Last month I ate at a restaurant in the French town where Van Gogh once lopped off part of his ear. The bathroom was so small, I could barely squeeze through the door. “This,” I thought, “is what it is like without the Americans With Disabilities Act.” That’s the law most people equate with public bathrooms bigger than the bedroom I once had in Manhattan. The changes the ADA brought about here will soon work their way through Europe, because of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, an international treaty based on the ADA. To date, 125 countries have signed on. In 2012, the United States Senate voted down ratification. Last month, former Senate leader Bob Dole rolled himself onto the floor of the Senate in a wheelchair to plead for passage, but the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations announced Dec. 20 he would still oppose it.
I’ve been out of the country. But I still followed in our local news media the ruckus Eureka attorney Jason Singleton raised by going after local businesses for failure to comply with the ADA. Porter Street Barbecue in Arcata closed after Singleton filed suit against the restaurant for failure to provide adequate access for people with disabilities. The restaurant argued that it could barely survive as it was and it couldn’t afford the upgrades needed to comply. The news media painted Singleton as Public Enemy No. 1 and treated the loss of the restaurant as a tragic event.
That reminded me of a man I once knew. In my late teens I worked in my dad’s take-out deli in New York. Once a week, I’d fill a bag with cooked foods and assorted groceries and take it two blocks to a customer who lived on the second floor of a building with no elevator. He was a war veteran who couldn’t walk. He never left his apartment. How could he? Even if he had an elevator in that building, sidewalks had no cut curbs. Many of the stores in that neighborhood had doors too thin for wheelchairs. That was before the ADA.
Without the force of the law, cities had no incentive to provide access for disabled people, who made up too small a portion of the voting bloc to matter. Without the law, businesses would find upgrades for disabled access an unnecessary cost. Really, how many people in wheelchairs ever went to them anyway?
There’s the Catch-22. If I can’t get through your door, I won’t come to your business. If your city is inaccessible to me, I won’t live there unless forced to. An inaccessible business will likely have few, if any, disabled customers. A city without sufficient access will have few disabled residents. But do you want to live in a place unfriendly to disabled people?
That’s the question I didn’t see asked when I read the numerous articles about Jason Singleton. In a Times-Standard editorial Dec. 22 I learned that he had filed 259 ADA lawsuits against businesses since 2005. It acknowledged that those businesses should have complied with the law. But what about the businesses that can’t, it asked. Or those which get the required local and state permits to operate and still get hit with a lawsuit for non-compliance of the ADA? The T-S said that the ADA was not designed to be used as an extortionist’s cudgel.
But it was designed so that private citizens could take on the task of enforcement that local governments would not be able to or be willing to do. If our local governments more strictly enforced the ADA requirements when they first issued business and building permits, Singleton would have a more difficult time finding businesses to sue. Judges would be more likely to dismiss these cases summarily. When local and state governments do not enforce, the law empowers private citizens — through lawyers — to take on the enforcement themselves.
However much you find such lawyers to be obnoxious, without enforcement of this kind of law, many businesses would not spend the extra money needed to make their businesses accessible. And without it we would have a community that does not welcome people with disabilities.
If you, reading this article now, have legs and arms that work and eyes that see and ears that hear, how sure are you that you will still have them next year or the year after or the year after that? Or that your spouse or child or parent will remain able-bodied?
It is sad when a business closes because it can’t afford to comply with a law like the ADA. But isn’t lax enforcement of the law unfair to those businesses that do comply?
As the daughter of a small businessman, I know there are costs to doing business. If a business can’t handle those costs, it shouldn’t be in business. It would be nice to have more businesses in our community and more jobs. It would also be nice to know that when I need a cane or a wheelchair, I won’t have to leave Humboldt to find a more accommodating place to live or wheel myself from one business to another pleading with them to make their business accessible. That’s what my government is supposed to do for me. And when it doesn’t, I’m glad there are people like Jason Singleton who will take on the task. I won’t begrudge him the money he makes doing it.
Marcy Burstiner is chair of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Humboldt State University. She has been away since August. But she is back. If you want to comment on this story or let her know of some media coverage or issue you’d like her to look into, email her.
This article appears in The Cancer Collaboration.
If it was about real access, Ms. Burstiner, I might agree with you. However, Singleton has sued businesses for having only tiny flaws like light switches an inch higher or lower than “required” which does nothing to restrict access. He is a bottom-feeder filling his pockets by exploiting the disabled, forcing businesses to close and people to lose jobs. The problem isn’t only parasites like Singleton, but the way the legislation was written that allows such abuses. Call me cynical, but I can’t help but believe it was deliberate.
Defending Singleton Article Misses The Whole Issue with Jason Singleton.
I’ve always enjoyed reading Marcy Burstiner’s articles, but her past article about supporting Jason Singleton misses the entire point of why people are so outraged about him here in Humboldt County.
It goes without saying that we should always support ADA access and encourage businesses to comply. However, with the way the ADA law is written, it doesn’t allow a business owner any time to repair or upgrade any areas that need it without being subject to legal fees being imposed by an attorney.
I’ve been reading a lot about the different cases that have been filed by Jason Singleton and others–many of which are minor issues that a business can correct if given the chance–without having to pay attorney fees. Often, his process starts with a letter that’s mostly anonymous due to poor return address information and no way to contact the concerned complainant. It’s extremely shady and certainly not professional.
Even Clint Eastwood tried to get the ADA law modified with Congress so that defendants would be given a chance to fix problems before lawyers can start running the meter on fee-shift entitlements. (http://overlawyered.com/archives/00may2.ht…). The recommendation was simple: a bill that would require disabled people to wait yet another 90 days, requiring them to ask a business, nicely, to please make their premises accessible, before suing them under the Americans with Disabilities Act for their lack of access. Congress did nothing, so we are still dealing with these frivolous and business killing lawsuits by Jason Singleton here in Humboldt County.
Marcy, unlike you, I do begrudge Jason Singleton for making money off local business that have been given no chance to respond to a complaint or to correct issues before being hit with his ridiculous trumped up attorney fees.
We cannot afford for this type of business killing game playing in our community.
The previous commenters make excellent points, and I would add that parasitic attorneys now take their cases directly to federal courts, because California law now limits the amount that they can shake down victim-businesses. This means that local victims have to travel to San Francisco in order to defend themselves. It must be nice for Ms. Bustiner not to have to be concerned about exposure to these suits, but she could have at least done readers the favor of speaking with some of Singleton’s victims. She could have started with the owners of the Clam Beach Inn, who have bent over backwards to comply with the ADA in their built-thirty-years-before-the-ADA building. Singleton’s suits have given business owners reason to fear unfamiliar disabled people who enter their businesses, because if your rented space is from an earlier era, the chances are good that, despite efforts to accommodate, the space is not in full compliance, and the “plaintiffs” are going to find sufficient grounds for a lawsuit.
Despite the grumbling, no one has reported the ACTUAL costs of Mr. Singleton’s suits or the details of required compliance…nothing but hearsay…
“Bending over backwards”, (aka: cutting corners), only works if it makes a business accessible.
Mr. Singleton came into our business in a leased building constructed in the 1920’s in Old Town, Eureka.
The city provided us with the ADA requirements and the building department “signed off” on them after they were completed. Meeting ADA compliance was a pittance of the investment required to start our business. We invited a person in a wheelchair to visit our business and write us a letter describing the accessibility of the remodeled bathrooms leaving Mr. Singleton with no issue to sue over.
It’s not just foolish business owners that suffer…if we had similar regulations when we needed them, Humboldt Bay might not be surrounded in job-killing brownfields.
Someone named “Anonomouss” complaining about “hearsay.”
Thanks, I got my USDA recommended dose of irony for the day.
I’m sorry you thought my name was “Anonomous”, is this your first time on a blog?
“Thank you so much” for providing my lifetime allowance of hypocrisy. Just because you are using a proper name hardly qualifies (anyone) to be bereft of intelligent points, but, I’m glad that satire can bring you solace.
Hypocrisy: Someone wanting to run a business out of their house and complaining about the costs of remodeling for disabled-access AND THEN complaining about the cost of being sued for failing to do so….AND THEN buying the house next door because they complained about the people living there…a person with that level of hypocrisy should SERIOUSLY consider using a pseudonym.
Gee, I’m happy it worked out for you, Anonymous, but your good fortune isn’t shared by all of Singleton’s victims. And please try to develop an appreciation for irony, because you’re a good source for it.
How convenient for you to lack an appreciation for both hypocrisy AND irony!
Obviously, you mislabeled as “irony” what was really your childish satirical dodge of a serious issue. Yet, you persist by mislabeling business owners that failed to comply with the law as “victims”, (joining a chorus that lacks a single example of how the initial costs of compliance are significant to the costs of starting their business), when, in reality, the predominant victims are actually the disabled!
I hope you can appreciate the amusement in watching a self-righteous arbiter of irony being skewered by his own petard. Ouch!
Once again, I was not “fortunate”; I merely followed the laws that were provided by Eureka, before opening!! Most people that have built successful businesses will tell you that the laws can bite you from many sources and it’s just plain dumb to “cut corners and cross your fingers”: a long and tired tradition in American business.
I would like to congratulate you for lacking any disabled persons in your immediate family and lament the humility you obviously lack as a result.
Until you do your homework please STFU.
Petards don’t “skewer,” but I’m not surprised that “Anononomous” would have about as firm a grasp on the concept as she/he has on other matters.
How is it not ironic that the predominant victims are the disabled that you fail to mention…and not the business owners that you chose to emphasize?
How is it that anonymous posts annoy you, yet you cannot avert your attention?
….And not one example of the actual costs of compliance compared to the actual costs of setting up a business…anywhere???
The only firm grasp you seem to have is on an immense ego.
I’m sorry that you are unsatisfied with the breadth of issues covered in my comments, though instead of complaining further, you might want to spend some time with a dictionary so that you can use “petard” and “ironic” correctly in the future.
I can understand why you have not challenged my understanding and application of “hypocrite” (above). And I understand why your earlier retreat to satire is now followed by another retreat behind semantics. It’s really quite pathetic. Hypocrisy does tend to foster an aggressive ego.
After centuries of discarding the disabled to face lives of seclusion and shame, we now know their potential and actual contributions to our society and communities within which they deserve to participate. Thus, it is the height of irony to read so many broad condemnations of an individual sanctioned by law, judge and jury, in the honorable task of elevating the people’s laws into actual practice. The irony is enriched by the witch-hunt that lacks a single published example showing the true costs of compliance compared to the true costs of starting-up any of “business victims” sited over the last 15 years! The irony is deepened further when a “democrat/progressive/liberal” joins the hunt.
Even a blindly frustrated satirist can understand the irony and tragic humor of a self-proclaimed arbiter of humor and irony (you) being destroyed by the very thing he intended to destroy others with. (“Petard” – Webster).
Elevating Singleton’s practices to “the honorable task of elevating the people’s laws into actual practice” is rank hypocrisy, and your Pecksniffian finger-wagging is farcical.
FYI:”Websters” is in the public domain, so do yourself a favor and pick up a real dictionary somewhere other than the Dollar Store.
As I suspected, your farcical assertions about my use of a pseudonym and the words “hypocrisy”, “irony” and “petard” were childish dodges all along.
It’s no surprise that a person interminably blind to the predominant victims here (the disabled) would seamlessly demean the impoverished for their “inferior dictionaries”! It’s very amusing how a buffoon with a better dictionary is still a buffoon. Thank you for that.
When you discover a single case where the initial cost of compliance by your “victims” can be compared to the actual costs of starting their business…get back to me. Until then, I will remind you of the scores of new businesses that have opened in the last 15 years without a hitch because they know Mr. Singleton is still here. (Hypocrisy not).
For the sake of your own conscience I hope you are never disabled and forced to shop at a dollar store.
(No need to press your own “like” tag…it’s only me and the NCJ staff you can hear giggling).
Nobody is denying that the disabled are also victims in Singleton’s lawsuits. The ultimate lack of access is a business that is closed.
Your sophistry is as transparent as your satire. Give it a rest!
The historic increase in access for the disabled has been, and continues to be, (especially locally), the existence of actual enforcement. This has been the public reality in numerous societies, governments and industries for a very, very long time. Human beings are famous for blaming others and denying responsibility when faced with failure.
We watched in shock during Robin Arkley’s recent spectacle at Eureka’s Warfinger building as one business owner after the next blamed the homeless for leaving Eureka and it’s just as easy to blame Singleton…except for one problem….far more businesses have managed to open during “Singleton’s Siege”.
Despite all the coverage and the hysterical, irrational finger-wagging that followed, NOT ONE “victim” has offered to open their books to prove the actual costs of initial compliance to the costs of starting their business. The fact is, had they complied at the outset, as we had, they would not have had to pay dearly later on.
Thank you again for the most guilt-free humor I’ve ever had at someone else’s expense.
Stay well.
You can assert the notion that lawyers like Singleton are champions of civil rights, but you’re the only one buying it. The idea that people deserve to be screwed by an unscrupulous attorney because when they started their business they didn’t invest sufficiently in ADA compliance is perverse.
It’s no wonder you’re anonymous. Who would want to stand publicly by the comments you’ve posted here? Not even you.
What’s truly perverse is the stench of mob mentality you defend and that Ms. Burstiner has bravely exposed. How courageous to “stand publicly” in a mob, congratulations!
Some businesses deserve sympathy, especially owners compelled to childishly exhibit wounded egos, (the gift that keeps on giving), in defense of baseless assertions via satirical drivel, sarcasm, semantics, sophistry, and other’s anonymity (again)! Adding deceit to your tricks and traps is embarrassing. If such sad public displays don’t hurt your business…good on you.
I never used the word “champion”. Martin Luther King was a champion, and for anyone intimately familiar with Old Town businesses, there isn’t a shred of doubt that each and every new start-up over the last 15 years has invested the pittance upfront for ADA compliance knowing that Singleton is actively enforcing the laws, thus, elevating the rights of the poor and disabled.
Local attorneys have lost there license for being “unscrupulous”, Singleton is not one of them.
After years of “Singleton news” every business in this county has had the opportunity to comply, nevertheless, I support the 90-day grace period once a business owner is CAUGHT. Maybe you are unaware how businesses are routinely “SCREWED” after shirking every conceivable code: taxes, health, worker safety, payroll, insurance, building, fire, employment, etc, requiring that any deserved sympathy should be proven, yet, amid all the reporting, not one business “victim” has dared risk the public humiliation of confessing the initial cost of compliance compared to the cost of starting their business.
Sadly, this courageous anonymous hero, who imagines himself to be standing up to “the stench of mob mentality,” and a “witch hunt,” will never enjoy the laurels that he believes himself to deserve. But he will slog on, bravely writing inane metaphors and invoking the name of Martin Luther King in order to justify the work of shysters.
I know you are hurting and need to project your egotism onto me, but I did not reveal the mob, Burstiner did. And she is the one undoubtedly “enjoying” exposing your ilk that has compelled you into an amusing fit of circuitous dodges.
Your prolific sophistry, manipulations and hypocrisy are beyond belief; I used MLK to illustrate what Singleton is not. It is your problem in coping with the simple fact that today’s proprietors are more careful, successful, and open to the disabled because of your “shyster”. “Laurels and heroism” are additional farcical projections you require to salve a deflated ego.
Once again, Eureka would not approve our remodel plans until we met the ADA requirements. They totaled about $1,000 in materials and I repaired a door, padded plumbing, raised toilets lowered dispensers, and installed hand rails myself. Singleton, who entered our business, had no problem with us or the vast majority of the other new businesses in Old Town. If the TS is correct, and other cities are passing businesses without ADA approval, why aren’t these cities paying settlements too…or is it more likely that well-informed business novices had decided to cut corners?
It is in the “anonymity”, (that simultaneously annoys and intrigues you), which reveals more hypocrisy. You conveniently ignore the sacrosanct “anonymity” in the financial details kept legally private by every “business victim” in every media report to date. The mob needn’t be burdened by fundamental details essential in defining “business victims”: determining a business’s required costs to meet ADA compliance, the costs and degree of compliance they actually completed, and the reported costs of starting their business.
This does not mean that Singleton was not relentless in his application of the law; it means that essential information is obsolete to a mob of ignorance.
And now he is drooling.
“Drool”? It’s the tears reflected in your monitor silly! Your parents never warned you about debating adults?
RECAP:
1) Joel Meilke has made up his mind about an “unscrupulous parasitic shyster that shakes-down victims until they are screwed”. (Drool, Drool).
2) Joel believes everyone agrees with him, so there’s no need for financial details proving a single business has been “victimized”. (It’s proprietary, privileged information that has never been published).
3) Joel has no personal experience in ADA issues.
4) Joel cannot respond rationally to others that do.
5) Joel becomes a human Caddis Fly defended by boulders of satire, semantics, sophistry, manipulation, hypocrisy and deceit in order to maintain a bloated ego.
6) Joel makes up his mind that anonymous posters lack credibility, but has no proof of that either.
7) Joel cannot tear himself away from an anonymous poster!
In case you have a dog, I’ve placed your business on Cindy Sheehan’s mailing list to divert your frustration. You’re welcome.
He likes to write — a lot.
It is commendable that you enjoy reading “a lot” because your immense burden of irrational feelings is all you possess on this issue. Denying responsibility and blaming others are also dysfunctional and irrational behaviors, for example, stop reading!
Media and blogs are slathered with daily reporting of victims and perpetrators, yet, no one knows what the average settlement totaled for Mr. Singleton’s 259 cases over the last 20 years (not 15). No one has reported how many businesses (claim) to be bankrupted as a result. And no one has access to the financial records of a single business claiming to be “victimized”.
Thank you for an intimate experience with mob mentality, it feels like debating a drunk.
Drool on…
He’s still pecking away.
He’s still clinging to every word.
Thanks for the brevity — I actually read that one. The longer comments, not so much.
He’s still clinging onto every word….neglecting his “pecking” obsession on SOOO many other blogs. How did they manage all this time without this childish quipster?
Look out…here he comes, he’s finished here!
FROM: “LIVING HIS EPITAPH”
“THE BRIEF BALLAD OF JOE”
A Big Grudge
Irrelevant Facts
Unproven Assertions
Petty Attacks
A Big Ego
Weak Of Wit
Quick To Dodge
With Childish Quips
Launch A Lie
Sprinkle Deceit
Add Hypocrisy
It Spelled Defeat