Overlawyered

There needs to be more for this story to make sense. ADA compliance is not retroactively required.

Whatever building she was going to passed the ADA requirement at the time of construction. Businesses are loathe to remodel buildings because of ADA compliance [1]. Therefore, the negotiations that your girlfriend was engaging in suggest that these were not negotiations, but trying to accommodate her issues. At which time, your girlfriend can take her business elsewhere or try to work within the parameters of the buildings ADA requirements at the time of construction.

Alternatively, you can file a frivolous lawsuit to try and force a business to fix the issue.

A good defense attorney would bring forward past activism to prove that the plaintiff's background suggests a history of causing issues for businesses. Who knows, this may show that she is one of the disability filers who just does it over [2] and over in what some claim are legalized extortion [3]. The defense is merely trying to show that she may be associated with such groups, seek counsel from these groups, and other items. That being said, do not give those passwords unless they get a subpoena, because they do not need it unless the judge agrees.

All this being said, I do agree with you on the ADA compliance. I walk through stores and bring up with employees that certain areas are not ADA accessible, tight walkways or weird floor movements, I AM LOOKING AT YOU FORMER HOLLISTER LAYOUT. The problem for actual…

Dumping water in the middle of a street in freezing weather is different than your first post in which in near freezing weather, soapy water ran out into the street due to floor cleaning. Regardless, I can't subscribe to that line of thinking in either instance.

Every normal person is capable of assessing their environment and plotting a safe course through it. If you tripped over a curb, it wouldn't be the person that put the curb there's fault. You can't expect someone else to make your world safe for you.
Your line of thinking is how a thief can sue when he gets injured breaking into your house -- you failed to make it safe for him [1][2]

Parents are responsible for the safety of their children, not random shop owners.

IANAL but I believe the legal standard that would be applied is reasonableness. Is it reasonable for a person, traversing a highly-inclined street, in freezing weather, to expect the street not to contain any frozen patches of water.

My stance is known -- I'm responsible for my and my children's safety, but I concede that your line of reason seems to be prevalent in society today.

There is a line of reasonableness that could be cross in which I would blame the other party. Ice on a street in freezing weather could be expected. A land mine would not be expected. Nor would a chunk of ice falling from an airplane. Those are situations in which I could reasonably find fault with another party.

[1]…

It seems the 'burglar sues for hurting themselves' theme is a popular one. I've heard it a few times from various friends and sources. As far as I can tell it tends to be miss-represented, or non-existent.

One of the common ones is the 'fell through a skylight' version, which is apparently sort-of true according to this:
http://overlawyered.com/2006/09/the-burglar-and-the-skylight-another-debunking-that-isnt/

In this case it was vs a school, and the case was settled before it was decided, which is as much a side-effect of the structure of our legal system as anything.

While I'm sure some questionable verdicts have caused unfair rewards in cases such as this, I have to imagine that it is very rare, or that the cases are actually much more complex than they appear on the surface.

It reminds me of people who laugh at the 'stupidity' of McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit ("well duh coffee is hot!"), where the more detailed information shows the reasonableness of the case (McDonald's coffee was dangerously, excessively hot, the plaintiff was in the hospital for eight days for third degree burns etc).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaurants

I feel this is an interesting flavor of urban myth.

Not only that, but many of them probably tweak their websites after their proposals reveal things they didn't want revealed.

Consider this episode: Obama (briefly) proposed requiring people to perform unpaid labor [1]. When the blogosphere caught on, the language was immediately changed to obscure the proposal ("set a goal", not "required").

This link includes a screenshot before, and the full text after: http://overlawyered.com/2008/11/community-service-yep-mandatory/

Perpetually can help the world learn about stuff like this.

[1] Not interested in discussing the actual policy - only the nature of the website tweaking is relevant for this conversation. This thread is about perpetually.com.

[edit: as suggested by jamesaguilar, tweaked language to focus on the part relevant to this discussion, rather than language used back in 2008. I put the footnote in because the last time I pointed out this example, people accused me of comparing Obama to Stalin.]

The current limit is $10,000 (but practically less in an attempt to nail those who engage in "structuring" transactions to avoid the $10k limit). That's a car or any other number of things in reach of normal not-considered-wealthy people. [0] is interesting reading, but honestly just searching for "structuring" leads to several cases like [1] where the government seized $107,000 from a convenience store owner due to the deposits from that business being under the reporting threshold.

I don't know how you get under a $600 threshold, but exposing orders of magnitude more people to this policy is likely to do far more damage than to result in any good. This is already not just about wealthy people.

[0] https://www.overlawyered.com/2012/04/structuring-who-can-get-away-with-it-and-who-cant/

[1] https://reason.com/2015/05/01/irs-steals-107000-from-convenience-store/

The submitted website doesn't do a good job of letting me know what's going on. Subjectively, the tone is a bit of a turn off for me.

Here's some more information about what's happening to them. http://overlawyered.com/2013/08/cpsc-sues-defiant-ceo-individually-buckyball-case/

The submitted article has a gently misleading FAQ = "HOW MANY KNOWN INCIDENTS ARE THERE OF SWALLOWING OF BUCKYCUBES®?
0." - they don't mention the numbers of people who swallowed Buckyballs.

Here's an old press release from CPSC http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Newsroom/News-Releases/2012/CPSC-Sues-Maxfield--Oberton-Over-Hazardous-Buckyballs-and-Buckycube-Desk-Toys-Action-prompted-by-ongoing-harm-to-children-from-ingested-magnets-/