Disabled New Yorker Has Sued 195 Businesses Since 2010
A double-amputee from Brooklyn has sued nearly 200 businesses in the last seven years for failing to accommodate customers in wheelchairs—which some see as abusing the legal system while others classify as fighting for fellow citizens with disabilities.
Zoltan Hirsch, age 37, has filed 195 claims since 2010, the New York Post reported Saturday. The businesses are reportedly located across New York, ranging from restaurants to bodegas to optometrists.
An attorney who defended a bar against another disabled serial litigant noted that most businesses settle to avoid paying prolonged legal fees.
“Why would somebody pay $100,000 in legal fees to go to trial when they can pay a fraction of that and be done with it?” Dennis Kearney told the Post. He said that he suspects that lawyers and their clients split the attorney’s fees, which can cost $20,000.
However, Kenneth Shiotani of the National Disability Rights Network said that such lawsuits were often the “most effective enforcement mechanism” to ensure that businesses are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected] or on Twitter, @aidenpink.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO