On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 5:00 PM Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Size of a company makes no difference here because Amazon has far more > resources available to insure everyone can shop equally. > come to think of it, could not Domino's argue they have too few resources > to accommodate? They would be wrong of course, simplification is less > expensive. But I wonder if that might be their argument? Domino's petition to the Supreme Court is here. <https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-1539/102950/20190613153319483_DominosPetition.pdf> (PDF). It has three main arguments: [i] the courts of appeals are badly split on the governing law; [ii] Congress has never ruled that Title III applies to web sites and mobile apps; [iii] in any event, there are no government-established standards to follow and therefore litigation can not be ended by attempting to make sites and apps accessible. On their first point, they are completely accurate and the Supreme Court is likely to take the case to resolve the split among the appeals courts. On their second point, this is the issue involved in the split among the courts of appeals. On their third point, it's a very strong argument. On the effect of lawsuits, I'll speak as a retired attorney who specialized in toilet training multinational corporations from discharging poisons into our nation's waterways. Lawsuits can be highly effective. Obviously, if a court issues an injunction requiring that a company do or refrain from doing something, the company has no practical choice but to comply. In cases that award damages, you need to understand a bit about how large companies react to being sued for damages. You must also understand that no one is in charge of a corporation. All officers have closely-defined responsibilities and do not dare invade someone else's area of responsibility for fear of starting a turf war. When the company is sued, just about everyone wants nothing to do with the issue since it could lead to loss of power and responsibility. The buck gets passed to the company's office of general counsel, who will arrange for outside counsel to represent the company in the lawsuit. The general counsel will also prepare a legal opinion on the legality of what happened. No CEO will take relevant action before reviewing the general counsel's opinion, and to take any action deemed unlawful by the general counsel is suicidal for the CEO should a second lawsuit be filed by someone else. The CEO would be left without even a fig leaf to protect himself from the board of directors' oversight. For smaller companies that do not self-insure, their legal defense is provided by their insurance company. The insurance company also looks at the company behavior that produced the claim for damages and unless it is squeaky clean, the company will be looking at an additional rider on their insurance policy come time for renewal that denies coverage should there be a reoccurrence of the same misbehavior. In my opinion, what isn't fair about all of this is the sheer expense of obtaining justice through our court system. It is a system designed for rich people. That means that lawyers have to turn down many meritorious cases simply because they are not sure winners, or the amount of damages the client is eligible for isn't enough to pay the legal fees, or ... Best regards, Paul E. Merrell, J.D. -- [Notice not included in the above original message: The U.S. National Security Agency neither confirms nor denies that it intercepted this message.] ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list