The Complex Theatre Stung in Lawsuit over Hearing Devices

Scam Alert: Abusing Civil Rights Laws

BY STEVEN LEIGH MORRIS

Monica Martin, Managing Director of The Complex Theatre, in the theater’s lobby. She now has hearing aid devices ($60 each), and signs posted ($10 each) in order to comply with ADA

In late March, 2018, The Complex Theatre’s Managing Director, Monica Martin, was notified by the theater’s landlord, Betty Spivak, of a $10,000 lawsuit filed against Spivak on March 23 by plaintiff Christopher Martinez, whom neither Spivak nor Martin had met.  

Martinez, who is hearing impaired, said he attended a performance at The Complex and requested hearing aid devices, as required by the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Martinez alleges that no hearing aid devices were available. Under that statute, persons with disabilities may not be discriminated against, in their ability to enjoy services provided to the general public.

Martin notes that the event to which Martinez had purchased tickets online was a private function, not a public event, and that the theater has no record of Martinez attending that performance or of anybody requesting hearing devices that night.

(Two messages by Stage Raw to Martinez’s lawyer, Morse Mehrban of Encino, went unreturned.)

Martin speculates that somebody had scouted the theater ahead of time and observed that there were no signs posted that hearing-aid devices were available (as required under the ADA), and that was sufficient to trigger the lawsuit.

“There’s no way for somebody like me to fight this,” Martin laments. “$20,000-$30,000 to get a lawyer to fight this.”

Martin says she settled with Martinez for $6,000 – on the advice of three different attorneys she had consulted. The decision to settle was based on the near impossible necessity in this case of proving a negative – that Martinez was not at the theater on the night in question.

She also discovered that Martinez is what’s known as a “serial filer” – working in partnership with Mehrban, and having targeted hundreds of businesses in Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties for ADA violations. Martinez is one of several serial filers who have partnered with Mehrban, who filed over 1,000 ADA cases in 2012 alone.

Under the statute, each “visit” by a victim to a business carries an entitlement payout of $4,000. The potential for exploitation is obvious.

In a 2017 case against a Best Western Motel in Patterson, California, plaintiff Scott Johnson (a disabled lawyer) visited that one Best Western nine times before filing his lawsuit – thereby multiplying by nine his potential payout, while the motel’s managers were unaware of Johnson’s grievances and were given no notice or opportunity to remedy violations before having to defend themselves in court. Among the complaints was “a pull-out counter for disabled clients at the reception desk that was one-tenth of an inch out of compliance,” said the motel manager Dominic Speno.

KPIX TV (CBS’s San Francisco affiliate), which reported on the Patterson case, found more than 2,000 cases filed by Johnson against Northern California business for ADA violations.    

President George H.W. Bush signing the ADA in 1990

Such abuses of the ADA legislation by for-profit litigation mills had become so egregious that in January, 2017, State Assemblyman Devon Mathis (R, Central Valley) introduced legislation (Assembly Bill 150) requiring that local businesses be given notice of ADA violations and the opportunity to remedy them before any court filing be certified. AB 150 never made it out of the of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Meanwhile, in Southern California, Mehrban’s 1,000 ADA complaints in 2012 against Southern California businesses are docketed on legislativedisgrace.com, a website dedicated to legislative abuses of the law, and of legislative indifference to those abuses.   

And these 1,000 filings came after Los Angeles Judge Anna Maria Luna ordered Mehrban, in 2010, to pay $28,582.87 in sanctions in connections with an ADA action he brought against a restaurant without investigating its defenses, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise.

A $60 insurance policy

Meanwhile, it’s probably small comfort to Monica Martin that the plaintiff with whom The Complex Theatre settled, Christopher Martinez, just lost an ADA case against a San Bernardino county California Pizza Kitchen. Mehrban was Martinez’s attorney. Martinez had demanded a hearing-aid in order to listen to the piped-in background music while he was dining.

San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Michael M. Dest ruled that ADA requires a hearing device for the transmission of information, and that piped-in background music is not information essential to the enjoyment of the dining experience, Dest wrote. Therefore, Martinez was not discriminated against by California Pizza Kitchen, under the terms of the ADA.

In any theater however, the performance is the essential information, and the law requires that it be accessible to everyone. It behooves every theater to purchase at least one hearing device ($60 on Amazon) and one sign in the lobby ($10) notifying patrons that the device is available.

Knowing the law and then obeying it are inexpensive ways to keep the ADA sharks at bay.