ATLANTA (Legal Newsline) – A Florida federal judge who undertook his own investigation of a serial lawsuit-filer and his attorney and penalized them for filing frivolous civil rights claims on behalf of the hearing-impaired was right to do so, an appeals court has ruled.
An Aug. 17 decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit gave a stamp of approval to Judge Paul Huck, who in 2019 ordered a man who had filed 26 lawsuits against gas stations without exhausting all pre-litigation remedies to pay $6,000 to a disability advocacy group and perform 150 hours of community service.
Alexander Johnson’s stack of lawsuits alleged the videos that played at gas pumps at the stations violated the ADA because they didn’t feature closed captioning for the hearing-impaired. The cases did not result in correction of that issue but instead provided settlement funds that he and his lawyer, Scott Dinin, split 50-50.
Dinin was hit with more severe penalties than his client – a $59,900 payment to the advocacy group, a filing of Huck’s order in his ADA cases and a report of his behavior sent to the Florida Bar. He was ultimately suspended for 18 months.
Dinin didn’t appeal those sanctions, only the dismissal of the ADA claims on their merits. The court found he lacked standing to challenge that because the lawsuits were technically brought by the plaintiff – Johnson.
Huck’s 2019 order noted that plaintiffs lawyers can seek reasonable fees for advancing the rights of the disabled in ADA cases.
“This is not one of those cases,” Huck wrote. “This case reveals an illicit joint enterprise between (Johnson and Dinin) to dishonestly line their pockets with attorney’s fees from hapless defendants under the sanctimonious guise of serving the interests of the disabled community.”
Johnson and Dinin targeted gas stations in Miami-Dade and Broward counties. The two were old pros at ADA litigation who had teamed for 131 cases as of Huck’s 2019 ruling.
In addition to the ADA, they brought suit against gas stations under the Florida Civil Rights Act but did not comply with pre-filing requirements in that law that forced them to exhaust other administrative remedies before heading to the courthouse.
Huck also found that Dinin inflated his hours in cases both against gas stations and hotels. Though his complaints were boilerplate, he still billed In each case for the time it took to draft the original, then sometimes used his billing rate for work performed by paralegals, the 11th Circuit's decision states.
In one case against Rochni Investments LLC, Dinin billed 1.7 hours to draft the amended complaint. The only change was the name of the defendant to Roshni Investments Group, Inc.
In one of the gas station cases, he billed 1.5 hours to fix a typographical error and reword two sentences.
Most ADA defendants choose a quick payoff to plaintiffs attorneys rather than paying their own legal fees to fight claims.
“Notably, the majority of the settlement agreements from the gas pump cases provided no remedial relief whatsoever,” the 11th Circuit ruled. “Instead, they resulted only in payment of Mr. Johnson’s legal fees and costs along with a dismissal with prejudice.
“And in other settlements the remedial relief (in addition to costs and fees) was not actually providing closed captioning to the videos, but simply turning off the videos and the gas pumps entirely.”
The 50-50 split of fees between lawyer and client constituted a “serious ethical transgression” in violation of Florida Bar rules, the 11th Circuit said.
Proof that the two were driven by the pursuit of money – not access – came in an email when they discussed taking out language in one case that noted the defendant had refused to turn off the videos entirely, Huck ruled.
They decided not to include that statement because it could give other defendants the idea to turn off their videos to avoid litigation. The email said they did not want to “sabotage” their strategy.
Dinin won the first trial in ADA litigation over the accessibility of websites for the visually impaired when a Florida federal judge found Winn-Dixie's site presented hurdles that the blind could not overcome. Though he was awarded around $100,000 for his work on the case, the 11th Circuit overturned the ruling earlier this year.