Who lives badly in New York: the most ridiculous complaints of citizens

The city of New York is buried in meaningless and costly lawsuits. Complaints come in everything: from food packaging and advertising to the design of retailers' websites. So the judicial system of the city has become one of the worst places in the country for civil justice.

Фото: Depositphotos

The American Tort Reform Foundation has placed New York in the dubious third place on the annual list with the eloquent title Judicial Gate to Hell, where claimants ’lawyers sometimes try to get some kind of justice from the pliable judges and inactive lawmakers, writes New York Post.

ATRF President Tiger Joyce said that many of the cases in the report of the organization concerned "a number of areas of the trial that turned out to be situations that did not cause any particular type of injury to the plaintiff."

“The theory of the case is that people are harmed in certain ways that are not demonstrated,” he says. “This new trend is something that clearly worries us.”

The only places that are considered worse than New York when it comes to frivolous lawsuits are not two cities, but two states: the first is California, and the second is Florida.

The report found that the value of legal settlements in the US in 2016 was $429 billion - 2,3% of the country's gross domestic product.

The ATRF report provides an 2017 study of the year in which 22% of all strange food lawsuits across the country were filed in New York, mainly based on allegations that food packages were not filled, or that products do not comply with the advertising statement that they are “natural”.

In one case, a federal judge in Manhattan dismissed a class action claiming that consumers were deceived by the purchase of Junior Mints, because the candy was "packed in a box that contained air for more than a quarter."

Judge Naomi Rice Bachwald said that permission to continue the case under the lawsuit "will fix in the law an awkward state of mathematical illiteracy."

The report also deals with Arike Matatovewho sued Manhattan's 50 businesses because they didn't have wheelchair access ramps and he allegedly couldn't get into buildings and rooms. It turned out that he is quite able to move on his feet.

Last year, a ruling by two federal judges that argued that all online stores should make websites compatible with screen reading software by visually impaired people literally opened gateways for lawsuits against hundreds of stores, the report says. According to the report, in accordance with these regulations, companies have to spend up to 37 000 dollars to upgrade their sites.

Last year, lawyer Derrick Anderson, a blind rapper from Queens, filed 25 lawsuits on his behalf in accordance with the provisions of these regulations. One of the defendants, the Paper Factory Hotel in Long Island, in court documents, called the Anderson case an attempt to "force a fork" for the defendants.

The ATRF report also criticizes state lawmakers for failing to reform a law in New York that imposes "absolute" liability on contractors and owners if a worker is injured in a fall—even if it is the result of the worker's negligence.

Greg Birila, state director of the National Federation of Independent Enterprises, which is a member of the ATRF, says frivolous lawsuits "increase the cost of doing business."

The Institute for Legal Reform reported that litigation costs raise the prices of goods and services purchased by the average New York household by $6600 a year, the highest in the country.

Lawyer Jeffrey Gottlieb, who is noted in the report as a specialist in the case of web sites, noted that the Americans with Disabilities Act "was the law for 27 years."

“There is no excuse for these companies' sites not to provide accessibility for people with disabilities,” he says.

These lawyers have a special place in the new report of the American Tort Reform Foundation:

• Jeffrey Gottlieb & Associates, Manhattan: Filed at least 26 lawsuits in less than two months over websites without software for reading visually impaired people.
• Lee Litigation Group, Manhattan: filed lawsuits for partially empty Junior Mints candy bags.
• Joseph Mizrahi, Brooklyn: filed more 500 lawsuits against sites in federal courts in Manhattan and Brooklyn in 2018.
• Weitz & Luxenburg, Manhattan: treated 52% of all asbestos-related injuries in New York City, up from 47% last year.
• McSweeney / Langevin, Minneapolis: was convicted on charges of persuading women to remove gluteal implants and then suing their manufacturers.

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