San Francisco coffee shop targeted by frivolous ADA lawsuit

“These types of lawsuits highly abuse the law.”

Roberto Guerrero · Cumaica Coffee · San Francisco, CA

 

When Roberto Guerrero and his family emigrated from war-torn Nicaragua in the 1980s, they hoped to share their family’s love of coffee with the residents of San Francisco. Starting with one store in 1987, members of the family opened several coffee shops in the Bay Area, including two Cumaica Coffee stores owned by Roberto.

Roberto loves the city of San Francisco and its coffee-loving residents. “San Francisco has been very generous,” he said. “It’s where the doors of opportunity are opened” for first-generation immigrants like himself. Unfortunately, California’s version of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) has created doors of opportunity for plaintiffs’ lawyers to target small businesses like Roberto’s.

It began when Roberto received a letter from a customer who claimed that certain features in Roberto’s store violated the ADA. All were minor violations such as a recycling bin placed too close to a door and a pastry case located too close to a counter. Roberto did not realize his store was in violation of the ADA but quickly made the requested changes and notified the customer.

The customer acknowledged that Roberto made the requested changes yet sued anyway and sought nearly $90,000 in damages. Unlike in most states, California law authorizes monetary damages in ADA cases, which incentivizes enterprising plaintiffs and their lawyers to bring lawsuits for even minor ADA violations. The law also provides for damages of up to $4,000 for each and every visit to a non-compliant business, encouraging plaintiffs to not report problems and instead repeatedly visit a business in order to claim greater payouts.

Roberto was shocked by the lawsuit and even invited the plaintiff and his attorney to see for themselves that the violations were corrected. The plaintiffs’ lawyer conceded that Roberto’s store was in compliance, but said it was too late to avoid the lawsuit. After about a year of litigation, Roberto settled the lawsuit.

But Roberto wasn’t the only small business owner targeted. At least 16 neighboring businesses were also sued by the same plaintiff. Two of them were forced to close. The plaintiff’s attorney claims to have filed 2,000 ADA lawsuits in California on behalf of several serial plaintiffs.

Roberto is angry about these lawsuits and the effect they have on businesses and the neighboring community. “These types of lawsuits highly abuse the law,” he said. “They affect an entire community, not just one business.”

 

21 Comments

  1. Rahul S said on September 22, 2011 at 11:36 am #

    This is exactly the kind of thing you dont need in a bad economy, with people struggling to make ends meet and support their employees in the process.

    ADA laws should not promise monetary benefits, rather it should support only improvement of services to the disabled.

  2. p weiss said on September 26, 2011 at 12:56 pm #

    The state should take a look at this lawyer & his practice. Disbarment would be a nice solution. Then CHANGE THE LAW! Compliance = NO LAWSUIT!
    Serial plaintiffs SHOULD BE BARRED from further suits.

  3. Sebastian said on September 30, 2011 at 4:57 pm #

    Does California have Vexatious Litigant laws? If so, they should be slapped on the jerk. Basically would mean he’d have to get a judge’s approval to launch lawsuits, therefore a chance to stop this jerk in his tracks.

    And that “per visit” rule should be changed that a visit only counts if the plaintiff has notified the defendant, each time. So that would have capped his suit at $4,000

  4. Daniel H said on November 4, 2011 at 3:27 am #

    If you actually look into the issue, you’ll see that the CA courts have done something about it. Don’t over react and strip away rights of all for the decisions of one. Plus, CA prides itself on equality. CA had a disability law in place 20 years before the ADA was ever passed. Property owners can’t act surprised about the regulations.

    http://legalpad.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/tough-times-for.html

  5. Bert L. Rogal said on November 4, 2011 at 7:21 pm #

    I am an attorney that has handled defending small businesses sued by “bottom feeder-attorneys. The cure is ridiculously simple; Plainitffs claiming ADA violations should first deliver a notice to the targeted business allowing the business owner to come into compliance (30 or 60 days BEFORE a lawsuit can be filed — Write your congressman.

  6. Bill Riedel said on November 17, 2011 at 6:20 pm #

    Sounds like this idiot and the idiot lawyer are making their living filing ADA lawsuits. I agree that ADA lawsuits should NOT award money but only require coming into compliance. That will quickly stop all these lawsuits and probably mean the person that is the plaintiff will have find some new sources of income.

  7. Sagebrush said on November 17, 2011 at 7:43 pm #

    Bottomfeeder lawyers give the rest of the lawyers a bad name. Can’t something be done about them ?
    When a business has complied to the ADA demands (which are usually a prcurser to a law suit) the judge should just throw it and the plainiff aka the wiener out of court.

  8. glenndan said on November 17, 2011 at 9:23 pm #

    This just shows that California is ‘LOONY.’ They may have been the first to recongnize ADA, before the rest of the country as one writter said. But the Town Government should handle this or the County Government could step, and, should step in and change the Laws for Businsses and small Businesses. This is a good example of ENTITLEMENT. We as Americans have forgotten the meaning of getting your hands dirty, rolling up your sleeves and taking care of your family, as well as yourself!! What happened to COURTESY. No one wants to open their mouth when they see something wrong, This Businessman, worked hard to build his business, support his family, and seek the American Dream, to be proud of what you’ve done. Then, to have some a KNUCKLE-HEAD, come into your business, and tell you you must change things to have acessable for people with disabilities (the article didn’t say what the disability was, wheelchair, cane, blind,etc.) I’m not going to assume anything. But, this person caused other businesses to close. Sounds like a habitual business closer only looking out for him/or herself. I know that San Francisco actually has ‘DRAG-RACES,’ but are the people of San Fran, so scared of Feinstein and Pelosi, that they can’t get either of them to make a change? This is just baffilling to me…

  9. Ken Anderson said on November 18, 2011 at 11:12 am #

    another reason we site to clients thinking of expanding into the USA hoping they will not do so. Our legal system, like all, needs improvement, but the USA, and in particular California, reduces growth and jobs because it is a major fear factor. Also another reason you pay 10 times the premiums for far less coverage that we do in Canada, and most of our domestic markets exclude coverage in the US

  10. William said on November 18, 2011 at 12:30 pm #

    @Daniel H –
    California does not pride itself on equality, it prides itself on punishing anyone who is not a member of certain protected classes of individuals. This would only count as a (very sad) form of equality if they only went so far as squashing every exception down to the level of the lowest common denominator, but they don’t stop at “level in the muck”, non-protected individuals must be further subdued, just in case they might possibly do something in offense of the protected.

  11. Christopher Fowler said on November 18, 2011 at 1:00 pm #

    There are angry handicapped people out there that spend their time LOOKING for any excuse to sue.
    I was with a small local renn faire troupe and when we put on our annual faire, there was ONE person in a wheelchair that complained, so by the next day, we had to have laid out a path made of those jigsaw puzzle type tiles to insure that he could roll his chair, but he threw a fit anyway. The park is as wheelchair accessible as possible to begin with and no other faire has had this kind of problem before.
    Special consideration for more than one is one thing, but having to jump through hoops for just one person that was trying to create a lawsuit is another. They only help the individual bringing the suit and their lawyer, not the community as a whole.

  12. Patrick Kofmehl said on November 18, 2011 at 2:32 pm #

    The ADA requirements are legal issue
    and should not be allowed to become a
    civil issue.

  13. Walt said on November 18, 2011 at 3:18 pm #

    This is absurd. The lawyer and plaintiff should be shot or jailed. This does nothing but line the pockets of sleaze balls.

  14. Ben said on November 18, 2011 at 5:59 pm #

    Daniel H – that’s from 3 years ago. What was the result? As far as I’ve been able to determine, Tom Francovich basically got tapped on the pinkie in the state ethics violation investigation, and is still at it. I’m not sure this counts much as ‘doing something about it’.

  15. Danny L. Smith said on November 19, 2011 at 11:26 am #

    And now these idiots in Ca are moving into and trying to destroy other parts of the country.

    Do they really not understand what is causing so many problems?

  16. ashlee said on November 30, 2011 at 2:53 pm #

    This is crazy. It’s very simple — if the business doesn’t fix it then and only then they could be sued. When the business is inspected by the health department why can’t they tell the business they are not complying with the ADA laws. I think that these people just go business to business looking for a lawsuit. They probably don’t even go to the business normally. it’s sad that an attorney is so willing to take cases. i am disabled and i have only complained twice and the place fixed it. sueing them never even crossed my mind. the fact that he still sued says it all it was never about making it easier for him to go there it was about hey yeah!!!! free money for me. what a mean horrible person they are. it makes me sad that people and the attorney are allowed to get away with this. maybe i should go to california i need some money. not!!!

  17. Lorie said on December 1, 2011 at 5:33 pm #

    The Ca judicial system is cracked. It does not serve the people (tax payers) however it does serve the attorneys and the state employees of the legal system. That being said, I also think a lot of people including lawyers are trying to make up for lost income due to our economy. A friend of mine owns a business and has become a victim to customers looking to make settlement money from bogus lawsuit. They are asking for insane amounts (6 figures/pain and suffering) in hopes of a settlement? The attorney representing them knows it will cost over 60k to prove the innocence of my friend. This almost forces the party being sued to settle even though they would be found free of any wrong doings in court. It all gets down to MONEY$. In regards to my friend’s situation, the people making the false claim (represented by an attorney) have exhausted their unemployment, and are currently unemployed! As I see it, their attorney is their accomplice in all of this Fraud! I honestly believe that the attorneys are at fault here and the attorneys that represent these bogus lawsuits should have to pay the cost incurred by the victims, fined and disbarred! This is all a big scam and we are all paying for it!

  18. paul mandica said on December 2, 2011 at 6:46 pm #

    they should put the attorney in jail and change the law.the bad thing is the attoeny makes the lawa.it has to STOP

  19. James said on December 3, 2011 at 12:18 pm #

    Californians demand too much control from the government and then comes the TRASH that abuse the laws for their own gain. Regulations as minor as these being sued over shows the ethics of the people doing these lawsuits, that being they are less ethical than the most corrupt of politicians.

  20. anarchitek said on January 1, 2012 at 4:44 pm #

    I heard of a person going around the state (CA) several years ago, filing these kinds of lawsuits against businesses that weren’t in full compliance with the ADA. According to the person who told me of this abuse (a building official who had to deal with the bozo, and provide plans for “research” into the violations), the person was in a wheelchair, and worked in concert with a lawyer, filing a half dozen suits in the local area, before moving on to a new location. They had been in this area several years before, and done the same thing at the time. It helped me calm clients who balked at the extent and cost of ADA “improvements” to their buildings. After explaining how they could be dragged into court, need to hire an attorney, AND lose, they quickly came around, urging me to “be sure” to get everything just right!

  21. Johnny Rocky said on January 1, 2012 at 6:40 pm #

    too chicken to name the plaintiff and attorney?

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