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.”

“We wanted to offer our cuisines, our culture and traditions,” says Ramiro.

Running a small business is difficult, as shown by the large number of vacant storefronts in Bell. Unfortunately, lawsuit abuse is one challenge faced by far too many small business owners, including Jaime and Ramiro.

One day, Jaime and Ramiro received notice that they had been sued for allegedly violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. The plaintiff, who uses a wheelchair, claimed to have visited La Casita Mexicana and alleged (incorrectly) that the mirror in the restaurant’s bathroom violated the ADA by being too high for customers in wheelchairs.

The two restaurant owners were shocked by the lawsuit. “Handicapped people are very welcome [at La Casita Mexicana], and we have trained our [staff] to go out of their way to help them,” says Ramiro. “We couldn’t understand it.”

They then heard that several neighboring businesses were targeted by similar lawsuits from the same plaintiff, who has filed more than 500 ADA-related lawsuits. This plaintiff was clearly “targeting small businesses, especially in the Latino community,” says Jaime.

Jaime and Ramiro chose to fight the lawsuit. They looked at La Casita Mexicana’s surveillance video and discovered that the plaintiff had not visited the restaurant – ever. When confronted with this evidence, the plaintiff quickly dropped his lawsuit.

The costs of a lawsuit can be high for a small business owner. In an already weak economy, the costs of frivolous lawsuits could force some small businesses to close. As Jaime says,“we don’t want that to happen to La Casita Mexicana, and we don’t want that to happen to anybody.”

“The minute they amputated the leg, the infection was gone, but I woke up with phantom limb pains. So for me, it felt like pliers on my toenails of the foot that’s gone,” said Mike Roman. “The only way my pain was controlled or managed even remotely was through intensely high doses of narcotics. There wasn’t one aspect that pain or medicine didn’t affect in my life. It slowly sucked the life out of not only me, but my wife and my kids.”

Doctors tried various procedures and medical devices to relieve the chronic pain Mike was suffering, but to no avail. Fortunately for Mike, medical device innovation was ongoing, and eventually the spinal cord stimulator – which had been tried before – progressed to where it could help him.

“It wasn’t until that technology had time to be developed and tweaked that it worked for me in 2005. On paper it’s genius, but it took time to develop that and it took a company.”

Freed from chronic pain, Mike was free to pursue his dream of racing in national events. On August 13th, 2009, on his third attempt at the Bonneville Flats Speed Weeks, Mike Roman broke the landspeed record in the J/GL Class Lakester Division at 165.127 mph.

Mike is worried that lawsuits may hamper the medical innovation that allowed him to race again. “Our fear as a family is that lawsuits will choke down the pipeline of innovation,” he says.

Mike says the goal of the legal system should be balance. “When lawsuits dictate what companies can do and what products they develop, then we are out of balance.”

“We don’t know what the future holds in medical technology. Please don’t slam the door on a patient’s hope, because there was a time when that’s all I had. But the technology caught up, and second chances can be made into miracles.”

But elementary school students in Cabell County, West Virginia, may miss out on some of those childhood pleasures. That is because the county’s school system has decided to remove swing sets from all school playgrounds, due to lawsuit fears. 

The decision came after the school district faced two different lawsuits from the same parent over relatively minor injuries suffered by his two kids in separate incidents on a school playground. Facing a tight budget because of the current economic situation, the school system determined that it could not afford the potential costs of playground-related lawsuits and decided to remove the swing sets.

“We’re disabling our swings to keep us out of the courtroom,” says Cabell County Schools superintendent William Smith. “Economically, school districts are really having to watch their budgets closely. Playgrounds are very important but the instructional program trumps that.”

Smith recalls his own experience growing up in Cabell County and how much everyone enjoyed the playgrounds. Kids got the typical scrapes and bruises, but parents took care of those injuries without resorting to lawsuits.

“The culture has changed so much,” he laments.

One school that is losing swings is Guyandotte Elementary School in Huntington. Donna Mooney attended Guyandotte and currently has a daughter attending. She is disappointed that her daughter won’t get to share in her own childhood experiences on the school’s swing set.

“The tragedy is that the kids are losing everything that is fun about being a kid,” she says. “You can’t bubble wrap everything from them. They have to be allowed to play and be kids.”

He’s referring to a fourteen-year long ordeal that forced his small, family owned business to endure a lawsuit, two trials, heavy legal expenses, and endless hours of wondering whether his business would survive.

It all began in 1996, when Steve was informed of an individual claiming they got sick due to pest control work done by Steve’s company. He investigated and found that the individual worked nowhere near where his technicians had performed their work. Despite this, Steve’s company was sued by the individual.

After going through a full trial, a jury found against the plaintiff and absolved Steve’s business from liability. The plaintiff refused to concede and appealed the verdict.

Five years later, after a second trial, a jury came up with an identical verdict: Steve’s business was not liable.

But the story still isn’t over. The plaintiff is threatening to appeal the second verdict and seek a third trial, which Steve could avoid by settling with the plaintiff for $500,000, despite the fact that his business did nothing wrong.

In addition to the endless hours and numerous legal expenses associated with going through multiple trials, the uncertainty created by the lawsuit has made it hard for Steve’s business to plan for the future or contemplate expansion.

“You’re unable to do anything during that process,” Steve says. “It ties you down so much.”

And leaving aside the obvious economic costs of going through fourteen years of litigation, Steve mentions the emotional impact of having to sit through endless legal proceedings where his business’s hard-earned reputation is dragged through the mud.

“It tears me up to this day,” he says, “sitting there thinking that everything I built is on the line.”

“Any time an entrepreneur decides to go into business for himself, he’s incurring a lot of risk, and the rewards are not guaranteed by any means,” Singer says. “When you throw in the additional risk of lawsuits and their potential cost, it has a serious effect on the economic engine of this country.”

In 2006, one the company’s neighbors – who had filed 23 previous lawsuits in the county – sued Acra Cast, the Singer family business. Acra Cast, with about 15 employees, is a small foundry, which designs and creates precision metal castings ranging from sculptures to machine parts.

The plaintiff alleged that emissions from the foundry had contaminated his cars, his carpet, and the siding of his house. Singer’s business has always been in full compliance with all environmental regulations. As the case proceeded, Singer learned that the plaintiff did not even own some of the cars for which he wanted compensation, and he had disposed of the carpets and cleaned the house siding before any evidence could be collected. From the samples they could collect, Singer explains that he and his lawyers eventually discovered that the gritty material on the plaintiff’s car could not have been caused by the wax burned at Acra Cast. It contained metal shavings and paint globules, Singer says, and was likely the result of parking near an auto body shop.

Even so, the case dragged on for almost three years, and Acra Cast had to pay for the suit out of pocket. Knowing he had not caused this damage, Singer refused to settle out of court, and he was forced to spend thousands of dollars on legal fees before the case was eventually dismissed in 2009.

These expenses, says Singer, burdened his business at a time of extreme hardship. The economy in Michigan and the fact that several of his clients have recently gone out of business meant that profit margins were dangerously narrow. He even had to lay off several of his employees.

“It’s one thing to run a business and to put up with the pain and the hard work associated with that,” Singer says. “It’s an entirely different subject to have someone come in, walk in off the street and – short of putting a gun to your head – try to steal money from you.”

The pool and its founder, Evelyn Graham, welcomed thousands of swimmers every summer for more than ten years. Mt. Laurel Pool provided a gathering place for families and neighbors and summer jobs for teenagers. One former lifeguard says, “When you’re younger, it is difficult to find a place of employment, and Evelyn gave us that opportunity to have a place to learn good work ethics.”

One summer, despite rules painted on the sidewalk and a warning from the lifeguard, a man ran and jumped into the pool, cutting his heel. “There was nothing we did wrong. He did it to himself,” the pool manager says. The lifeguard and manager cleaned and bandaged the cut, and the manager recalls that he said “It’s nothing. It’s just a little cut… No problem.”

But, later, Mt. Laurel Pool was sued. The man and his wife claimed $100,000 for the injury, and Graham’s lawyers recommended that she settle what she considered to be a wildly frivolous case. She was baffled, and, fearing copy cat lawsuits, she decided to close the pool.

In the end, it was the community that suffered most. Hazleton families no longer have a place to swim, and everyone from the ticket takers to the management lost their jobs. “They sue when they shouldn’t sue,” Wanuga says. “But then we have lawyers who thrive on it. They love it. They wish you would sue, too.”

 “I’m sure they have other motives in mind,” says a former lifeguard, “but they can’t possibly take into consideration what it’s doing to everybody else.”

Juskys was in the process of improving an apartment complex he had just acquired when he learned he was being sued. He had been making a variety of repairs to the building and the surrounding facilities, and he was posting regular repair notices on the tenants’ doors, as is required by law.

But one tenant claimed that these notices caused her emotional distress, and she sued Juskys for $500,000. The irony, Juskys says, is that the plaintiff had personally been requesting improvements and then sued him for notifying her that he was planning to make them.

“There’s no way to avoid it,” Juskys says. “At some point, if you’re into real estate, you’re going to get sued. We’re easy prey.” The lawsuit not only took away from Juskys’ ability to focus on his tenants and the properties he manages, it also prevented him from initiating new projects, hiring extra employees and creating jobs.

On the day of the trial, Juskys’ insurance company decided to settle the case, and he was required to pay thousands of dollars out of his own pocket.

Juskys now understands why businesses settle even the most frivolous of lawsuits. Small businesses like his can’t win, he says. Even if he had gone to trial and the jury had ruled in his favor, his only winnings would have been a legal bill, higher insurance rates, and lost time.

“You try to do everything right,” Juskys says, “and it’s just not good enough.”

But that did not stop Monroe Rubber and Gasket from being sued. “I didn’t quite understand why we were receiving these [lawsuits] based on what we do here,” said owner Mike Carter.

Over the past five years, asbestos class action and mass action lawsuits have become notorious for fraud and abuse. Judges and others have exposed scams by which plaintiffs’ lawyers conduct assembly line mass medical screenings, lump hundreds of healthy people into a class with only a few sick plaintiffs, and sometimes falsify medical diagnoses. A number of fraudulent medical screeners have even been banned from work on these cases.

Now that many companies responsible for asbestos are bankrupt, plaintiffs’ lawyers are filing lawsuits against businesses like Monroe Rubber and Gasket that neither produced nor were end-users of asbestos products.

Like in many asbestos suits, nearly all of the people claiming that they were injured by Monroe Rubber and Gasket are healthy. Plaintiffs’ lawyers often bundle claims from a few asbestosis/mesothelioma patients with many other healthy plaintiffs in order to leverage greater settlements.

Mike Kosik, the manager of Monroe Rubber and Gasket, said, “We’re all sympathetic to the people who actually have the disease. The ones that we don’t like are the ones that, ‘OK, I was around it. Put my name on the list. Get me whatever you can.’”

Carter’s business employs dozens of people, including several of his family members and close friends. If Monroe Rubber and Gasket continues to accrue legal costs, all of them will lose their jobs. “This could take us out of business,” said Carter. “It’s just kind of sad because I’ve got a group of people here that work with me. And it’s their livelihoods on the line.”

“If just one of these lawsuits do get through, we’ll all be without a job.”

Months later, the local sheriff came to the Swimms’ house to personally serve Scott with papers. “Scott thought he was going to go to jail. He did not understand what was happening,” said Scott’s mother, Susan. Scott was later deposed by three plaintiffs’ lawyers. The night before, he cried himself to sleep. “Scott was intimidated by that,” his mother said. “That was a scary, scary thing.”

The Swimms’ legal ordeal lasted almost a year. Scott’s grades suffered, and his teachers called Susan to let her know how differently Scott was behaving at school. Seeing how dramatically the suit was affecting their son, the Swimms “wanted the whole thing to stop… and I wanted Scott to be able to get his little smile back,” Susan said.

Since the cost of fighting a lawsuit, no matter its merits, is often more than a settlement, the Swimms’ insurance company decided to settle the suit.

Not only did the lawsuit take an emotional toll, it put a dent in the Swimms’ income as well. The many hours Robb spent handling the lawsuit took him away from his jobs, which both paid by the hour. At the time, Robb was working as a hotel concierge and scanning tickets on the ski mountain. Susan was attempting to start her own small business.

“My son’s age was no concern,” Robb said of the lawsuit. “My family’s situation was no concern. And I do believe the lawyers used Scott and his age as a pawn to get across a certain fear that ‘we’re going to hurt your child more if you don’t pay us.’”

“What we learned is that it wasn’t about justice. And it wasn’t about what really happened in the accident… it was all about money.”