Prenda's Paul Hansmeier Has Been Busy Suing More Companies Over Questionable Website ADA Claims

from the count-'em dept

Earlier this week, we noted that Team Prenda’s Paul Hansmeier appeared to be filing questionable lawsuits, claiming Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) violations, including over websites. We pointed out that this had the hallmarks of Hansmeier’s historical trolling cases, including copyright trolling and settlement opposition: file nuisance cases that appear designed to encourage those sued to just pay up to settle. We pointed out that while there were just two of these ADA cases, since we only found out about the most recent one because it had been removed to federal court, we wondered if there were more lurking in Minnesota state court.

The answer is: yes, absolutely. And it didn’t take long. Three more such cases have been removed to federal court, and they’re all quite similar. In each case, Hansmeier claims that the websites violate the ADA by not being “accessible” to people with disabilities. In each case, the claims are highly questionable, as can be seen in the two responses that have been filed already (all embedded below). The earlier story involved a dentist office’s website. The latest ones are a doctor’s office, a bank, and a chiropractor. Basically small business websites. I expect that we’ll be seeing many more of these as well. You’d think Hansmeier would be busy trying to defend all of the cases he’s been losing where he owes attorneys’ fees for his copyright trolling efforts, but apparently he just can’t stop filing questionable lawsuits.









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Companies: class action justice, prenda, prenda law

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Comments on “Prenda's Paul Hansmeier Has Been Busy Suing More Companies Over Questionable Website ADA Claims”

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39 Comments
sophisticatedjanedoe (profile) says:

You’d think Hansmeier would be busy trying to defend all of the cases he’s been losing where he owes attorneys’ fees for his copyright trolling efforts, but apparently he just can’t stop filing questionable lawsuits.

I was wondering too: whether he delusionally continues to believe in his superior intellect and its ability to make easy money, or he finally started thinking about raising some funds for the inevitable criminal defense.

88YearOldDefender (profile) says:

Re: Re:

Downstream, I’d be willing to bet that Toonkel will be part of the Hansmeier money machine. Don’t know her, but given what she does for a living, it would seem logical that she’d be the one to give affidavits, expert testimony, you name it.

Someone should check to see if Million has sued anyone in the past with another lawyer. Already with so many cases being filed all at the same time, it does raise an eyebrow.

Anon E. Mous (profile) says:

Obviously Hansmeier is addicted to making the easy money, He isn’t interesting in doing what other lawyers do which is actually use your practice and help people in the process.

Hansmeier like Steele is motivated by greed and easy money. This was the case with the AF Holdings cases and with the class action objection cases and now with these DA cases (and I use the word cases as an example, feel free to use the word shakedown or extort if you so choose)

Paul obviously has learned nothing from the various rulings against him and Steele and Prenda and the various sanctions that are coming his way.

Further to that you have the multiple bar discipline referrals coming as of yet. Could this be a desperate last gasp to grab as much cash now while he still has a bar# to practice with, maybe so.

I imagine Paul knows the clock is ticking before those footsteps in the night that wake him out of his sleep and sends him racing to the window to see if it is the FBI coming to collect him for RICO and tax evasion seem much too real, and one day they will be.

Paul is making the desperate grab for cash before Duffy flips like Gibbs did, and that Mark Lutz would love to do if it wasn’t for Steele holding his feet to the fire.

The revenue form Porn litigation is dead in the water, any court that even hears the mere mention of Paul Hansmeier, John Steele or Paul Duffy and Prenda Law come up in a case is going to see off reminders of Judge Wright’s ruling and the Judge throwing some serious side eye towards any litigation initiated by any of those three.

We all know Paul and John will never return to practice like a normal would after set backs like these, they are too addicted to getting easy cash.

Hansmeier and Steele will live on and so will their legacy as famous porn trollers in ethics classes around the U.S. as an example of how to know when you have crossed that line in your obligations to your oath as an officer of the court and your profession.

They are really nothing more than a punch line that other Lawyers use around the water cooler. I am sure lawyers they use to see in the courthouse halls used to say hello before the Prenda saga come to light.

Now I am sure that when other Lawyers see Paul or John coming down the hall, they do the fake phone call trick or pretened to read a paper in their hand or fake a coughing fit till they are by so they can quickly get away so as to not be caught associating with those lawyers.

Anon E. Mous (profile) says:

Let me guess, some of these people Hansmeier is suing on behalf of groomed his dog, or cleaned his house or office, or were maybe a childhood neighbor.

I would say it was one of his invisible friends from childhood, but I doubt that even his invisible friends would want to be connected to Hansmeier and all the baggage he has with him after the Prenda saga.

That Anonymous Coward (profile) says:

Re: Re:

he is filing these actions in state court, so need the MN bar to pull his card.

Sadly the wheels of justice do move slower for those who are a part of the machine, mainly because they know all of the tricks to slow down the process if anyone makes a misstep.

With the recent referral to the MN AG and Bar, he might lose the ability to try and file these cases under the radar in state courts.

Speaking of which, WTF don’t we have a PACER style system for all State courts?

That One Guy (profile) says:

You’d think Hansmeier would be busy trying to defend all of the cases he’s been losing where he owes attorneys’ fees for his copyright trolling efforts, but apparently he just can’t stop filing questionable lawsuits.

I can’t help but wonder if the reason he’s going around with so many shakedown lawsuits is to have a source of income he can draw from for the fines and fees from the other cases he’s involved in, a stash of cash that won’t require him to draw from Prenda’s offshore accounts, as I’m sure there are more than a few individuals of federal persuasion that would quite love to see where he’s keeping his funds.

Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re:

Unfortunately for him, his extremely limited skill set means that the only job he can get is as a scumbag. I don’t see this business venture being any more successful. Then again, the lucrative amounts of money juggled around thanks to copyright law letting it be so probably have more to do with it.

That One Guy (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:

Unfortunately, with how the system is set up currently, such actions tend to be very profitable, with almost no risk to the ones filing, or threatening to file, the lawsuits.

Going to court is expensive, not to mention it requires taking time off that a person might not have to spare from a job, hiring a lawyer, dealing with all the legal crap… the whole idea behind nuisance suits filed by parasites like him is to make it just cheap enough for the target/victim to ‘settle’, paying to make the problem go away basically, but not expensive enough that it’s worth fighting, and this particular scumbag has more than enough practice picking just the right amount to hit the sweet spot between the two, given he’s been doing so for years now.

JustMe (profile) says:

Small town much?

Is downtown Minneapolis a pretty small place? In the HealthEast case I noticed that Paul (scum of the earth) Hans-looser is at 100 South Fifth Street while the dashing and noble Mark R. Whitmore is at 33 South Sixth Street. The fact that their offices are 443 feet apart just makes me laugh.

https://www.google.com/maps/preview#!data=!4m18!3m17!1m1!1s33+6th+Street+Southeast%2C+Minneapolis%2C+MN!1m5!1s100+SE+5th+St%2C+Minneapolis%2C+MN+55414!2s0x52b32d79d3089379%3A0xf730e47db105b3e5!3m2!3d44.9887402!4d-93.2532831!3m8!1m3!1d3130!2d-93.2532786!3d44.9887458!3m2!1i1256!2i852!4f13.1&fid=0

Steve (profile) says:

Actually a really good lawsuit

Say what you like about Prenda Law and the issues there, but the issue of non-accessible websites is a really serious one. Millions of people around the world are prevented from accessing websites that the rest of us take for granted because they fail to follow the basic guidance as referenced in these lawsuits – using actual text not pictures of text, providing alt-text for images, ensuring that text boxes are labeled correctly, not using visual-only CAPCHAS, etc.

This is not rocket science and does not need to impact the look or operation of your website in any way. It just means that all of your potential customers or potential users of the service provided by your website can actually use it.

Bravo for Mr. Hansmeier for going after people who willfully discriminate against the disabled.

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