A key piece of learning/teaching is motivation.  Until someone decided
> they want to learn a subject, it is difficult to make them study.

I've seen this topic from a lot of angles, including seeing corporate 
behaviour that makes me a bit jaded and cynical about the subject, at 
times.  Specifically, I've repeatedly seen corporate staffers pull off
what seemed to me (at least at the time) as a con job whereby they 
claim they cannot possibly use some new corporate-standard software
-- even, say, a new release of Microsoft Office -- until they have had 
'training' in it.  Then, the managers comply with this, paying to send
the employee(s) offsite or into a conference room to be 'trained' for a
few days to a week, which from my cynical perspective looked mostly like
a chance to loaf and take a mini-vacation from real work.

It looked to me, at least at the time, as if 'I haven't been trained'
was a flimsy excuse, and the business found it easier to just fund 
some person to walk everyone through almost-completely-unchanged
MS-Office dialogues than to say 'learn or get replaced'.

I'll readily admit that this interpretation is cynical, and that only
some corporate 'training' is as featherweight as 'let's take a leisurely
stroll through the latest MS-Office'.

That having been said, on the other hand, I completely agree:  When I 
want to learn a subject, I dig into it.  People who aren't prepared to 
learn tend to just put in their time.

On the gripping hand[1], people are diverse in the ways they learn.
Some people need the lecture talking head.


[1] http://catb.org/jargon/html/O/on-the-gripping-hand.html