Federal Judge Went Too Far in Lawsuits, a Court Says Something about the cases seemed wrong. The lawsuits, scores of them, accused businesses of failing to provide proper access for disabled customers. Defendants who lost had to pay the plaintiff’s legal fees, and they piled up in case after case. Last year, a federal judge in Brooklyn, citing “troubling litigation tactics,” denied legal fees, based in part on an unusual step by his chambers. His staff members investigated the matter outside the courtroom. Now a federal appeals court is saying he went too far. The judge, Sterling Johnson Jr., sent staff members to visit several Brooklyn businesses that were sued by Mike Costello, a paraplegic man, and found that most if not all were never made more accessible to disabled people. The judge used the observation as part of a strident ruling last year denying more than $15,000 in legal fees to Mr. Costello’s lawyers, Ben-Zion Bradley Weitz and Adam Shore, finding that their lawsuits did nothing to ensure that Mr. Costello or any other disabled person had better access to the businesses. But this week the appellate court reversed Judge Johnson’s decision and took the rare move of ordering that the case be assigned to a different judge. The [...] newsnyork/federal-judge-went-too-far-in-lawsuits-a-court-says/
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 05:15:28 +0000
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