Posted on 04/19/2017 7:45:07 AM PDT by simpson96
DENVER -- A woman who says she filed dozens of lawsuits hoping to advocate for people with disabilities now says she feels used by a money-making effort.
Alyssa Carton has filed 99 lawsuits against businesses in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the past three months. Carton has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair.
"I've endured a lot of challenges with accessibility and just, you know, struggling with everyday life," Carton said in an interview.
She says she began filing lawsuits after responding to a job opening on Craigslist for a group called Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities, or AID, which is based in Phoenix.
“I was just looking for things to get involved in,” Carton said in an interview. "My goal was to help, you know, move ADA along.”
Carton’s new job was to visit businesses and scope out any potential accessibility problems for people with disabilities. She earned $50 per audit. Carton says she was instructed to measure everything from the height of parking lot signs to the location of the toilet paper dispensers in the restrooms. When she found measurements she says didn’t meet the specifications spelled out in federal law, her attorney, provided by AID, would file suit.
Carton said at times she wanted to simply notify the businesses of the problems so they could fix them without going to court. But she says her employers wanted to move ahead with lawsuits.(snip)
Carton says she probably would not have applied for the job if she had known what she knows now. She still considers herself an advocate for the ADA and says businesses need to take the standards seriously. But she says she also feels used by an organization that might be driven by profit.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedenverchannel.com ...
POS
Not the sharpest tool to be used so. She didn’t even get a cut... or did she?
The Unitarians used to have their convention in the area but they filed so many ADA complaints that Schools quit allowing them to come. They basically disinvited themselves from every venue.
I have had two clients hit with this bull $5000 to have the people walk away. DA knows it is a scam but thats the price to pay for being a property owner.
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again, too few to mention
I did what I had to do
And saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it my way
She’s either dishonest or a moron because that is precisely what these law outfits do. They are professional extortionists.
In California usually it takes about $10,000 for these suits to go away.
they tried to pull this on Clint Eastwood who owns a hotel resort in Carmel California and he stood up for himself and did Prevail, but he is hardly typical:
he has the resources to fight hard and long and 95% of people do not.
it’s a whole industry.
she was getting $50 and the law firm was generally probably getting about 10,000 for each suit.
there was an outfit with a big van doing this to like 10 different wineries per day.
wineries have vinyards and gravel parking lots, right..?
so they would pay almost anything because it’s cheaper to Simply make the lawsuit go away then then make the fixes.
Did you know that originally the Ada would require Golf Course **sand traps** to be wheelchair accessible..?
sand traps okay?
think about that.
Same thing for strip clubs; the girls perform on the table or elevated surface right?
so they were going to require those also to beat wheelchair-accessible presumably for paralyzed strippers..!!
Well, she made almost $5,000 out of the effort. Too bad for her, she realized late that it's a scam.
They used to have the text of the sermons at the local Unitarian church on their website. They are obsessed with “bad Christians”. They should call it The Church of Condemnation because it is all they ever do.
Self-righteousness must be one of their main principles.
They have a new minister so maybe it has gotten better.
The Federal Government has just revised the existing ADA laws with seemingly simple modifications , but that really can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for facilities that are fully compliant to pre existing ADA laws to bring the facilities up to the new ADA codes. This update of ADA has given rise to an emerging group of ADA shake down scam artists. These people abuse the well intentioned ADA regulations do things like walk into business office of a company like a machine shop , which is not a real operation nor is it open to the public, and say they have an emergency and ask to use the bathroom.
Our of good will, you allow the handicapped person into your facility house to use the bathroom.
A few weeks later, you have an extortionate law suit filed against you out of the blue for ADA violations.
No prior notifications or a letter politely informing you that your facility is not up ADA so would please put up a rail in the bathroom to comply.
Instead the law suit demands that you bring your private facility up to ADA and consent to allow their ADA expert access to your complete facility to audit the facility to make sure it complies with new ADA standards and mandates passed in 2012, which could cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and put you out of business.
Or, you can settle with them out of court for around $15,000.
In the most extreme case, a number of law suits were filed because the new ADA laws required a different sign height for handicapped parking.
The ADA shysters wanted $15,000 to drop a lawsuit because your otherwise complaint handicapped parking zone had a handicapped parking notification sign that was compliant with ADA laws in effect when the building was built but is now one foot too low for the newly revised ADA laws.
If you did not settle out of court, they threaten to sue for “damages” and compel a formal ADA audit of your entire facility.
If you ever drive through a business park and find the doors are locked and the employees will not allow into the building this is the reason why.
She’s either dishonest or a moron because that is precisely what these law outfits do. They are professional extortionists.
“That’s a nice business you have there. It would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
When visiting the wineries around Temecula, Cal the scam had to do with ‘dangerous’ lead-foil wrappers at the top of the bottle. $5000 to make them go away. There are lots of wineries in the area. Some lawyer made a bunch of money by just printing out a couple of hundred letters. Business dilemma settle for $5K or spend several times as much in attorney fees.
It seems like there have been so many instances across the country of small businesses being forced to shut down because they could not afford the huge costs of becoming ADA-compliant. I never even suspected that it was co-ordinated. Figures. I wonder who is funding organizations like the one this twit worked with.
Paralyzed Strippers???
Sounds like something Lady Gaga would pretend to be during one of her concerts.
We have sleazy lawyers like that in Florida. They go LOOKING for small mom and pop businesses that might have smaller restrooms... then they get a crippled/handicapped person to go in and complain.
Threatening to sue or take an “out of court settlement”, the lawyer makes a killing, the business owner spends a lot of money because a customer complained, and the handicapped person gets a pittance. Oh, and the handicapped person never goes back to that business because they only went there to file a lawsuit in the first place.
I have (had?) a casual friend who is one of these lawyers. Didn’t realize he DID this kind of thing until a year or two ago. I was sick to my stomach when I found out how he makes his money. I have been a guest in the guy’s home, broken bread with him, prayed with him and talked life with him. But he never really went deep into discussing his work.
Now I know why. Ugh.
A city near me had to spend thousands to repair sidewalks that had cracks that exceeded the ADA requirements. All because one person complained. And now any new subdivisions in that town don’t have sidewalks.
If she has to testify, she could announce to the jury she withdraws her complaint.
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