Americans with disability act. The law passed in 1990 bands accommodation such as Office Buildings and restaurants to make their facilities accessible to people with limited mobility. The subcommittee on Civil Justice is holding a hearing on whether it changes to the law should be made to make it harder to sue for alleged violations of the law. Theyll hear from some members of kcongress. Theyll hear from a Business Owners and Interest Groups as well on a hearing that should get underway shortly. The house is getting underway. The final day of work for the week as they finish up work today on the military Construction Veterans Affairs bill. The senate gaveling in at 9 30 eastern about a half an hour from now and theyll continue work on their combined military construction Veterans Affair bill transportation and housing and that will include a vote this morning on zika funding 1. 1 billion is the proposal. Thats set for the house over on cspan. Constitution of Civil Justice will come to order. Without objection the chair is authorized to recess the committee at any time and welcome to you gentlemen, sorry for being a little late. Weve called this hearing today to examine hr 3765, the education reform act of 2015 and hr 241 access act of 2015, which are two common sense proposals that require plaintiffs to provide defendants with written notice and an opportunity to correct an alleged violation voluntarily before they may file a lawsuit and force a Business Owner to incur legal costs. These bills, which only apply to cases involving public accommodations, would both improve Public Access for disabled individuals and eliminate thousands of predatory lawsuits and damage that that damage the reputation of ada and its over all purpose. When the ada was signed into law by president george h. W. Bush in 1990, the goal was to provide disabled to equal access. In large part the ada has worked. Its been hailed as the most sweeping nondiscrimination legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unfortunately, enterprising plaintiffs and their lawyers have abused the law by filing a flurry of ada lawsuits aimed at churning out billable hours and extracting money from Small Businesses rather than improving access for the disabled as the ada intended. The predatory lawsuits are possible for two chief reasons, first 100 compliance with the ada is very difficult to achieve. Even though good faith efforts, such as bringing or hiring an ada compliance expert, a business can still find themselves subject to a lawsuit for almost any minor or unintentional infraction. According to one ada Compliance Specialists i rarely if ever see circumstances or instances where there isnt an access violation somewhere. I can find something wrong anywhere. This makes compliance a challenge, even for those with the very best of intentions. Second, unlike title two of the Civil Rights Act, the ada does not require require any notice before a lawsuit can be filed. This has led to thousands of lawsuits being filed for issues of relatively minor noncompliance, such as a sign being the wrong color or having the wrong wording. Abuse of the ada has been noted by federal judges in numerous cases throughout the country who have referred the proliferation as a Cottage Industry. These judges have recognized that the explosion of private ada litigation is primarily driven by the ada attorneys provision. They explained the ability to profit has led some law firms to send disabled to individuals to as many businesses as possible in order to have them aggressively seek out all violations of the ada. Then rather than notifying the businesses of the violations and attempting to remedy them, lawsuits are filed. As settlement prior to filing a lawsuit does not entitle plaintiffs counsel to attorneys fees under the ada, there is an incentive. As one judge observed the result is that the means for enforcing the ada attorneys fees have become more important and desirable than the end, which is accessibility for disabled individuals. But the ada was enacted to protect disabled individuals, not to support a litigation mill for entrepreneurial plaintiffs attorneys hunting for ada violations just to file lawsuits. These bills examined today would help eliminate predatory ada lawsuits, increase compliance with the ada by giving businesses the opportunity to fix ada violations instead of dragging them into litigation and improve the reputation of the ada in the eyes of the public and ultimately improve access for disabled individuals. Lawsuits would be reserved for those instances in which offenders are truly unwilling to make appropriate changes. This would also allow legitimate claims to move through the legal system faster. Moreover, requiring notification before filing an ada lawsuit will benefit our company, many Small Businesses have been forced to close because of accessibility lawsuits and others have unnecessarily spent thousands of dollars litigating claims. Small businesses are critical to americas economic recovery and should not be burdened by unnecessary litigation. Its an honor to have congressman ted po whom introduced 3765 and congressman ken cal bert who introduced hr 241 both here to testify about their respective bills and i look forward to your testimony and the testimony of our other witnesses and with that, i would recognize the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, from tennessee for a statement. Thank you, mr. Chair. Colleagues, its good to have yall here. This is not the first time this has been a hearing on this type of issue since 2000 there have been, i think, three times that bills have been filed and hearings on prenotification concerning ada. I have met previously with the folks from the world, hotel world and the Disability Community and tried to get a more better grasp on the issue than come up with some type of reasonable solution. Its difficult to do it, but folks dont really want to change for their kind of positions theyve got, some of them are based in 199 0 and theyll tell me that this is what we did in 1990 and its kind of like, well, thats fine, i wasnt there in 1990, my job is not what happened in 1990. When we look at these cases, private parties are indisspenceble. This is a civil rights law. We have eve got to have private attorney generals and private attorney generals have been so effective in many areas and seeing that our laws are effectively forced, civil rights particular and the ada. Because of that, there was an agreement in 1990 said that it wouldnt be damages to these cases under the ada attorneys fees. So it was a compromise that it was done. I understand that there are some folks that think there are attorneys out there throwing out wide nets and they dont really have a specific target and i think thats wrong. I definitely think thats wrong. But i would suggest to them in coming up with some type of solution, and part of that is in the bill, i think, you have to have specificity in your complaint. You can tighten that up and see if they have not just a boilerplate complaint, although i dont know why rule 11 hasnt worked against those types of complaints in the past, so be it, maybe that will help. If you get into this situation to where you obviously, the title of this hearing is the examining legislation to promote the effective, i know its effective enforcement of the adas accommodations, so its we have to presume, in there, that we want to enforce the adas public accommodations provisions, most of what we have eve got here is not so much for enforcement, limiting enforcement and limiting the way we go. Thats just the position about minor contradiction in the title and what i see is the focus of the legislation. You cant ive never seen a criminal penalty that would be created to anybody who asserts a civil right and this would be a case you could have civil penalty, criminal penalty, if you dont give your notice provision first, and that seems really harsh. And i think some of the folks agree, further than it should go and that but there can be abuses, i think there might be abuses. If there are abuses i want to clean them up. And i did that with this committee and looking at trolls and i know theyre not your pals, but they may be, Marshall County texas deal and its not necessarily a great world out there. Ill suggest if you wand to amend this presuit notifications you ought to have something that also rewards the good guys and clean up the mess after 120 days and everybody said, oh, the good guys come forth and get notice, thats what you want to get, you want the mirrors or the signs or the rails or whatever, taken care of. And its good guys do it, make substantial clients, great. But if they dont, youve got bad actors or if they lolly gag or they dont do substantial, i think youve got to have a stick and if youll change this, youve dot have a stick to see the bad guys get punished somehow, im not quite sure how you do it, its got to be something to the people to give them notice provision in time to be dilatory. But punish them for not being good guys. One of my thoughts was to give some kind of damages, liquidated damages, maybe some amount thats equal to or multiple of what it requires to fix the area or maybe there would be some other kind of damages we can come up with to punish the owners that arent the good guys. Youve dot to have consequences for those people and otherwise theyre just getting the benefit and theyre not being the folks that i know are interested in helping through this action and the folks with the Ada Community, i mean, they want like i want the ada enforced and this is not about attorneys, this is about ada provisions. But the attorneys do bring the cases with the notice provision, they dont have not getting attorneys fees as they bring a party to the attention of Business Community and they clean it up, and the other side gets nothing for it. Theres unlikely theres going to be continued interest in those people, the attorneys to follow through and giving the notice provisions advising the clients and trying to cure problems with the ada. Thats just the way the system works, people have got toave some skin in the game and youre taking the skin in the game out. So thats going to hurt, i think, the enforcement here unless we come up with something on the back end that makes it a little bit sweeter. Im a lawyer and i have a disability. I helped pass the ada state statute in tennessee and im interested in seeing the enforced appropriately and properly, im not interested in seeing businesses get these wide nets thrown and sub to folks looking out more for attorneys fees or disabilities community. I think thats a disservice both to the association and members of the bar and to people with disabilities, so i hope we have a fruitful discussion. And hope we can come up with a solution. I think its a good ideas here, but i dont think the solution is here and i think we need to look at some kind of a stick to make sure the bad guys get slapped so the good guys can deal with a notice. That i yield back the balance of my time. And thats just the way it is. I think the gentleman and i will now yield to Ranking Committee for full committee. Thank you, chairman franks. And top of the morning to you and our distinguished witnesses and the guests that have joined us this morning. The three bills that are subject of todays hearing would institute a notice and cure requirement under title three of the american abdomnd disabiliti act of 1990. Specifically these measures will prohibit a lawsuit from being commenced unless the plaintiff first gave the Business Owner specific notice of an alleged violation an opportunity to fix toward remedying the violation. Let me begin by stating what i said previously when similar proposals were considered by our committee in the year 2000 and, again, in the year 2012. I am adamantly opposed to any effort to weaken the ability of individuals to enforce their rights under title iiis public accommodations provisions. And here is why, first, the notice and cure requirement will generate numerous litigation traps for the unweary and ultimately dissuade many individuals from pursuing their legitimate claims. For example, two of these bills would require a complainant that provide specific notice of the allege violation before he or she may file suit. But they failed to divine what constitutes specific notice nor do they define what is substantial progress toward compliance. As a result, courts will have to struggle to determine what these inherently vague terms mean. There by, creating an open invitation for well financed business interest to engage in endless litigation, possibly, that would drain the typically limited resources of a plaintiff. The measures would under mine a key enforcement mechanism of american with disabilities act and other civil rights laws. The credible threat of a lawsuit is a powerful inducement to businesses to proactively take care to comply with the acts requirements. Yet a presuit notification requirement would create a disincentive to engage in voluntary compliance as many businesses would simply wait until receiving a demand letter before complying with the law and this requirement also would discourage attorneys from representing individuals with claims under title iii because Attorney Fees may only be recovered if litigation ensues. Plus an individual with a title iii claim would not be entitled to recover such fees if the extent of the attorneys representation was limited to drafting the demand letter presuit notification will make it more difficult for disabled persons with valid title iii claims to obtain legal representation to enforce compliance. Finally, title iii by its terms is already designed to make kplans relatively easy for Business Compliance relatively easy for businesses. So i am pleased to join the hearing and i yaeld back aield time remaining. Thank you, mr. Chairman. And i thank the gentlemen and without objection other members Opening Statements will be made part of the record. Before i introduce the witnesses i would like to submit two statements for the record. The first is letter for National Theater owner and support of hr 3765 second is Coalition Letter also in support of 3765 without objection these statements will be entered into the record. So let me now introduce our witnesses, we have two very distinguished panels today. And that will be begin by introducing the first panel of witnesses. Our first witness is representative ted po. Mr. Po represents texas Second District and is a member of the judiciary and Foreign Affairs committee. Glad to see you, sir. And our second witness is representative ken calbert. He represents californias 42nd district and member of the house of appropriations committee. Glad youre here. I will now recognize our first witness, congressmen ted po and if youll turn that microphone on. Yes, sir. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Thank you for allowing me to be here and also i would like to thank congressman calbert for his work on this issue for a good number of years. As the chairman has pointed out or has pointed out in the past, im a former judge, prosecutor, lawyer, been a legal professional for almost 40 years. And this is a situation where in this particular hearing that were having deals with, i think, abuse of a good law. I believe strongly the ada. And it needs to be always enforced. And the goal of the legislation is to make sure that when there is a violation anywhere across the fruited plain, that the violation gets fixed so that theres accommodation for the citizen to get into that business. But the legislation hopes to prevent what is occurring that there are lawsuits being filed not to get accommodation for the citizen, but to get money so that people settle and the alleged violation may or may not ever be addressed. And what happens is that lawyers are making a lot of money off of this, what i think, are frivolous lawsuits, to the detriment of the person who is actually being prohibited of going in to some businesses because the goal is not being reached to allow accommodation, what is happening is lawyers are filing lawsuits, businesses settle rather than go to court and lawyer gets we dont know, how much of that money. So in the last ten years, there have been these frivolous lawsuits have been filed under public accommodation section of the ada, some of these lawsuits are, in my opinion, shakedowns for businesses and theyre using the ada as a basis to obtain quick settlements, rather than go to court. For example, some of these law firms and there are specific law firms in different parts of the country that do this, theyll file notice or get a letter stating that there is not a proper pool lift in a particular motel or hotel. And many of these some of these hotels dont even have a pool or these motels, but the businesses settle rather than go to court because its the cost of litigation. And that is the motivation of these lawsuits. Were talking about settlements of around 5,000 apiece, all from the same individuals, organizations that are making many of these claims is going from business to business. Its the Business Model thats been working in the last ten years where 10,000 of these lawsuits have been filed in florida a plaintiff named howard kohen has filed 529 of these lawsuits. California martin boegle filed 124. Pennsylvania christopher melow has filed 21 of these lawsuits. In some cases like howard cohen he sued the hotel despite the fact that he was never a registered guest at the hotel. Sounds somewhat suspicious. The ada expert who actually wrote part of the ada bill helped the hotel fight in this particular case. He stated that he was essentially operating a continuing criminal enterprise that boils down to extortion that does not get people into these motels. It allows for, as he said, shakedowns for money to be collected by these, as i think they are, ada trolls. And some of the letters and notices are so nebulous that the person receiving the notice doesnt even know what the violation was. Weve got a Realtor Com