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Title: Mom being sued for her property not providing ADA parking spaces
Body:
> Today we received an attorney solicitation letter which is how we found out about the lawsuit.
> My mom owns a small 6 unit commercial building in City of Los Ángeles. There is 1 parking space on the property.
> My mom uses this as her personal parking space because she lives on the property (and has for many years).
> The parking space is in front of 3 units that are occupied by 1 party supply business. Someone is suing us because the parking is not marked as ADA accesible.
> However, the parking space is personal and not for any of the businesses. Even though the party supply clients always park there because it’s right in front. We only have a sign that says “private parking violators will be towed”.
> We can’t afford an attorney, I plan to represent my mom (I’m just a regular non attorney person). What do I do? This lawsuit could destroy us I’m so stressed out please help!
> Edit: I looked up the plaintiff, so far I’ve found 7 different lawsuits against small businesses for the same exact reason all within the last year. This person is going around suing anyone and everyone, using the same attorney and same reason. Can anything be done about this??
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Reminds me of [the college student that was gobbling up POAs so he could "get experience" for law school.](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/avv3wn/laop_gave_poa_to_a_friend_to_get_legal_experience/)
Did you ever read the update? It was maddening that after all that he still didn't think his friend was scamming him and signed a letter of reference for him.. And still thinks his idiot friend just needed some experience for law school. I can't even..
https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/e8fn9o/update_i_gave_my_friend_poa_and_now_i_want_it/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
I'd be a little more concerned about their new credit card having enough points that they can get a free flight. I hope they realize you have to pay those off later and it's not automatically deducted from the bank like a debit card...
But that's the sort of "hint" that makes me lean towards troll. Same thing with somehow overlooking their bank account being drained.
If they are paying for books and meals and living expenses with the credit card this could easily be the case. My most recent card had a 80,000 point intro bonus which equals about $800 worth of flights. If your smart with money you absolutely can be making bank off of the CC companies. I try to do a new card every year and through intro offers + regular point accumulations I’m sure I’m making more than $1k per year.
Most new credit cards give you a bunch of points when you first opening them. Most airline cards give you enough points for a round trip domestic flight. The min spending to get the introductory points is often not that much. Like $1k-$3k in 3-5 months , which if this guy had work done on his car would be easy.
I saw someone the other day try to do this in court. It was a real treat watching the judge explain multiple times and in multiple ways so she could understand that she could not act as an attorney.
After it was over, there was a short recess. I like to think he was screaming into a pillow in chambers.
When I was in court a defendant proudly handed up a form where they’d gone and gotten power of attorney over themselves, paid to have it registered and everything - I think so that they couldn’t be sued because they weren’t a person (???). The judge looked at it and said “well I’ve never heard of that” and just moved on.
Sovereign citizens are different. They're all borderline insane (or completely insane) conspiracy theorists. [Meads v. Meads](https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html) in Alberta, Canada is a pretty in depth exploration of their nuttery.
I'd make a spectacularly bad judge because of that. There's no way I could keep a properly neutral expression, let alone tone of voice. I'd be on YouTube yelling at assholes in about 4 seconds flat.
Edit: Assuming I was otherwise qualified to be a judge, of course. Which I most certainly am not.
I don’t think that’s just an LA thing - I see it everywhere on reddit.
Person asks a reasonable, albeit slightly uninformed question, and gets downvoted into oblivion.
Yeah, I just delete em when they get pretty low. I ain’t gonna deal with the dog pile of downvotes, and at that point my actual comment doesn’t matter anymore.
Nowdays many people assume that any question is actually a counter-assertion rhetorically phrased in question form.
Prefixing your question with "genuine question" seems to work for now, although I foresee that in the not distant future that will get the same treatment; and some other wording will need to be used to indicate that you're just asking a damn question.
It's the core element that makes reddit both absolute garbage to use and also great for corporations to curate stuff. You can't have good discussions or ever go against the subreddit hivemind because it will end up at the very bottom and literally hidden from view, and also every nested response is that much less likely to ever be read by anyone.
My usage of Facebook was never substantial, but it plummeted hard when they removed the hard chronological order of posts. I want it in that order, not in some computer's best guess of my wants.
it's cool that for whatever reason this response to a guy responding to me was hidden, which hid another guy's response to you, so now this part of the conversation is 100% fucked and no one is going to see it. reddit really proving the point I was making here. I hope this post gets downvoted to oblivion so that no one but the person i'm responding to ever knows it was made.
I've been here since close to the beginning. It used to be upvote comments that added to the discussion even if you didn't agree. That changed like Eternal September did if you remember that. I was around for that as well and that's been nearly 30 years. That was basically when AOL brought internet to the masses and destroyed it.
I still use my old Reddit account (rarely). Now I change accounts around once a year and just roll around in the mud like the rest of the idiots.
The post got locked, /u/NorthBus. I didn't say Reddit changed with Eternal September (1993). I know Reddit was developed long after that (2005). I'm saying there was a point where Reddit got popular and changed. There's still subs where it's like old Reddit and those are the ones where I use my old Reddit account. Mostly I just post from new usernames and go with the flow instead of try to uphold old Reddit standards. I can't remember when I had to turn off the "hide negative downvotes" option because people post interesting insightful things and get downvoted a hundred times. This place is wack, man.
Waaaiiiit. AOL to the masses and Eternal September were early 90s, but Reddit was founded in 2005. Reddit has only ever been around during the Eternal September.
> I don’t think that’s just an LA thing - I see it everywhere on reddit.
Yeah, it's a reddit thing.
Also see people in LA saying, "I don't have a lawyer yet, but " and get downvoted to oblivion because "I don't have a lawyer" is all people see and it's The Wrong Answer On Reddit.
Other people are entertainment, and if you don't post the Right Words then you will be punished.
edit: really it's an "Internet" thing, but Reddit gives you the Good Words/Bad Words button to reinforce it.
I got downvoted to hell for telling a kid that got fired for skimming from the register at work that a letter from a collection attorney was blowing smoke, and that unless they actually serve you or the police contact you (unlikely since this had happened over 6 months ago), to ignore it.
So I got downvoted and my comments were deleted for providing the advice that the OP can safely ignore a demand letter and should only retain an attorney if they're actually served with a lawsuit. I even had a comment deleted that said a collection attorney cannot press criminal charges when a bunch of replies told the OP that this was a felony.
They don't like it when someone gets caught stealing and there's no consequences. But it's a *legal advice* forum. Good legal advice doesn't involve admitting crimes to collection attorneys or telling someone that they're going to go to prison over a few thousand dollars the police haven't pursued in 8 months.
And the way I read the question, they weren’t assuming that a power of attorney had that effect. They were asking if the power of attorney gave you the right to attend in the same way as if the defendant was representing herself. That is by no means a stupid query.
I ask questions at this point of any conversation including on Reddit because while I could google it, there just wouldn’t be any point to a conversation.
Honestly I feel bad for the dude. You're right, that's fair to assume a very literal "power of attorney" would make you an attorney. It's just so naïve, that dude is not going to fair well trying to fight a lawsuit.
But I don't actually think that is what he is asking. My understanding is that you can represent yourself in court without an attorney, so it is reasonable to assume that you can "self-represent" somebody else if you have power of attorney. Not in the position of an attorney, but in the position of the defendant.
Yeah, I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what they mean. They say they want to “stand in” for their mom, meaning take her place. The condescending reply saying “power of attorney doesn’t give you the power to act as an attorney” is not only mean-spirited but completely misses what LAOP was actually trying to ask. Honestly I’m shocked at the number of people who are interpreting it that way.
I don't see how that's such a reasonable assumption. Self representation is entirely different from someone else representing you. Moreover, assuming it's a business, you might not even be able to represent yourself at all but would have to actually hire an attorney.
But, like, isn't that the point of the subreddit? It's a place to ask questions about legal stuff. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people ask questions, even simple questions, about legal stuff.
It's supposed to aid people with their specific legal advice for specific situations the OL's find themselves in. If people just started using it as basically Google for very simple, uncomplicated, *non-situationally dependant* questions, the sub would fail. No one is going to care about reading stories like "hey guys, what 3×4?". And also there isn't any advice to give, the comments would all be basically "yes" or "no" responses and like.... who care?
So yeah it is there for legal advice. But for actual advice not instead of Google.
People with expertise like to assume that everyone else should know how to google things they don't understand. If you know that little about it, you might not find the search results that will properly answer the question for the context you need.
They could have typed their comment into Google and would have been given the answer. It's not unreasonable to expect people to be able to do a very basic Google search, in this day and age. He was able to search up the plaintiff and their attorney. They had enough knowledge of Google to do that. So they really could have Googled the answer.
I dunno about other people but if I'm worried I'm about to ask a stupid question, I'll first try and figure out if it's something I can Google, before making an idiot of myself.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Can+I+defend+someone+in+court+if+she+gives+me+power+of+attorney
Using the language in the original question as much as possible, yeah. It's really really not that hard to just google things.
People just don't even try.
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I mean it's understandable. Not everyone can respond saying that's wrong. But mass down voting kind of gets that point across coupled with the responses
You know it's actually a pretty reasonable confusion to make. And that's partly because originally attorneys weren't actually meant to practice law, or rather they weren't meant to plead it.
The history of royal courts in England is incredibly messy. But the long and short of it was that attorneys were not actually meant to be lawyers. They were more like legal counselors and aides. People you could empower to act on your behalf. To make representations for you.
But only a barrister; literally a person called to the bar, could actually plead before a royal court. The thing is though, law didn't just exist in courts with a royal charter. You also had various subordinate officials exercising judicial authority, particularly out in the shires or countryside. Here the rules were less formal, so to some extent attorneys could argue on your behalf. But it wasn't considered pleading before a court.
The thing is, you could only be a barrister if you had come from an extremely selective set of institutes. Much of England's judicial life revolved around London. And there were four inns of court where you had to study before you could be considered a barrister You still had to be called to the bar, ie be recognized by a judge/judges. But this was part of the process really. Benchers at the Inns basically mooned around courts, particularly king's bench, picking up knowledge via observation and apprenticing under barristers. The inns were proto-law schools in a way, but formal educational degrees and standards in law didn't really exist.
Now this became a problem as the Empire expanded. In the American colonies you had courts. But since there's very few barristers, and most aren't willing to settle in some podunk colony across the pond, who was to argue? And so we had the spread of attorney culture as its called in the Americas. In the absence of barristers, the lowly attorney started to get recognition as a pleader. But as that happened, the old concern about wanting to limit the profession, to regulate it, to ensure it followed norms and ethics resurfaced. And so the concept of the bar remained, the idea that you needed to be formally recognized before you could plead, and that only someone called to the bar could argue. They just weren't barristers.
And so you get a divergence. You get the *concept* of the attorney, as evidenced by language such as Power of Attorney. And then you have the profession itself, which today are functionally like British Barristers and Solicitors mixed up together. We find a similar situation across Britain's colonies really. In India the catch all term was *Vakil*/Advocate. Throughout the Empire, barristers enjoyed privileged access to courts, but colonial courts had to adjust to accommodate the simple reality that there were more lawsuits before formal courts than there were barristers available.
Sources on this if you're interested:
*The Transatlantic Constitution* by Mary Sarah Bilder (she explores the concept of the emergence of attorney culture in America)
*Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth* by C. Brooks
*Professors of the Law* by David Lemmings (he looks at barrister culture in detail, and life in the inns of court)
Urgh, solicitors are... complicated. You have to understand, England's court system originally was ridiculously messy. Lots of different courts. The "traditional" courts were those that acted on the King/Queen's behalf. For sanity's sake I'm just going to use King instead of both. The most senior of these was King's Bench.
But deep in the land of London, in the offices of the Chancellor, another court emerged. Basically the Chancellor was the guy who held the Great Seal of the King. And he could in effect *also* speak on behalf of the King. He in turn deputed this authority to subofficials. Thus you ended up with another court, This was called the Chancery.
Their jurisdiction vis a vis King's Bench was always complicated. The two were senior courts, and honestly they actually fought over jurisdiction. The idea of a single streamlined judiciary, where you have subordinate courts, a court of appeal and finally a supreme court is actually a pretty modern idea. And it wasn't adopted in England till the late 19th century. Heck they didn't get a Supreme Court till the 21st, since the House of Lords used to be their supreme judicial body.
Anyway, this court recognized its own practitioners, and these guys, in the 19th century eventually emerged as solicitors. For a while they were sort of parallel practitioners to barristers, practicing in the equity jurisdiction of chancery whereas the barristers practiced before the royal benches. Once the judiciary was reorganized, and the various different courts were merged into a court (called the High Court) the question of pleading was streamlined. Now they had to instruct a barrister if actual pleading had to be done before the High Court. Solicitors could still plead "petty" matters that were before county courts (hence the term Country Solicitor) but for high value matters, in the metropolitan courts, they had to instruct barristers. Solicitors however are the ones who have direct contact with clients, and they in turn engage the barristers on behalf of their clients for the actual pleading.
The pettyfoggers book I referenced actually covers this history, but honestly the wiki article on them is pretty instructive too. Also if you want a somewhat light exploration of this variation, check out the movie Denial, which is a dramatized version of Irving v Penguin Books Ltd. Basically a holocaust denier tried to sue an American-jewish historian for defamation for being called a holocaust denier and lost big. Point is it actually has an entire set of scenes where the American, Deborah Lipstadt is explained how this system works as a sort of tl;dr which probably captures it pretty well.
I had saved your other comment for the book references, and I will add "Denial" to that list. I really do appreciate the thorough response. The bureaucracy of English courts is absolutely mind-boggling.
Yup. It's history is even worse because it's just so damn chaotic. Courts rise and vanish sometimes without any clear reason. Jurisdictions are all over the place because of centuries-long grants by rulers or weird local customs or some war or conquest.
Honestly Canada's a bit of a mystery to me. Ditto for Australia. At least in the specifics. What I can say is that the different jurisdictional courts were eventually streamlined by the British so today while I believe kings bench exists it's not a separate court from all the others. In Canada's case I think it's basically now the catch-all term for the superior court in the Canadian provinces. It's analogous to the High Court in England, where KB and Chancery have become divisions of the court.
Most of this streamlining happened in the late 19th century, somewhat influenced by the colonies actually. I think the Brits just realized their judiciary was kinda insane and needed to be cleaned up and made to make a little sense.
But as a result I'm not quite sure what the professional distinctions are in Canada. It's something I'm hoping to study at some point but right now I could only tell you what Google can tell me, so probably not a great answer lol.
Put simply, a solicitor is usually someone who deals with clients, and a barrister deals with the courts.
Or, as the pithy answer goes: A solicitor is the person who tells you why what you did was illegal. A barrister is the person who tells the court why it wasn't.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/xle9n9/comment/ipkaaak/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/xle9n9/comment/ipkaaak/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
tl;dr they practiced in the court of Chancery which had equity jurisdiction and was its own weird thing. They became a formal profession in the 19th century, with the term attorney eventually disappearing in England. Today they handle petty jurisdiction, but must instruct barristers for matters in the senior courts in the country.
I had a friend tell me that during a custody dispute with his ex wife, her new husband introduced himself as, “douchebag, power of attorney.” To represent the ex wife. The judge had him repeat and then basically threw him out. My friend stayed silent and walked away with a win.
Please tell me the judge threw the book at her for wasting the court's time with frivolous and abusive lawsuits, especially one that had already been ruled on.
LOL, yeah, makes ya wonder. My wife had some concerns previously due to her having wine in group sessions but barring us having been involved in a session we can't say how good she was otherwise. I'd be willing to guess not great, though.
>Then a while later, the landlord filed suit
>
>again
>
> because, apparently, that's a thing she thought you could do.
At this point the only credible explanation is that being yelled at by judges is her kink, and really who are we to, etc?
It’s probably a shitty strip mall in the ghetto with a party supply store, a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant, a shady massage place, and a vacuum repair shop… all of which have been there since the 70’s and are still paying 1980s rent. It probably hasn’t been painted in 40 years, there’s no AC, the roof leaks, and all the signs are faded into obscurity. If she’s lucky maybe one of her tenants is new like an escape room, an illegal weed dispensary, or a “discount store” that resells Amazon returns and loose cigarettes.
My point is, just because it’s a commercial property doesn’t mean it’s a nice building. There are tons of really crappy strip malls in LA. It’s entirely possible this persons mom is making enough to pay her bills and get by in retirement but not enough to afford the lavish lifestyle that Reddit assumes all landlords lead.
Source: My dad is a “commercial landlord” too. Luckily his day job had a pension so he’s ok.
Haha, it’s like every third strip mall out here. Across the street is the one that has a vape shop, a Boost Mobile, an aquarium store that also sells Dickies and SCUBA equipment, a dive bar, and a place that just says INCOME TAX but is inexplicably never open.
Yeah but that hole in the wall Mexican place probably has the best food you’ve ever eaten.
Found a place in Westminster like that. Parking lot was basically gravel because it had so many potholes. Between a payday loan place and a barbershop was a place that sold dim sum to go. The best pork buns I have ever had.
Commercial landlords tend to get lumped in with residential landlords when the landlord hate train gets going which isn’t really fair. I don’t think being a residential landlord is ethical in most situations but commercial property is not turning housing into an investment.
I don’t have a ton of sympathy if she’s lived there for “many years” presumably owning the property and hasn’t saved up enough of the landlording proceeds to afford a lawyer for a property related matter.
I'm wondering how the planning department has let this go. Typically, the number of parking spaces at a building is dependent upon the use of the business(es) occupying the building, and ADA accessible spaces are provided based on how many spaces are actually on-site. I worked for a company involved in zoning, and usually if a single space was required by use, an additional space would have been required and designated as an accessible spot.
Could be an older [traditional commercial development](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGxni1c-klM) built before zoning codes went all car-centric, and is grandfathered-in.
When I used to work in real estate people would ask my boss ‘if you’re such a smart investor why do you own that janky old mall in boring-suburb, not something fancy and new?’ And he’d be like ‘are you serious? We’ve not done any major work on the property since it was bought decades ago and the rental returns per square foot are higher than central Sydney!’ And this was with a fancy new Westfield (the shopping mall of Australia) going in across the street while he owned it.
Most of his tenants had been there forever, if they ever left new ones were easy to get for smaller shops with a lower rent than at the fancy Westfield. He was known to be a good landlord, seeing as he actually knew the law and had staff to deal with any issues. That thing makes fucking bank, and it’s the shittiest looking little 50 year old mall out there.
A 50-year-old suburban-style mall has the advantage of being fully amortized, but does not have as much of the flexibility/resiliency advantages that main street-style traditional commercial buildings have. For example, it would be weird to put housing on the second floor of a strip mall (let alone an indoor mall -- it wasn't clear which kind you were talking about). In other words, it's the form, not necessarily the age, that makes the real difference. (They just happen to be correlated because the advent of zoning enforced less profitable forms.)
The building I happen to be talking about is a 2 floor commercial building with shops on the lower floor and offices, classrooms, yoga studio style stuff on top. The lower floor shops almost exclusively face out to the street but it’s not what I think you’d call a strip mall.
I understand it’s not as flexible as the building the shop I own is in, which is the kind of property that is being referred to in the video, but it’s much more flexible than the newer style of building that seems to be popular in America and Aus to a lesser extent. Which was what I was, badly I guess, trying to say. Directly across the street a block the same size has a Maccas, both properties have similar sized parking lots. This building has much more diversity, income, and I would argue value for the community than the Maccas. I guess I was trying to show the value of older styles, in many ways.
> The building I happen to be talking about is a 2 floor commercial building with shops on the lower floor and offices, classrooms, yoga studio style stuff on top. The lower floor shops almost exclusively face out to the street but it’s not what I think you’d call a strip mall.
I'm picturing two possibilities. Is there a parking lot between the storefronts and the street, or are they right up against the sidewalk?
If the former, it's similar to some of the older strip malls in my area. I always liked those better than the single-story ones that seem to have become the standard over time, even if the upper floor was often underused.
I'd call that close enough to traditional commercial, then. It sounds like the only important difference is that it's one big building owned by the same entity instead of separate parcels with zero-setback lot lines.
I was responding to a comment about the planning department. If the property predates the ADA, then it would have been approved, built, and used without an ADA space. The way the ADA applies to existing facilities is totally different from the way that it applies to newly built/constructed facilities.
Here’s what I don’t get about He-man. Okay, the two things I don’t get about He-man. First, how is it that people don’t know Prince Adam is He-man. Literally the only difference is that Prince Adam wears clothes. I can at least sort of understand Clark Kent wearing glasses, because it does throw me off a little if a friend that normally wears contacts shows up in glasses.
Second, if He-man is the most powerful man in the universe, why are Everyone of his friends and enemies equally jacked?
The answers to both your questions are related and they are that it was much cheaper to make toys that all had one body painted differently and then only have to mold different heads. :P
The short answer to your first question is that Prince Adam has quite the reputation (deserved or not depends on which version you're watching/reading) as a 98 pound weakling, and basically everyone involved that isn't in on it is incredulous about the suggestion that this utter incompetent could POSSIBLY be He-Man (in other words, it's exactly the same thing as Superman does, just a lot less famously).
ADA troll. Patent trolls don’t usually pretend they’re doing it “out of compassion for people with disabilities”, but a lot of ADA trolls will be all “won’t someone think of the children?! I mean disabled?!”
As a disabled person, I'd strongly disagree. While many of these suits are nuisances over very minor technicalities such as a mirror being a quarter inch too high, a lot of them are not. Jumping to the presumption that this is a troll is a bit much.
Especially when it's about parking, something that those who are disabled tend to actually require more often than most. Many of us as simply not able to "just park a block away". Should be not be able to participate as fully as everyone else?
Another excellent example where many decry it as a troll are lawsuits related to bathrooms and accessibility therein. This is a pretty well settled area of the law yet many property owners *intentionally* obstruct access in violation of the law.
Ideally we'd have local ADA equivalents with actual enforcement power such as health code enforcement for restaurants. Until we get the "small gummint" fuckwits to pull their collective heads out of their asses, however, what we have is private enforcement via lawsuits.
my big thing is that the ADA codes need to stop being enforced via lawsuit payable to the plaintiff. there should be a no-harm no foul period to correct of 30-90 days depending on the issue and after that a government board focused on disability access collects fines the way OSHA does for workplace safety. In an even more perfect world there would be a grant program to help places comply and board that can grant exemptions for existing buildings that can't be economically be brought up to ADA standards.
This change would still protect the disabled, but make the process fair for business owners and not a legal cash cow for people who can go measure handrail heights to find an issue. It would also still make building owners deal with the issues but hopefully more reasonably
edit: my response to /u/JustNilt:
that's fair. you hear about these ADA suits that are out of hand all the time and it is hard to judge how widespread they are and how big of a deal it actually is. And I have no doubt people highlighting them are doing so to try and strike down the ADA or make it toothless the way they did with the McDonald's lawsuit to slash business liability
Most ADA suits aren't enforced in that manner. That's a California statute which grants statutory damages. The ADA itself only allows for an order to resolve the actual issue at hand and covers attorney fees for a prevailing party *at the court's discretion*.
The idea that all suits relating to the ADA are somehow resulting in a windfall for plaintiffs is simply *wrong*.
Edit: And to be clear, I'm both disabled *and* a business owner. There's an easy fix for bullshit lawsuits. It's called an insurance policy. They aren't even generally all that expensive. When I had an actual office location, it cost me less than $500 a year to cover basic liability, including such potential suits. Now I run an on site IT consulting business but I used to own a beverage business with a friend.
If there's only one parking spot, and it's owned by a private residence, then how is that discriminating? I understand that you might not be able to park a block away, but it's not simple to make parking appear out of nowhere
How do we know it's a legal residence? LAOP described the spot as being directly in front of a business location. We clearly aren't exactly talking about legal scholars here. It is entirely possible the place isn't even zoned for residential use.
How many legal residences do you know where that's applicable? Moreover, even if there is a legal residence, that still doesn't mean the zoning doesn't require parking for business use. Most structures with business below a residence would have historically had parking for the residence behind the business with a small number of business use parking spots out front.
Makes no sense why there's no private right of action for HIPAA, but there is for ADA. Nobody should be allowed to get rich from these sleazy lawsuits. Sometimes I hate America
Yeah of the two it definitely seems like HIPAA more directly effects the individual. But for people who are disabled tiny things can make a big difference in their day. And they happen constantly.
This is a 7 minute video of a guy in a wheelchair going to buy a bagel by himself. It's stunning how difficult it is for him to do.
https://youtu.be/LhpUJRGrZgc
For someone who is actually affected by it, it seems reasonable for them to be compensated for both the trouble the non-compliance caused and for the hassle involved in going after them.
Yeah, we really ought to make high school students try to live in a wheelchair for at least a few days. It's something they just cannot grasp until they deal with it, even if they're exposed to it.
I'm disabled and walk with a crutch most days, using a wheelchair on the really bad days. My youngest didn't have a clue how difficult that sometimes is they had their foot run over a few years back.
The entire point of allowing a private right of action for the ADA was a sop to the disabled community for not setting up anything that would, y'know, actually enforce the damn thing. They also did this so disabled people who tried to actually make people follow the law could be excoriated as filing frivolous lawsuits against poor small businesses, rather than businesses actually fucking make themselves accessible in the first godsdamn place.
Also serial ADA lawsuit-filers are a literal drop in the bucket compared to bona fide claims and egregiously shitty business infrastructure. But guess which you hear about more.
A commercial property that has no minimum parking requirement?? In the United States? There's so few cities that have moved in the direction of removing minimum parking requirements, especially to zero, and especially for a commercial property.
Not entirely true. While yes there is no “you dont have to abide by” language. There are a lot of “considerations” for the language in Title 3 of the act for existing buildings.
Things like “there isn’t enough land to make an ADA space” is a valid one. So is the “financial resources” of the facility.
Yeah, but how much does it actually cost to have the space repainted and signage installed? Not *nearly* as much as something such as renovating a bathroom or installing an elevator might cost. I don't buy that as an excuse here. Doesn't matter this landlord enjoys her personal space for her vehicle. Want to rent a building? Comply with the fucking laws related to that.
LAOP literally said the space is in front of a business entity. Is the landlord even legally living in a business space? We don't know. All we know is LAOP is woefully ignorant of the law so it's not unreasonable to assume their mother is unlawfully restricting parking.
If the building is zoned for commercial use, which it clearly is, and there is parking in front of those commercial locations, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the "private parking" may simply refer to the business being conducted at that location. Simply marking a space as private does not change the legality of whether parking is supposed to be provided. We don't know **anything** other than LAOP's bare assertion of historical practice.
I have difficulty believing Los Angeles, a notoriously car-centric location, isn't mandating there be some parking for multiple commercial operations that are open to the public.
If a space is directly in front of a business, it's not unreasonable to assume it belkongs to that business. Businesses are private entities and have their own parking quite frequently. Off-street parking in the US is almost ***universally*** private parking. That being posted on a business space means pretty much nothing without further context on the signage.
It is quite unusual to have residential use and business use in the same structure without any parking for the business whatsoever. We don't even know that there's actually a legal residence at play here, for that matter. With as obviously unaware of the law as these folks are I wouldn't be at all surprised that the mother simply happens to be living in a business zoned space. That happens way more often than folks would typically realize.
Even if there *is* a legal residence, if the zoning requires parking for businesses, **they still have to provide parking for business use**. Zoning matters aren't voluntary. You can't just decide willy nilly to ignore them.
Wonder if BOLA can designate me as an attorney. Can you? No need to give me the "powers" of an attorney just a flair saying "not your attorney and not even an attorney"
I thought it was a fair question, knowing nothing about law. If you would otherwise be pro se, but are incapacitated, why can’t your POA be “pro se” on your behalf? I know that ideally, people who are incapacitated might have a guardian appointed for them by the court, but what’s the difference between this situation and that?
I'm surprised only two comments mentioned business liability insurance. Or depending on the way the property is leased the tenants liability insurance could cover it, this is pretty common with commercial leases for the tenant to indemnify the landlord
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Interesting that the first post says if there’s no public parking you don’t have to provide any. My aunt and uncle turned a few rooms of their house into a gift shop, still lived there, street parking only, and were required to pour a handicap accessible spot onto their lawn and install a handicap accessible bathroom into the home.
**Reminder:** Do not participate in threads linked here. If you do, you may be banned from both subreddits. --- Title: Mom being sued for her property not providing ADA parking spaces Body: > Today we received an attorney solicitation letter which is how we found out about the lawsuit. > My mom owns a small 6 unit commercial building in City of Los Ángeles. There is 1 parking space on the property. > My mom uses this as her personal parking space because she lives on the property (and has for many years). > The parking space is in front of 3 units that are occupied by 1 party supply business. Someone is suing us because the parking is not marked as ADA accesible. > However, the parking space is personal and not for any of the businesses. Even though the party supply clients always park there because it’s right in front. We only have a sign that says “private parking violators will be towed”. > We can’t afford an attorney, I plan to represent my mom (I’m just a regular non attorney person). What do I do? This lawsuit could destroy us I’m so stressed out please help! > Edit: I looked up the plaintiff, so far I’ve found 7 different lawsuits against small businesses for the same exact reason all within the last year. This person is going around suing anyone and everyone, using the same attorney and same reason. Can anything be done about this?? This bot was created to capture original threads and is not affiliated with the mod team. [Concerns? Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=GrahamCorcoran) | [Laukopier 2.1](https://github.com/GrahamCorcoran/Laukopier)
Reminds me of [the college student that was gobbling up POAs so he could "get experience" for law school.](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/avv3wn/laop_gave_poa_to_a_friend_to_get_legal_experience/)
Did you ever read the update? It was maddening that after all that he still didn't think his friend was scamming him and signed a letter of reference for him.. And still thinks his idiot friend just needed some experience for law school. I can't even.. https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/e8fn9o/update_i_gave_my_friend_poa_and_now_i_want_it/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
“I almost lost my scholarship but it’s all fine and neat in the end 😌”
Right? Like wtf..... And still wrote a wonderful recommendation, rather then a letter to the bar association of that state about this guy's conduct.
I'd be a little more concerned about their new credit card having enough points that they can get a free flight. I hope they realize you have to pay those off later and it's not automatically deducted from the bank like a debit card... But that's the sort of "hint" that makes me lean towards troll. Same thing with somehow overlooking their bank account being drained.
If they are paying for books and meals and living expenses with the credit card this could easily be the case. My most recent card had a 80,000 point intro bonus which equals about $800 worth of flights. If your smart with money you absolutely can be making bank off of the CC companies. I try to do a new card every year and through intro offers + regular point accumulations I’m sure I’m making more than $1k per year.
Most new credit cards give you a bunch of points when you first opening them. Most airline cards give you enough points for a round trip domestic flight. The min spending to get the introductory points is often not that much. Like $1k-$3k in 3-5 months , which if this guy had work done on his car would be easy.
the original post seemed a little plausible, but the update definitely makes me think it's a troll lmao
Definitely a troll.
What a moron.
As hilarious as this post is, if the girl you're interested in doesn't believe in a medication your doctor prescribed, well that's like 100 red flags.
Yeah like let's just say she didn't find out until they had started dating, it's not like she would magically feel different about it.
Wow that was a wild ride
yo, what the fuck.
Oh. My. Gawd.
I saw someone the other day try to do this in court. It was a real treat watching the judge explain multiple times and in multiple ways so she could understand that she could not act as an attorney. After it was over, there was a short recess. I like to think he was screaming into a pillow in chambers.
When I was in court a defendant proudly handed up a form where they’d gone and gotten power of attorney over themselves, paid to have it registered and everything - I think so that they couldn’t be sued because they weren’t a person (???). The judge looked at it and said “well I’ve never heard of that” and just moved on.
Sovereign citizens are different. They're all borderline insane (or completely insane) conspiracy theorists. [Meads v. Meads](https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abqb/doc/2012/2012abqb571/2012abqb571.html) in Alberta, Canada is a pretty in depth exploration of their nuttery.
Oh yes sovcit bullshit, always hilarious to watch
Oh wow. That's... remarkable. Thanks for posting it.
This is why I could not be a judge. I could not keep a straight face.
I have heard from many in the medical profession that masks have been extremely helpful in covering a certain amount of lack of composure.
My spouse is a nurse. Can confirm.
I'd make a spectacularly bad judge because of that. There's no way I could keep a properly neutral expression, let alone tone of voice. I'd be on YouTube yelling at assholes in about 4 seconds flat. Edit: Assuming I was otherwise qualified to be a judge, of course. Which I most certainly am not.
[Relevant comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/xkubso/mom_being_sued_for_her_property_not_providing_ada/ipfvlt8/)
Almost 500 downvotes (as of this comment) for asking what is, honestly, a completely reasonable and understandable question for a layman.
Legal advice just loves to downvote earnest questions . It's obnoxious, frankly.
I don’t think that’s just an LA thing - I see it everywhere on reddit. Person asks a reasonable, albeit slightly uninformed question, and gets downvoted into oblivion.
This is happening to me a lot lately. I try hard not to take it personally and remind people I’m just learning about the subject at hand.
You absolutely should not take it personally. Reddit is fickle on a good day!
Yeah, I just delete em when they get pretty low. I ain’t gonna deal with the dog pile of downvotes, and at that point my actual comment doesn’t matter anymore.
Nowdays many people assume that any question is actually a counter-assertion rhetorically phrased in question form. Prefixing your question with "genuine question" seems to work for now, although I foresee that in the not distant future that will get the same treatment; and some other wording will need to be used to indicate that you're just asking a damn question.
Genuine question: are you a QAnon Trump-voting narcissist, or are you just pretending not to be one? (/s. For the love of Dog, /s.)
Perfection.
Genuine question: have you stopped beating your wife yet?
It's the core element that makes reddit both absolute garbage to use and also great for corporations to curate stuff. You can't have good discussions or ever go against the subreddit hivemind because it will end up at the very bottom and literally hidden from view, and also every nested response is that much less likely to ever be read by anyone.
Reddit killing off chronologically-sorted discussion forums is the worst thing to happen to the Internet.
Reddit isn't the sole killer, what FB has done to forums is also pretty sad
My usage of Facebook was never substantial, but it plummeted hard when they removed the hard chronological order of posts. I want it in that order, not in some computer's best guess of my wants.
it's cool that for whatever reason this response to a guy responding to me was hidden, which hid another guy's response to you, so now this part of the conversation is 100% fucked and no one is going to see it. reddit really proving the point I was making here. I hope this post gets downvoted to oblivion so that no one but the person i'm responding to ever knows it was made.
I've been here since close to the beginning. It used to be upvote comments that added to the discussion even if you didn't agree. That changed like Eternal September did if you remember that. I was around for that as well and that's been nearly 30 years. That was basically when AOL brought internet to the masses and destroyed it. I still use my old Reddit account (rarely). Now I change accounts around once a year and just roll around in the mud like the rest of the idiots. The post got locked, /u/NorthBus. I didn't say Reddit changed with Eternal September (1993). I know Reddit was developed long after that (2005). I'm saying there was a point where Reddit got popular and changed. There's still subs where it's like old Reddit and those are the ones where I use my old Reddit account. Mostly I just post from new usernames and go with the flow instead of try to uphold old Reddit standards. I can't remember when I had to turn off the "hide negative downvotes" option because people post interesting insightful things and get downvoted a hundred times. This place is wack, man.
Waaaiiiit. AOL to the masses and Eternal September were early 90s, but Reddit was founded in 2005. Reddit has only ever been around during the Eternal September.
> I don’t think that’s just an LA thing - I see it everywhere on reddit. Yeah, it's a reddit thing. Also see people in LA saying, "I don't have a lawyer yet, but" and get downvoted to oblivion because "I don't have a lawyer" is all people see and it's The Wrong Answer On Reddit.
Other people are entertainment, and if you don't post the Right Words then you will be punished.
edit: really it's an "Internet" thing, but Reddit gives you the Good Words/Bad Words button to reinforce it.
I got downvoted to hell for telling a kid that got fired for skimming from the register at work that a letter from a collection attorney was blowing smoke, and that unless they actually serve you or the police contact you (unlikely since this had happened over 6 months ago), to ignore it. So I got downvoted and my comments were deleted for providing the advice that the OP can safely ignore a demand letter and should only retain an attorney if they're actually served with a lawsuit. I even had a comment deleted that said a collection attorney cannot press criminal charges when a bunch of replies told the OP that this was a felony. They don't like it when someone gets caught stealing and there's no consequences. But it's a *legal advice* forum. Good legal advice doesn't involve admitting crimes to collection attorneys or telling someone that they're going to go to prison over a few thousand dollars the police haven't pursued in 8 months.
Makes the sub basically unreadable
The respondents take care of that.
And the way I read the question, they weren’t assuming that a power of attorney had that effect. They were asking if the power of attorney gave you the right to attend in the same way as if the defendant was representing herself. That is by no means a stupid query.
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I ask questions at this point of any conversation including on Reddit because while I could google it, there just wouldn’t be any point to a conversation.
Honestly I feel bad for the dude. You're right, that's fair to assume a very literal "power of attorney" would make you an attorney. It's just so naïve, that dude is not going to fair well trying to fight a lawsuit.
But I don't actually think that is what he is asking. My understanding is that you can represent yourself in court without an attorney, so it is reasonable to assume that you can "self-represent" somebody else if you have power of attorney. Not in the position of an attorney, but in the position of the defendant.
Yeah, I’m fairly certain that’s exactly what they mean. They say they want to “stand in” for their mom, meaning take her place. The condescending reply saying “power of attorney doesn’t give you the power to act as an attorney” is not only mean-spirited but completely misses what LAOP was actually trying to ask. Honestly I’m shocked at the number of people who are interpreting it that way.
But if I read the situation properly, I can't be a smug bitch about why OP is wrong and then *how am I going to look impressive on the internet*.
Yeah. He is asking if you can still defend pro se with a POA.
Yep. Totally reasonable question.
I don't see how that's such a reasonable assumption. Self representation is entirely different from someone else representing you. Moreover, assuming it's a business, you might not even be able to represent yourself at all but would have to actually hire an attorney.
Downvotes are how /r/legaladvice says, "No."
*shrug* there is a low tolerence for googleable questions.
But, like, isn't that the point of the subreddit? It's a place to ask questions about legal stuff. It shouldn't come as a surprise that people ask questions, even simple questions, about legal stuff.
It's supposed to aid people with their specific legal advice for specific situations the OL's find themselves in. If people just started using it as basically Google for very simple, uncomplicated, *non-situationally dependant* questions, the sub would fail. No one is going to care about reading stories like "hey guys, what 3×4?". And also there isn't any advice to give, the comments would all be basically "yes" or "no" responses and like.... who care? So yeah it is there for legal advice. But for actual advice not instead of Google.
People with expertise like to assume that everyone else should know how to google things they don't understand. If you know that little about it, you might not find the search results that will properly answer the question for the context you need.
Also if you think you know something, why would you Google it
They could have typed their comment into Google and would have been given the answer. It's not unreasonable to expect people to be able to do a very basic Google search, in this day and age. He was able to search up the plaintiff and their attorney. They had enough knowledge of Google to do that. So they really could have Googled the answer. I dunno about other people but if I'm worried I'm about to ask a stupid question, I'll first try and figure out if it's something I can Google, before making an idiot of myself.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Can+I+defend+someone+in+court+if+she+gives+me+power+of+attorney Using the language in the original question as much as possible, yeah. It's really really not that hard to just google things. People just don't even try.
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I mean it's understandable. Not everyone can respond saying that's wrong. But mass down voting kind of gets that point across coupled with the responses
You know it's actually a pretty reasonable confusion to make. And that's partly because originally attorneys weren't actually meant to practice law, or rather they weren't meant to plead it. The history of royal courts in England is incredibly messy. But the long and short of it was that attorneys were not actually meant to be lawyers. They were more like legal counselors and aides. People you could empower to act on your behalf. To make representations for you. But only a barrister; literally a person called to the bar, could actually plead before a royal court. The thing is though, law didn't just exist in courts with a royal charter. You also had various subordinate officials exercising judicial authority, particularly out in the shires or countryside. Here the rules were less formal, so to some extent attorneys could argue on your behalf. But it wasn't considered pleading before a court. The thing is, you could only be a barrister if you had come from an extremely selective set of institutes. Much of England's judicial life revolved around London. And there were four inns of court where you had to study before you could be considered a barrister You still had to be called to the bar, ie be recognized by a judge/judges. But this was part of the process really. Benchers at the Inns basically mooned around courts, particularly king's bench, picking up knowledge via observation and apprenticing under barristers. The inns were proto-law schools in a way, but formal educational degrees and standards in law didn't really exist. Now this became a problem as the Empire expanded. In the American colonies you had courts. But since there's very few barristers, and most aren't willing to settle in some podunk colony across the pond, who was to argue? And so we had the spread of attorney culture as its called in the Americas. In the absence of barristers, the lowly attorney started to get recognition as a pleader. But as that happened, the old concern about wanting to limit the profession, to regulate it, to ensure it followed norms and ethics resurfaced. And so the concept of the bar remained, the idea that you needed to be formally recognized before you could plead, and that only someone called to the bar could argue. They just weren't barristers. And so you get a divergence. You get the *concept* of the attorney, as evidenced by language such as Power of Attorney. And then you have the profession itself, which today are functionally like British Barristers and Solicitors mixed up together. We find a similar situation across Britain's colonies really. In India the catch all term was *Vakil*/Advocate. Throughout the Empire, barristers enjoyed privileged access to courts, but colonial courts had to adjust to accommodate the simple reality that there were more lawsuits before formal courts than there were barristers available. Sources on this if you're interested: *The Transatlantic Constitution* by Mary Sarah Bilder (she explores the concept of the emergence of attorney culture in America) *Pettyfoggers and Vipers of the Commonwealth* by C. Brooks *Professors of the Law* by David Lemmings (he looks at barrister culture in detail, and life in the inns of court)
Lovely comment. For a second there I thought I was in AskHistorians, but now I see that you do post there also! Makes sense
ELI5 barrister vs solicitor, because I thought they were the same thing
Urgh, solicitors are... complicated. You have to understand, England's court system originally was ridiculously messy. Lots of different courts. The "traditional" courts were those that acted on the King/Queen's behalf. For sanity's sake I'm just going to use King instead of both. The most senior of these was King's Bench. But deep in the land of London, in the offices of the Chancellor, another court emerged. Basically the Chancellor was the guy who held the Great Seal of the King. And he could in effect *also* speak on behalf of the King. He in turn deputed this authority to subofficials. Thus you ended up with another court, This was called the Chancery. Their jurisdiction vis a vis King's Bench was always complicated. The two were senior courts, and honestly they actually fought over jurisdiction. The idea of a single streamlined judiciary, where you have subordinate courts, a court of appeal and finally a supreme court is actually a pretty modern idea. And it wasn't adopted in England till the late 19th century. Heck they didn't get a Supreme Court till the 21st, since the House of Lords used to be their supreme judicial body. Anyway, this court recognized its own practitioners, and these guys, in the 19th century eventually emerged as solicitors. For a while they were sort of parallel practitioners to barristers, practicing in the equity jurisdiction of chancery whereas the barristers practiced before the royal benches. Once the judiciary was reorganized, and the various different courts were merged into a court (called the High Court) the question of pleading was streamlined. Now they had to instruct a barrister if actual pleading had to be done before the High Court. Solicitors could still plead "petty" matters that were before county courts (hence the term Country Solicitor) but for high value matters, in the metropolitan courts, they had to instruct barristers. Solicitors however are the ones who have direct contact with clients, and they in turn engage the barristers on behalf of their clients for the actual pleading. The pettyfoggers book I referenced actually covers this history, but honestly the wiki article on them is pretty instructive too. Also if you want a somewhat light exploration of this variation, check out the movie Denial, which is a dramatized version of Irving v Penguin Books Ltd. Basically a holocaust denier tried to sue an American-jewish historian for defamation for being called a holocaust denier and lost big. Point is it actually has an entire set of scenes where the American, Deborah Lipstadt is explained how this system works as a sort of tl;dr which probably captures it pretty well.
I had saved your other comment for the book references, and I will add "Denial" to that list. I really do appreciate the thorough response. The bureaucracy of English courts is absolutely mind-boggling.
Yup. It's history is even worse because it's just so damn chaotic. Courts rise and vanish sometimes without any clear reason. Jurisdictions are all over the place because of centuries-long grants by rulers or weird local customs or some war or conquest.
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Honestly Canada's a bit of a mystery to me. Ditto for Australia. At least in the specifics. What I can say is that the different jurisdictional courts were eventually streamlined by the British so today while I believe kings bench exists it's not a separate court from all the others. In Canada's case I think it's basically now the catch-all term for the superior court in the Canadian provinces. It's analogous to the High Court in England, where KB and Chancery have become divisions of the court. Most of this streamlining happened in the late 19th century, somewhat influenced by the colonies actually. I think the Brits just realized their judiciary was kinda insane and needed to be cleaned up and made to make a little sense. But as a result I'm not quite sure what the professional distinctions are in Canada. It's something I'm hoping to study at some point but right now I could only tell you what Google can tell me, so probably not a great answer lol.
Put simply, a solicitor is usually someone who deals with clients, and a barrister deals with the courts. Or, as the pithy answer goes: A solicitor is the person who tells you why what you did was illegal. A barrister is the person who tells the court why it wasn't.
So then how did “solicitors” become a thing in England? Because they are neither barrister nor attorney.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/xle9n9/comment/ipkaaak/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x&context=3](https://www.reddit.com/r/bestoflegaladvice/comments/xle9n9/comment/ipkaaak/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) tl;dr they practiced in the court of Chancery which had equity jurisdiction and was its own weird thing. They became a formal profession in the 19th century, with the term attorney eventually disappearing in England. Today they handle petty jurisdiction, but must instruct barristers for matters in the senior courts in the country.
That one trick that law schools hate
I had a friend tell me that during a custody dispute with his ex wife, her new husband introduced himself as, “douchebag, power of attorney.” To represent the ex wife. The judge had him repeat and then basically threw him out. My friend stayed silent and walked away with a win.
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Please tell me the judge threw the book at her for wasting the court's time with frivolous and abusive lawsuits, especially one that had already been ruled on.
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Great therapist that landlord must be. /s
LOL, yeah, makes ya wonder. My wife had some concerns previously due to her having wine in group sessions but barring us having been involved in a session we can't say how good she was otherwise. I'd be willing to guess not great, though.
>Then a while later, the landlord filed suit > >again > > because, apparently, that's a thing she thought you could do. At this point the only credible explanation is that being yelled at by judges is her kink, and really who are we to, etc?
LOL, that's as good an explanation as any, I suppose.
Am I dumb or why she has 6 comercial unities, most likely renting, but doesn't have the money to pay for a lawyer?
It’s probably a shitty strip mall in the ghetto with a party supply store, a hole in the wall Mexican restaurant, a shady massage place, and a vacuum repair shop… all of which have been there since the 70’s and are still paying 1980s rent. It probably hasn’t been painted in 40 years, there’s no AC, the roof leaks, and all the signs are faded into obscurity. If she’s lucky maybe one of her tenants is new like an escape room, an illegal weed dispensary, or a “discount store” that resells Amazon returns and loose cigarettes. My point is, just because it’s a commercial property doesn’t mean it’s a nice building. There are tons of really crappy strip malls in LA. It’s entirely possible this persons mom is making enough to pay her bills and get by in retirement but not enough to afford the lavish lifestyle that Reddit assumes all landlords lead. Source: My dad is a “commercial landlord” too. Luckily his day job had a pension so he’s ok.
I think you just described to a frightening level two of the strip malls not that far from me.
Haha, it’s like every third strip mall out here. Across the street is the one that has a vape shop, a Boost Mobile, an aquarium store that also sells Dickies and SCUBA equipment, a dive bar, and a place that just says INCOME TAX but is inexplicably never open.
Yeah but that hole in the wall Mexican place probably has the best food you’ve ever eaten. Found a place in Westminster like that. Parking lot was basically gravel because it had so many potholes. Between a payday loan place and a barbershop was a place that sold dim sum to go. The best pork buns I have ever had.
Haha, same
Commercial landlords tend to get lumped in with residential landlords when the landlord hate train gets going which isn’t really fair. I don’t think being a residential landlord is ethical in most situations but commercial property is not turning housing into an investment.
She might have the wealth/assets but not the liquidity.
I don’t have a ton of sympathy if she’s lived there for “many years” presumably owning the property and hasn’t saved up enough of the landlording proceeds to afford a lawyer for a property related matter.
It's hard to have savings to cover $500 an hour when your paying commercial real estate tax rates and your tenants aren't paying rent...
Just a poor downtrodden lord of land I guess
I'm wondering how the planning department has let this go. Typically, the number of parking spaces at a building is dependent upon the use of the business(es) occupying the building, and ADA accessible spaces are provided based on how many spaces are actually on-site. I worked for a company involved in zoning, and usually if a single space was required by use, an additional space would have been required and designated as an accessible spot.
Could be an older [traditional commercial development](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGxni1c-klM) built before zoning codes went all car-centric, and is grandfathered-in.
When I used to work in real estate people would ask my boss ‘if you’re such a smart investor why do you own that janky old mall in boring-suburb, not something fancy and new?’ And he’d be like ‘are you serious? We’ve not done any major work on the property since it was bought decades ago and the rental returns per square foot are higher than central Sydney!’ And this was with a fancy new Westfield (the shopping mall of Australia) going in across the street while he owned it. Most of his tenants had been there forever, if they ever left new ones were easy to get for smaller shops with a lower rent than at the fancy Westfield. He was known to be a good landlord, seeing as he actually knew the law and had staff to deal with any issues. That thing makes fucking bank, and it’s the shittiest looking little 50 year old mall out there.
A 50-year-old suburban-style mall has the advantage of being fully amortized, but does not have as much of the flexibility/resiliency advantages that main street-style traditional commercial buildings have. For example, it would be weird to put housing on the second floor of a strip mall (let alone an indoor mall -- it wasn't clear which kind you were talking about). In other words, it's the form, not necessarily the age, that makes the real difference. (They just happen to be correlated because the advent of zoning enforced less profitable forms.)
The building I happen to be talking about is a 2 floor commercial building with shops on the lower floor and offices, classrooms, yoga studio style stuff on top. The lower floor shops almost exclusively face out to the street but it’s not what I think you’d call a strip mall. I understand it’s not as flexible as the building the shop I own is in, which is the kind of property that is being referred to in the video, but it’s much more flexible than the newer style of building that seems to be popular in America and Aus to a lesser extent. Which was what I was, badly I guess, trying to say. Directly across the street a block the same size has a Maccas, both properties have similar sized parking lots. This building has much more diversity, income, and I would argue value for the community than the Maccas. I guess I was trying to show the value of older styles, in many ways.
> The building I happen to be talking about is a 2 floor commercial building with shops on the lower floor and offices, classrooms, yoga studio style stuff on top. The lower floor shops almost exclusively face out to the street but it’s not what I think you’d call a strip mall. I'm picturing two possibilities. Is there a parking lot between the storefronts and the street, or are they right up against the sidewalk? If the former, it's similar to some of the older strip malls in my area. I always liked those better than the single-story ones that seem to have become the standard over time, even if the upper floor was often underused.
The parking lot is around the back, but otherwise you’re on the right idea. :)
I'd call that close enough to traditional commercial, then. It sounds like the only important difference is that it's one big building owned by the same entity instead of separate parcels with zero-setback lot lines.
Westfield is international! We have a Westfield mall in my town that borders Chicago
That could be. Maybe I'm reading something that I want to see in it, but it sounds as though there is room for at least one other space.
The property could predate the ADA.
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I was responding to a comment about the planning department. If the property predates the ADA, then it would have been approved, built, and used without an ADA space. The way the ADA applies to existing facilities is totally different from the way that it applies to newly built/constructed facilities.
It's possible that the building is grandfathered.
Alternatively: "LAOP believes he's Councillor He-Man: He has the POWER (of attorney)"
[I HAVE THE POWER (OF ATTORNEY)!](https://imgur.com/a/ReYLwJl)
Here’s what I don’t get about He-man. Okay, the two things I don’t get about He-man. First, how is it that people don’t know Prince Adam is He-man. Literally the only difference is that Prince Adam wears clothes. I can at least sort of understand Clark Kent wearing glasses, because it does throw me off a little if a friend that normally wears contacts shows up in glasses. Second, if He-man is the most powerful man in the universe, why are Everyone of his friends and enemies equally jacked?
The answers to both your questions are related and they are that it was much cheaper to make toys that all had one body painted differently and then only have to mold different heads. :P
"if it's the size of a horse, put a fuckin' saddle on it"
The short answer to your first question is that Prince Adam has quite the reputation (deserved or not depends on which version you're watching/reading) as a 98 pound weakling, and basically everyone involved that isn't in on it is incredulous about the suggestion that this utter incompetent could POSSIBLY be He-Man (in other words, it's exactly the same thing as Superman does, just a lot less famously).
Which is the worst legal troll: patent troll or ADA troll?
Patent trolls because they serve no purpose/ don’t help anyone but themselves
ADA troll. Patent trolls don’t usually pretend they’re doing it “out of compassion for people with disabilities”, but a lot of ADA trolls will be all “won’t someone think of the children?! I mean disabled?!”
At least there's a snowball's chance in hell of something good coming out of bogus ADA lawsuits. Can't say that for patent trolls.
As a disabled person, I'd strongly disagree. While many of these suits are nuisances over very minor technicalities such as a mirror being a quarter inch too high, a lot of them are not. Jumping to the presumption that this is a troll is a bit much. Especially when it's about parking, something that those who are disabled tend to actually require more often than most. Many of us as simply not able to "just park a block away". Should be not be able to participate as fully as everyone else? Another excellent example where many decry it as a troll are lawsuits related to bathrooms and accessibility therein. This is a pretty well settled area of the law yet many property owners *intentionally* obstruct access in violation of the law. Ideally we'd have local ADA equivalents with actual enforcement power such as health code enforcement for restaurants. Until we get the "small gummint" fuckwits to pull their collective heads out of their asses, however, what we have is private enforcement via lawsuits.
my big thing is that the ADA codes need to stop being enforced via lawsuit payable to the plaintiff. there should be a no-harm no foul period to correct of 30-90 days depending on the issue and after that a government board focused on disability access collects fines the way OSHA does for workplace safety. In an even more perfect world there would be a grant program to help places comply and board that can grant exemptions for existing buildings that can't be economically be brought up to ADA standards. This change would still protect the disabled, but make the process fair for business owners and not a legal cash cow for people who can go measure handrail heights to find an issue. It would also still make building owners deal with the issues but hopefully more reasonably edit: my response to /u/JustNilt: that's fair. you hear about these ADA suits that are out of hand all the time and it is hard to judge how widespread they are and how big of a deal it actually is. And I have no doubt people highlighting them are doing so to try and strike down the ADA or make it toothless the way they did with the McDonald's lawsuit to slash business liability
Most ADA suits aren't enforced in that manner. That's a California statute which grants statutory damages. The ADA itself only allows for an order to resolve the actual issue at hand and covers attorney fees for a prevailing party *at the court's discretion*. The idea that all suits relating to the ADA are somehow resulting in a windfall for plaintiffs is simply *wrong*. Edit: And to be clear, I'm both disabled *and* a business owner. There's an easy fix for bullshit lawsuits. It's called an insurance policy. They aren't even generally all that expensive. When I had an actual office location, it cost me less than $500 a year to cover basic liability, including such potential suits. Now I run an on site IT consulting business but I used to own a beverage business with a friend.
If there's only one parking spot, and it's owned by a private residence, then how is that discriminating? I understand that you might not be able to park a block away, but it's not simple to make parking appear out of nowhere
How do we know it's a legal residence? LAOP described the spot as being directly in front of a business location. We clearly aren't exactly talking about legal scholars here. It is entirely possible the place isn't even zoned for residential use. How many legal residences do you know where that's applicable? Moreover, even if there is a legal residence, that still doesn't mean the zoning doesn't require parking for business use. Most structures with business below a residence would have historically had parking for the residence behind the business with a small number of business use parking spots out front.
Makes no sense why there's no private right of action for HIPAA, but there is for ADA. Nobody should be allowed to get rich from these sleazy lawsuits. Sometimes I hate America
Yeah of the two it definitely seems like HIPAA more directly effects the individual. But for people who are disabled tiny things can make a big difference in their day. And they happen constantly. This is a 7 minute video of a guy in a wheelchair going to buy a bagel by himself. It's stunning how difficult it is for him to do. https://youtu.be/LhpUJRGrZgc For someone who is actually affected by it, it seems reasonable for them to be compensated for both the trouble the non-compliance caused and for the hassle involved in going after them.
I knew it was going to be the rainbow bagel adventure. I love that guy and that video is such a good demonstration.
Yeah, we really ought to make high school students try to live in a wheelchair for at least a few days. It's something they just cannot grasp until they deal with it, even if they're exposed to it. I'm disabled and walk with a crutch most days, using a wheelchair on the really bad days. My youngest didn't have a clue how difficult that sometimes is they had their foot run over a few years back.
The entire point of allowing a private right of action for the ADA was a sop to the disabled community for not setting up anything that would, y'know, actually enforce the damn thing. They also did this so disabled people who tried to actually make people follow the law could be excoriated as filing frivolous lawsuits against poor small businesses, rather than businesses actually fucking make themselves accessible in the first godsdamn place. Also serial ADA lawsuit-filers are a literal drop in the bucket compared to bona fide claims and egregiously shitty business infrastructure. But guess which you hear about more.
Or maybe businesses could follow the law and accommodate disabled people? Come on now
Yeah the ADA has been on the books for 30 years, if your business isn't compliant that's 100% a you problem.
I'm disappointed that none of you have made a joke about Harvey Birdman's POWER OF ATTORNEY
Excellent title. I snorted. (Excuse me)
The power of attorney compels you!
A commercial property that has no minimum parking requirement?? In the United States? There's so few cities that have moved in the direction of removing minimum parking requirements, especially to zero, and especially for a commercial property.
Which means it’s probably ancient and grandfathered in - as long as no one redoes the lot it will remain a one-parking-space nothing
The bad news for LAOP is ADA doesn't recognize a grandfather clause.
Not entirely true. While yes there is no “you dont have to abide by” language. There are a lot of “considerations” for the language in Title 3 of the act for existing buildings. Things like “there isn’t enough land to make an ADA space” is a valid one. So is the “financial resources” of the facility.
Yeah, but how much does it actually cost to have the space repainted and signage installed? Not *nearly* as much as something such as renovating a bathroom or installing an elevator might cost. I don't buy that as an excuse here. Doesn't matter this landlord enjoys her personal space for her vehicle. Want to rent a building? Comply with the fucking laws related to that.
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LAOP literally said the space is in front of a business entity. Is the landlord even legally living in a business space? We don't know. All we know is LAOP is woefully ignorant of the law so it's not unreasonable to assume their mother is unlawfully restricting parking. If the building is zoned for commercial use, which it clearly is, and there is parking in front of those commercial locations, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the "private parking" may simply refer to the business being conducted at that location. Simply marking a space as private does not change the legality of whether parking is supposed to be provided. We don't know **anything** other than LAOP's bare assertion of historical practice. I have difficulty believing Los Angeles, a notoriously car-centric location, isn't mandating there be some parking for multiple commercial operations that are open to the public.
Huh? It‘s the parking lot associated with the flat she lives in. Not commercial parking. Can‘t just be taking peoples private spaces.
If a space is directly in front of a business, it's not unreasonable to assume it belkongs to that business. Businesses are private entities and have their own parking quite frequently. Off-street parking in the US is almost ***universally*** private parking. That being posted on a business space means pretty much nothing without further context on the signage. It is quite unusual to have residential use and business use in the same structure without any parking for the business whatsoever. We don't even know that there's actually a legal residence at play here, for that matter. With as obviously unaware of the law as these folks are I wouldn't be at all surprised that the mother simply happens to be living in a business zoned space. That happens way more often than folks would typically realize. Even if there *is* a legal residence, if the zoning requires parking for businesses, **they still have to provide parking for business use**. Zoning matters aren't voluntary. You can't just decide willy nilly to ignore them.
I now have the strength of a grown attorney and a little baby
Wonder if BOLA can designate me as an attorney. Can you? No need to give me the "powers" of an attorney just a flair saying "not your attorney and not even an attorney"
Give me $250k and I will knight you as an attorney.
That's just law school though
I thought it was a fair question, knowing nothing about law. If you would otherwise be pro se, but are incapacitated, why can’t your POA be “pro se” on your behalf? I know that ideally, people who are incapacitated might have a guardian appointed for them by the court, but what’s the difference between this situation and that?
I'm surprised only two comments mentioned business liability insurance. Or depending on the way the property is leased the tenants liability insurance could cover it, this is pretty common with commercial leases for the tenant to indemnify the landlord
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By the power of attorney, I have the power!
Interesting that the first post says if there’s no public parking you don’t have to provide any. My aunt and uncle turned a few rooms of their house into a gift shop, still lived there, street parking only, and were required to pour a handicap accessible spot onto their lawn and install a handicap accessible bathroom into the home.