Gas pump captioning lawsuit tossed
Two weeks ago, a top federal appeals court upheld a federal judge’s decision to throw out an ADA lawsuit brought by a deaf plaintiff from Florida named Alexander Johnson and his attorney, Scott Dinin over lack of closed captioning in gas pump videos.
In 2019, U.S. District Judge Paul Huck said Johnson and Dinin’s primary goal was to get payments in settlement agreements and for the gas stations to turn off the videos completely, instead of aiming to find a way to provide closed captioning on the videos. The judge said the pair had 26 identical cases against gas station owners located throughout southern Florida and that the way they brought the lawsuit showed that their motivation was money.
The district court imposed sanctions against the pair, ordering the attorney to pay over $50,000 in penalties and for the deaf man to pay about $6,000 and complete 150 hours of community service.
Johnson and Dinin appealed, and two weeks ago the 11th Circuit dismissed the appeal and affirmed the sanctions.
[Sponsored Video from Convo: https://www.convorelay.com/download ]
[Sponsored Video from The Learning Center: Join our Growing Family! We are always looking for Deaf or ASL Proficient Individuals. Start your application at: https://www.tlcdeaf.org/careers ]
I will show you some insights from Michael Schwartz, a deaf law professor at Syracuse University.
Michael Schwartz:
This case is very rare. Most attorneys and most deaf clients are legitimate. They are filing legitimately. Now, the Eleventh Circuit says the issue of gas pumps with video captions is a good one. But how the lawyer Dinin and his deaf client proceeded was all wrong. This is rare. I’ve never heard or seen anything like this. This is the first time. What was wrong here are a few things. The attorney made up the number of hours with a top rate of 500 dollars per hour even for the work done by paralegals, which should be charged less. Also, he and the client had a secret agreement to split the attorney fees with the client. Oh, no. That’s a violation of attorney ethics. The attorney collects the fees, and the client collects the monetary damages if any. These are separate. They both agreed to split the fees… Which is strictly prohibited. Also, the deaf person didn’t ask -- the attorney did not ask for captions. They asked for money - fees and damages. That’s all. He didn’t ask for an injunction, an order from the court requiring captions. Also, that attorney is required to exhaust administrative processes, meaning the court holds and first goes to an agency in Florida. That’s what Florida law requires. You must first file an administrative complaint first. If it’s not satisfied or resolved, then go to court. He went straight to court. The court warned him because he’s supposed to file an administrative complaint first. It’s interesting, I did some math. I’m not very good at math, but I used a calculator. (The attorney) said he filed 653 complaints between November 2013 to March 2019. That’s five and a half years…and 653 complaints? So I did the math, and my God. That’s filing a complaint every other day, meaning Monday, Wednesday, Friday for five and a half years? That tells you something’s wrong.
Alex: Thank you Michael Schwartz for his insights. We see that he believes the majority of ADA cases are legitimate and that this situation is rare. Two of the red flags he pointed out were a revenue sharing agreement between the attorney and the client and the enormous amount of lawsuits filed.
In the transcript are the links to the court’s opinion and related information.
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/johnson-dinin-ca11.pdf