Posted on 01/23/2009 4:00:08 AM PST by Virginia Ridgerunner
You can believe what ever you want. Court papers do not lie about this cases. Reporters lie all the time.
The fact is these scam artists go in with a minor issue and force the issue. She did not win the cases if the business was forced to settle as a business decision.
Businesses do not want to disclose their business income. It is cheeper to pay her 1000 expert fee and the X dollars to the lawyer to just go away.
It is amazing how many of these complaints settle with little or nothing changing in the business.
The ADA should change to prevent litigation mills. Legitimate issues should be noticed in advance. If a new building has been approved and given its completion papers then that should stand as presumption of compliance.
The joke of the ADA now has guild before innocence.
BTW FYI: it is easy enough to look up these womans court documents to confirm everything. Remember, reporters lie.
For businesses of Gettysburg, the place where the high tide of the Confederacy began to ebb, the place where arguably the civil rights movement began, and where the ideals of inclusion that were written about in the preamble to our constitution were reinforced by the emancipation proclamation, to be resistant to the ideals of inclusion and failing to uphold the Americans with Disabilities Act is disgraceful. They render themselves to the level of a cheap tourist trap, parasitically earning a buck off of the people that come to visit those hallowed battlefields.
Disabled people want the same access that any able bodied person wants, the same level of dignity. To date this woman has made no personal gain from this; no punitive damages have been awarded to her...she is simply asking for the right thing to be done, to be treated like a citizen, and an equal human being as the rest of us.
That a disabled veteran cannot enter these places infuriates me as a veteran. I would think that in a time of economic downturn, that a business would be willing to do what it takes to maximize the number of patrons that could enter and spend at its establishment. That a small business can accept low interest government loans and not be forced to comply with all laws like the ADA is certainly curious.
I would echo many of the comments posted; pathetic and disgusting...shame on the Gettysburg community.
Second, I live here in Gettysburg, and you do not have the full facts behind what this woman is doing. She does not even live in Adams County and does not patronize the businesses she targets. She lives in Maryland and makes it her personal hobby to terrorize all businesses within her immediate driving radius. All she and her husband do is go from business to business and berate onwers and managers who try to help them. Last fall she made a spectacle of herself by having her husband tape-measure every door of every business in the downtown area. Feelings were so intense that day, that she had to have a police deputy accompany her for protection while her husband did the dirty work, much to the deputy's chagrin.
Most of the buildings in Gettysburg are over a 100 years old, and it would be financially crippling for the property owners and renters to make the changes she is demanding, even though she is not a customer. No one has ever turned her away, and she has an unpleasant habit of personally attacking anyone who tries to assist her at their respective establishment.
The issue with this woman is not access, but power, and she is clearly abusing ADA to quench whatever personal demons are haunting her.
I invite you to read some of the comments at the posted link, several of which are from targeted business owners, so that you may be better informed about what is going on in this community with these ADA lawsuits.
You're not the woman described in the story are you, posing as a veteran? She's been known to troll the local news forums and use aliases to further her agenda.
Just curious...
Death is an underrated motivator
this is a classic ADA shakedown case.
Find a token “expert” some named plaintiff organization.
ONE MILLIMETER off on something and presto you get attorney fees, expert fees (the activist in this case) and move on to the next one.
ADA suits are now a scam for attorney fees.
An unfunded mandate that the feds outsourced to the ambulance class.
I am not the woman referenced, don’t even know her. I’m just an informed reader seeing ignorance and intolerance.
Only a person that is not disabled and cannot envision him or herself nor any of their loved ones being disabled would oppose ADA legislation. I’ve seen what bombs and bullets do to a person, and I imagined what my life would be like after a permanent disabling injury... there is the basis of my anger on this issue. Call it an overactive imagination if you like, or use it as a frame of reference for doing the right thing...
The current state of affairs in the US is that the ADA is one of the most unenforced pieces of legislation in the US because it so often falls into the “too hard to do” category. Taking down “whites only” signs was easy, desegregating schools was easy, allowing women to vote was easy...building a ramp or widening a doorway is too hard to do...even in 19 years.
The ADA is almost 19 years old... For a business anywhere in the US that was functioning to have not made changes to be compliant in the last 18 years means that: a) they are willfully breaking the law, or b) haven’t turned a profit in that time frame (highly unlikely). A business that has started up in the intervening years is negligent for not knowing the law and being compliant, and any agency that grants them a license to do business is likewise negligent from enforcing the law.
This isn’t about the Gettysburg Community or their ignorance. They are just facing one tenacious person that is willing to stand up for her rights in a way that is unsettling to them. This is a National problem that needs to be addressed, and more tenacious people like her are needed to change attitudes.
no argument about the original alleged intent.
However I have personally seen the scam in action from the law firm perspective. The setting up of the staw man plaintiff, the real party operating as a expert (essentially soliciting for cases), and the legal fee mill.
sorry but for every ONE legit ADA case there of hundreds of mere legal fee generating cases that are settle forgotten and NO CHANGES made after the fees are paid.
and finally do not assume too quick about anyone.
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