Deborah Laufer has finally found a case she doesn’t want a court to hear.
The disabled Florida woman has made a career out of the Americans with Disabilities Act by surfing the internet to find hotels she says don’t meet the law’s standards for online information about accommodations for disabled patrons. Then she files lawsuits against the hotels.
She says she is trying to force compliance. She has filed more than 600 complaints, reached settlements and then collected costs and attorneys’ fees.
Opponents say her string of lawsuits is a cash grab.
Now, Ms. Laufer is asking the Supreme Court not to hear her latest case: a challenge to a chain of hotels in Maine that refused to settle.
Through her attorney’s court filing, she said the case is bad because the lawyer formerly handling it has been sanctioned by a federal judge in Maryland over his approach to cases.
Julianna Acheson, owner of Acheson Hotels LLC, said Ms. Laufer fears that the Supreme Court will end her moneymaking operation.
“Having filed several hundred lawsuits, Laufer’s sudden desire to conserve judicial resources is not credible,” Ms. Acheson’s attorneys say. “Far more judicial resources will be wasted if Laufer ducks this court’s review, leading to hundreds more ‘tester’ suits being brought.”
An attorney for Ms. Laufer did not comment on the pending case but pointed to her client’s submission to the court. In her declaration, Ms. Laufer said she lost her job after a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, developed depression and had difficulty traveling because hotels did not provide access for her wheelchair in violation of the ADA.
After learning she could work toward ensuring ADA compliance, she took the opportunity to help others, according to her court declaration.
“Serving as an ADA plaintiff helped get me out of my depression because it allowed me to help myself and other people,” she said.
Ms. Laufer said she did not file the ADA cases to make money.
“I have never received any payments for my federal ADA claims. I have received monetary damages a few times in lawsuits brought under state law,” she said.
Robyn M. Powell, a law professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the Supreme Court case could greatly impact disability rights because disabled people rely on Ms. Laufer and other testers to ensure their civil rights are protected.
“Without testers like Ms. Laufer, the ADA would not be able to meet its objective of eliminating the often unintentional but still damaging exclusion of people with disabilities from places of public accommodation,” said Ms. Powell, who is not involved in the lawsuit.
Ms. Powell noted that the Supreme Court has not heard such a case in 20 years and she does not expect the justices to dismiss the case as Ms. Laufer has requested.
“Given the Ccurt’s majority-conservative composition, I could imagine a scenario where thecCourt could deny Laufer’s motion to dismiss because the bench is interested in narrowing the scope of the ADA,” the law professor said.
The justices are slated to hear the case, Acheson Hotels v. Deborah Laufer, on Oct. 4.
The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990 to prevent discrimination against disabled people. It requires public establishments to make reasonable accommodations for disabled people to access their services and facilities. A provision compels hotel owners to describe features at the establishment for people with disabilities.
Ms. Laufer, who has impaired vision and needs a cane or wheelchair to move, said Coast Village Inn and Cottages, an Acheson Hotels property, doesn’t list accessible rooms on its website and doesn’t provide enough information to determine whether she could be accommodated. She said that violates her rights under the ADA.
A U.S. district court sided with Acheson Hotels, saying Ms. Laufer wasn’t planning to be a customer and therefore didn’t have standing to sue. The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, finding that withholding the information amounted to harm to Ms. Laufer and gave her legal standing to sue.
Other district and circuit courts have ruled the other way, creating the sort of split that makes a case attractive for Supreme Court justices.
Ms. Laufer says the case is moot because she plans to dismiss the claim filed in a lower court and similar lawsuits after the sanctioning of Tristan Gillespie, one of her attorneys.
A federal disciplinary board said last month that Mr. Gillespie inflated his legal fees in roughly 800 lawsuits he filed for Ms. Laufer and another disabled plaintiff against hotel companies to collect costs and attorneys’ fees. None of the cases went to trial.
“Given that the complaints across all cases are boilerplate with few changes apart from dates and defendants, it appeared highly improbable that Gillespie actually could have accrued $10,000 in reasonable attorneys’ fees and costs when each demand was made,” the panel concluded.
Mr. Gillespie was suspended from practicing law before the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland for six months. He has appealed the punishment.
He did not respond to a request for comment.
Ms. Laufer said last month in a court filing with the Supreme Court that she did not want Mr. Gillespie’s discipline record to distract from her cases. She agreed to dismiss her claims with prejudice.
“Although Ms. Laufer has not engaged in any improper conduct and continues to believe that her claims against Acheson and other hotels are meritorious, she recognizes that the allegations of misconduct against Mr. Gillespie could distract from the merits of her ADA claims and everything she has sought to achieve for persons with disabilities like herself. She accordingly has decided to dismiss all of her pending cases with prejudice,” her current attorney, Kelsi Brown Corkran, argued in court papers.
Attorneys for the hotel said letting Ms. Laufer out of her legal battle would signal an all-clear to her and other plaintiffs “to resume their extortionate scheme.”
“Julianna Acheson has earned her day in court,” her attorneys said. “Despite her business being devastated by COVID, she refused to capitulate to Laufer’s settlement demands. She has expended time and money fighting Laufer’s pathological lawsuit all the way up to the Supreme Court. She is on the verge of protecting her business from future, similar lawsuits. The court should decide the question it has already agreed to decide rather than condemning her to defeat without a hearing.”
After this report was published, Mr. Gillespie told The Washington Times that he thought the disciplinary investigation was unfair, noting his appeal. He said Supreme Court precedent says lawyers are entitled to their fees in civil rights cases, and that the disciplinary was “cherry-picking.”
“The Panel engaged in proceedings by baseless accusation rather than actual facts,” Mr. Gillespie said.
• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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