Naples Daily News

• "Best Western and Restaurant. Business was among several in Naples and Fort Myers that were sued in the last couple of years by Mallah's firm over alleged ADA violations. In the lawsuits, Mallah names as plaintiff's different advocacy groups for the disabled."

  http://www.naplesnews.com/02/04/business/d755197a.htm

Litigation Trends Article

• "One development is the growth of single-issue law firms devoted to filing ADA suits on behalf of individual plaintiffs who allege they have been denied access to public accommodations. The ADA is a strict liability statute: if your business is in violation, you are liable. Although damage awards usually are minimal, often as little as the state statutory minimum of $1,000 per occurrence, attorney fee awards of $4,000 to $8,000 are common. These legal costs are in addition to the expensive repair work necessary to bring a restaurant, hotel or other business into compliance with the ADA. With rare exceptions, public accommodations in violation of the ADA are sitting ducks, at risk of being sued until accessibility improvements are made." (Pamela Lawton Wilson, author)

  http://www.sandiegometro.com/1998/dec/legally.html

New Jersey

• "R.B. settles ADA compliance suit - Red Bank will be making improvements to public areas to make them more accessible to the disabled. The borough will also apply for a grant to assist in covering costs incurred from the changes."

  http://hub.gmnews.com/News/2002/1004/Front_Page/060.html
  

Southwest Airlines

• "Access Now, an advocacy group for the blind, and a blind man named Robert Gumson filed the lawsuit in an attempt to compel Southwest to redesign its Web site to make it easier for blind people to navigate. They admitted that it was possible for the blind to buy tickets on Southwest's site, but argued it was "extremely difficult."

  "Gumson, who said he had a screen reader with a voice synthesizer on his computer, asked the judge to order Southwest to provide text that could serve as an alternative to the graphics on its site and to redesign the site's navigation bar to make it easier for him to understand. He and his lawyers also asked for attorney fees and costs. "

  "The ADA says that any "place of public accommodation" must be accessible to people with disabilities. The law, enacted in 1990, lists 12 categories, including hotels, restaurants, shopping centers, universities and bowling alleys. "

  
  update [10/2002] A federal judge ruled Friday that Southwest Airlines does not have to revamp its Web site to make it more accessible to the blind.
  In the first case of its kind, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies only to physical spaces, such as restaurants and movie theaters, and not to the Internet.

  "To expand the ADA to cover 'virtual' spaces would be to create new rights without well-defined standards," Seitz wrote in a 12-page opinion dismissing the case. "The plain and unambiguous language of the statute and relevant regulations does not include Internet Web sites."

  http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962761.html?part=wht&tag=wtop

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

"The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Florida, offered a broad view of the ADA in a June decision involving the TV show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" To weed out less-able participants, the show had used a screening process that required people to press keys on a telephone keypad.

"Several disabled people sued, saying that the ABC Television Network was in violation of the ADA because deaf people or people with upper-body mobility problems were unfairly excluded. The Eleventh Circuit sided with the plaintiffs, saying the phone process "deprives them of the opportunity to compete for the privilege of being a contestant on the 'Millionaire' program.

"In her decision on Friday, Judge Seitz said the Web was different, because there was no link "between Southwest.com and a physical, concrete place of public accommodation."

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-962761.html?part=wht&tag=wtop