5 Things To Do When Your Business Is Sued For ADA Compliance Violations – Vaughan & Associates, a Cris Vaughan Law Firm
Call Our Defense Attorneys Today If You Have Been Sued For ADA:
Northern CA 916-660-9401
Bay Area / Central CA 415-492-2854
Southern CA 310-426-2836
You may have arrived at this website as a result of being sued individually or your business being sued for ADA accessibility violations. There are more than 100 lawsuits per month filed in California alleging businesses are not in compliance with applicable ADA access requirements.
Here are several steps to take if you’ve been sued for a violation of ADA accessibility requirements:
#1: Take the lawsuit seriously. I get contacted at least once a month by a business or individual who didn’t take a lawsuit like this serious, and now is facing a money judgment and someone’s trying to collect money from them. This is not a scam. This is what the law allows to happen at the current time. There is no grandfather provision or other protection for your business so take the lawsuit seriously.
#2: Contact a lawyer who is knowledgeable and experienced and handling matters of this type. There are only a handful of attorneys in the state of California whose primary practice is defending businesses sued for ADA accessibility violations. Make sure your attorney has not only handled these matters before, but is knowledgeable and experienced enough to give you all of the options available in responding to cases of this type. There are effective means of responding to these type of lawsuits. Make sure your attorney is aware of all of them.
#3: Obtain an accessibility evaluation of your property. The only way to prevent a lawsuit like this from happening again, is if the property is in compliance. The first step is to obtain an evaluation and a list of all the things that are wrong in the property. In California, there is a group of people known a Certified Access Specialist or CASp who are recognized by the state of California as experts in accessibility who can give you a list of the changes that need to be made on your property. This ADA compliance evaluation is a service that our other business, ADA Consultant Services, helps businesses and properties with, Contact our CASp experts here: https://adaconsultantservices.com or 916-660-1916.
#4: Develop a plan to implement those changes. Not all changes have to be made immediately, but they do have to be made in order to prevent the property from being sued again. In our experience, we’ve had one property sued three separate times for the same type of violation. Make sure you implement the plan and make the changes that are in the report. They don’t all have to be made immediately but they do need to be made to give you the protection from this happening again.
#5: Be prepared to take action and review this as a business problem as any other problem your business may face. It will take business judgment and a decision making process to solve this moving forward.
Thank you and we look forward to hearing from you.
Call Our Defense Attorneys Today If You Have Been Sued For ADA:
Northern CA 916-660-9401
Bay Area / Central CA 415-492-2854
Southern CA 310-426-2836
