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Prenda's Old Copyright Trolls Are Suing People Again
New submitter Hokan writes: Paul Hansmeier and John Steele, formerly of Prenda, are suing again. Each have started nonprofits, in Minnesota and Illinois, claiming to defend disabled people, and they are suing small businesses for ADA violations. You may recall that a District Court judge issued sanctions against Prenda for their attempts to file copyright suits against a broad swath of internet users. Their new practices take a similar tack: sue a small business and generously offer to collect a settlement somewhat lower than the amount it would cost to to make changes to their establishment. A new group is fighting back by creating "an access audit for local businesses, allowing them to develop a plan to fix ADA issues and potentially to ward off litigation."
Given that they're all probably not disabled, I'm wondering what grounds they have to sue in the first place. But that's why they offer a "settlement" that's less than the cost to defend the suit, so the case never sees the inside of a courtroom. In effect, though, they're using the legal system to extort money out of people and depending on the particulars, that may qualify under RICO statutes. In theory, they might actually be breaking the law.
If you pass sledgehammer legislation like the ADA, common sense behavior gets replaced with lawyering and bad things happen. And the people who passed the legislation in the first place say that their intentions were good, blame lawyers and blame the people who opposed the legislation in the first place, and finally call for more legislation to fix the problems that the first legislation caused.
This is the result:
https://regulatorystudies.colu...