Peoria’s Green Chevrolet to Pay $65,000 to Settle EEOC Discrimination Suit
A Peoria, Ill., Chevrolet dealership will pay $65,000 and furnish other relief to settle a disability discrimination and retaliation lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced yesterday.
According to the EEOC's lawsuit, Green Chevrolet violated federal law by forcing an employee to transfer to a position that had never previously existed when the company learned that the employee was experiencing kidney failure and would require regular dialysis treatment. The EEOC also alleged that when the black employee resisted his transfer by explaining that he was healthy enough to continue working his sales advisor job and by asking why the company did not "get a white guy" to do the new job, the company fired him in retaliation for this opposition.
The Next Frontier in ADA Access Litigation – Online (Part I)
JD Supra
Florida, and particularly South Florida, has always been on the leading edge of legal trends that involve mandatory attorneys’ fees for plaintiffs. For many years, the United District Court in and for the Southern District led the pack in the number of Title III cases filed under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). In 2013, one in every five ADA Title III case was filed right here in the Southern District. In fact, the Southern District has a 435-page list of all the addresses where ADA Title III cases have been filed in an effort to prevent plaintiffs from suing a property location that was previously sued.
Perhaps because that the address list includes just about every physical location in the Southern District of Florida, the plaintiffs’ bar has now gone virtual and the hot new trend in ADA Title III litigation is website access.
Panel Revives Claims Over Disabled Access to Flyaway
Metropolitan News-Enterprise
Federal law does not bar the City of Los Angeles from seeking indemnification from its contractors in response to a suit against the city regarding disabled access to the Van Nuys Flyaway bus service, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.
The panel reinstated the city’s third-party claims against AECOM Services, Inc. and Tutor Perini Corporation. It reversed U.S. District Judge of the Central District of California S. James Otero’s ruling that the claims were preempted by the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Rehabilitation Act.
AECOM and Tutor are successors-in-interest to companies that built the FlyAway facility. Disability activists sued the city—which operates the facility through its Department of Airports, claiming that the facility and its bus service to Los Angeles International Airport failed to meet the accessibility standards of state and federal law.
Disability Advocates Sue MTA Over Subway Elevator Outages
New York Law Journal
Persistent and sustained elevator outages in New York City subway stations have made the transit system largely inaccessible to straphangers with disabilities, according to class action suits filed in state and federal court.
In the Southern District complaint, plaintiffs allege violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and asks the court to order the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to adopt policies to ensure that elevators are in working order and provide adequate notice and alternative forms of transportation when there are breakdowns.
Both the state complaint, filed in Manhattan Supreme Court, and the federal complaint also allege violations of the New York City Human Rights Law.
"They just need to come up with a protocol to take care of their elevators," said Michelle Caiola of Disability Rights Advocates, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs.
NYC subway system makes commuting hell for disabled people: suit
New York Post
The Google engineer who was crippled by a falling tree limb in Central Park charges has become an activist for the disabled — and charges in a new lawsuit that the subway system is hell on the handicapped.
Sasha Blair-Goldensohn is among the three people and six organizations to file class action suits Tuesday in both federal and state court against the MTA and the city for the underground issues.
The court papers say that only 112 out of 472 subways stations are wheelchair accessible — and many of those have aging elevators that are frequently broken, leaving disabled riders with no way to get to platforms or stranded when they get off trains.
AudioEye Is Rapidly Making the Internet Accessible to All
InvestorIdeas.com
AudioEye's innovative technology, which makes the internet available to people with disabilities, has led to rapid growth for the company