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Sanford law firm chimex lawsuit7/6/2023 “You would expect a real plaintiff motivated to file a lawsuit affecting his civil rights to show up in court at some point,” Abraham said. The complaints also never demand that plaintiffs correct deficiencies cited under the ADA. The named plaintiffs never attend hearings and negotiate with defendants via email, instructing them to send settlement checks to Chang, Michaels said. Stephen Abraham, a Newport Beach attorney who last year represented more than 120 Southern California businesses sued for ADA violations, said each of the lawsuits follows the same pattern, even containing the same boilerplate language and identical typographical errors “All evidence points to Simon Chang being behind the entire scheme,” he said. What makes Chang’s lawsuits different, Michaels says, are his clients - not one has been found to exist. Prolific serial plaintiffs, scattered throughout California with ties to a handful of law firms, typically are wheelchair-bound activists who purport to have the best interests of the disabled in mind.īut critics say the lawsuits essentially amount to legal shakedowns, designed to encourage settlements with plaintiffs to avoid fines of up to $4,000 under California law federal law caps fines at $1,000 for ADA violations. Those figures do not include state court filings that Shaw doesn’t track. The number of ADA lawsuits filed in federal court in 2018 hit a record high of 10,163 - up 34 percent from 2017, when the number was 7,663, according to Seyfarth Shaw, one of the nation’s largest law firms specializing in defending against such cases.Ĭalifornia led the nation in federal ADA cases last year with 4,249 filings compared to 2,751 in 2017. But the legislation has given rise to a cottage industry of so-called drive-by lawsuits, often targeting improper handicap parking accommodations or signage visible outside businesses. The Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990 to ensure the disabled have access to public accommodations. “We did help some of the plaintiffs in ADA lawsuits with the settlement process, which is why there were settlement checks written to our office.” Serial ADA plaintiffs proliferate “Our office never filed those ADA lawsuits,” he said in an email to the Southern California News Group. Please help stop this enterprise, remove all those involved from the bar, and forward this information to the proper authorities for criminal prosecution.” “I have contacted over 200 defendants in person or by telephone who are victims of crimes. “I cannot stress enough the urgency this matter must be given,” Michaels wrote in his 2018 letter to the State Bar. Michaels has filed a complaint with the State Bar of California urging swift action to stop the harassment of businesses, which typically offer up to $4,000 to settle complaints alleging such ADA violations as faded paint on a handicapped parking spot or a bathroom mirror that rests perhaps an inch too high. Simon Soo Kil Chang, who operates the K&C Law Firm, has for at least the past three years allegedly targeted vulnerable mom-and-pop establishments that don’t have the financial resources to fight the civil rights claims in Orange and Los Angeles county courts, according to Placentia attorney David Michaels. In a new twist on an old ruse that some call legal extortion, a Los Angeles attorney is suspected of creating “ghost” clients who file hundreds of lawsuits under the Americans with Disabilities Act to extract settlements from Southern California businesses.
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