by Kevin Cody
Eleven Hermosa Beach business owners and managers sat around the fire pit in the Tiki Kai patio on a hot afternoon in January to discuss an onslaught of costly lawsuits filed against them.
The suits sought $10,000 to $20,000 in damages for violations of the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act and the California Unruh Civil Rights Act.
The suits occur with such frequency the business owners consider them as “a cost of doing business.” And as “extortion.”
Spyder Surf co-owners Dennis Jarvis and Dickie O’Reilly, who organized the meeting at the Pier Plaza restaurant, said Spyder Surf has been served with three ADA lawsuits within the past 24 months.
The first suit alleged the ADA parking sign at Spyder’s Pacific Coast Highway store was mounted too high. The next two alleged the aisles in their Pier Avenue, and Manhattan Avenue stores were too narrow for wheelchairs.
“My employees don’t even remember a wheelchair customer coming into the store on the dates of the aisle suits. The attorneys in these suits wait months before filing, knowing security camera video gets overwritten,” Jarvis said.
Cal Sushi and Teriyaki, in the Pavilions Shopping Center, is being sued for inadequate space “under the [restroom] sink,” and inadequate “toe space” under their outdoor tables. The suit asks for $21,000, Robert Yun said at the Tiki Kai meeting. His 65-year-old mother, Hyang “Monica” Yoo, owns the restaurant.
The plaintiff in both the Cal Sushi and Spyder Surf suits was wheelchair-bound, quadriplegic Brian Whitaker. As Yun spoke, he rifled through a 100-plus page print out of the more than 800 ADA lawsuits Whitaker has filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court since 2000.
Fritto Misto restaurant on Pier Avenue was sued because its cashier counter’s height exceeded the ADA height maximum, owner Gabby Fie said at the meeting. A handyman fixed the problem in three hours, she said. She paid $18,000 to settle.
New wave of ADA website suits
Good Stuff business manager Antoinette Gill said her El Segundo restaurant was sued in 2023, and again in 2025, not for restaurant accessibility, but for website accessibility. Courts have expanded the definition of accessible “locations” under the ADA Act to include websites.
After the 2023 ADA suit, filed by a blind person, Goodstuff owner Cris Bennett hired the website compliance company AccessiBe to make his websites accessible to blind people. AccessiBE was founded in 2018 “to help small businesses meet accessibility laws,” according to its website.
One year later, the El Segundo Goodstuff was sued again for its website allegedly being inaccessible to a blind plaintiff. On the advice of his attorney, Bennett paid settlement demands in both cases, totaling over $20,000. Contesting the suits would have cost more in attorney fees than settling, Bennett said.
Baja Sharkeez, and Hermosa Brewing Co. have also been sued because their websites were allegedly not ADA compliant.
Like Goodstuff, Sharkeez was sued twice for its website, owner Greg Newman said.
“We paid $6,000 to settle the first suit, and considered that a win. But after we thought we fixed the site, we were sued again and paid $25,000 to settle,” Newman said.
Newman and Hermosa Brewing owner Dave Davis said they have dumb-downed their websites in hopes of deterring future ADA suits.
A South Bay attorney who defends small businesses against predatory ADA lawsuits said almost all of the nearly 50 recent ADA lawsuits defendants he has defended have involved website compliance. All of his clients settled to avoid court costs, he said.
“These lawsuits are like quicksand. The more you fight the worse it gets. You pay your attorney fees and the plaintiff’s if you lose,” the attorney said.
The attorney asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation against his clients.
ADA lawsuit clusters
Four businesses on a two block stretch of Aviation Boulevard in Hermosa have been served with ADA suits in recent years. La Paz #2, a small, mostly take-out Mexican restaurant owned for 30 years by Pilar and Fernando Valerio paid $14,000 last year to settle an ADA suit. The suit alleged their checkout counter was too high and their three tables too low for wheelchairs. Last month, the Valerios were sued again for a sidewalk planter and a bump in their doorway that allegedly impedes wheelchair access and requires a ramp. The elevation difference between the sidewalk and doorway is less than an inch.
An owner of a Pier Avenue business who has not been sued, said at the Tiki Kai meeting, she locks her entry door out of “Fear of the disability con,” the title of an academic paper by Fordham University Law Professor Doron Dorfman. The paper notes that predatory ADA lawsuits cast a conman shadow over all of the handicap community.
All but two of the dozen Hermosa business owners interviewed for this article made settlement payments, even though many felt they would have prevailed at trial. Most signed a non disclosure agreement (NDA), which prohibits them from disclosing settlement amounts. An attorney familiar with the Hermosa cases said the local settlement range is typically $6,000 to $20,000.
“The ADA plaintiffs’ attorneys calculate a settlement amount that is less than it will cost me to defend against the suit. So, I swallow my pride and pay it,” said a longtime Hermosa business owner who asked not to be identified because “I’ve already been sued up the ying yang.”
The businesses paid the settlements out of pocket. Liability insurance does not cover ADA lawsuits, according to local insurance agent Dan Post, of Post Insurance.
Predatory ADA lawsuits against Beach City businesses aren’t new. An April 1998 Easy Reader story, titled “Handi-Cash,” reported Coast Liquor, International Wine and Cigars, Chong’s Chinese, Mongolian Bar-B-Que, Becker Surf, and Sion Mexican were all sued within months of each other by the same serial plaintiff using the same law firm.
“We’re not against handicapped people. We want their business. And we’re not against complying with ADA requirements. But we should be given time to fix the problems before being fined,” Jarvis said.
Whose protecting whom
The Federal Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990. It requires businesses to provide equal access to goods and services to people with disabilities.
Under federal ADA law, businesses that are successfully sued for failing to accommodate the disabled are given time to “cure and correct” the accessibility problems. Federal ADA law does not grant plaintiffs financial compensation if they prevail, though it does award attorney fees. Most states adhere to the Federal “cure or correct” guidelines, and deny damages if ADA violations are corrected.
But in California, under the 1959 Unruh Civil Rights Act, successful ADA lawsuit plaintiffs are entitled to $4,000 per ADA violation, plus attorneys fees. There is no “cure or correct” safe harbor under California law.
Last year, a bill designed to stop predatory ADA lawsuits, SB 84, was approved by a 32 to 4 vote in the State Senate. If passed into law, the bill would have allowed businesses with 50 or fewer employees 120 days to correct ADA violations. No damages or attorney fees would be awarded if the corrections were made.
Despite bipartisan support in the State Senate, when SB 84 went to the Assembly, Assemblymember Ash Kalra (D-San Jose) exercised his power as chair of the Judiciary Committee to let the bill “die in committee.” As a result, the Assembly never voted on the bill, and it did not become law.
Kalra defended killing the bill by telling Courthouse News Service, “I am deeply disappointed that the [SB 84] author and coauthors are unwilling to come to the table with me and our Assembly Judiciary Committee members on a more balanced right-to-cure bill for ADA violations.”
SB 84 co-author Senator Roger Niello (R-Fair Oaks) told Courthouse News the amendments Kalra wanted would have left the current law intact.
According to Niello, California had more disability lawsuits filed than all other states combined in 2021. He said five law firms are responsible for about 92% of those suits.
Local heroes
Of the 10 Hermosa businesses represented at the Tiki Kai meeting, only Cal Sushi’s Yoo is fighting its ADA lawsuit, rather than agreeing to a settlement demand.
In 1980, Yoo left her native Korea to move to New York City to study at the Fashion Institute of Technology, while her husband studied for a doctorate in business at New York City University. In 1990, the family moved back to Korea. Then, in 2008 Yoo moved back to the United States to help her sister with her newly opened California Sushi and Teriyaki, at Fifth Street and Pacific Coast Highway, in Hermosa.
Two years ago, Yoo bought the restaurant from her sister and moved it to the Hermosa Pavilion Shopping Center. She was served with the ADA suit the following year.
Her son, Robert Yun, said the family decided to fight the suit rather than settle after learning Whitaker, their plaintiff, was a serial litigant, and had sued other Hermosa businesses
“When businesses settle he keeps coming back to the area. We want to stop him from harassing other businesses, at least locally.”
“The other reason is the claims were false. We wanted to prove our innocence because we are presumed guilty until proven innocent,” he said.
Yun planned to represent the family business in court, rather than retain an attorney. But when he appeared at a pretrial hearing at the Torrance Superior Court, the judge told him the restaurant needed to be represented by an attorney.
“The judge also told me to settle,” Yun said. As did the dozen local attorneys he consulted.
Hermosa Brewing owner Dave Davis told Yun about Mission Viejo attorney Ara Sahelian.
“Ara was different,” Yun said. “He told me straight up, if you want to settle, we can end this call right now. I finally found the fighter I was looking for. My wife could finally get a good night’s sleep.” Yun’s wife, Solyoun, works at Cal Sushi with his mother.
Sahelian lost use of his legs to polio when he was a child. He has used a wheelchair ever since, including for court appearances. He currently is defending over 100 small business owners who have been sued for ADA non compliance.
“My job is to be sure small businesses, like Monica Yoo’s, aren’t devastated by predatory ADA lawsuits,” he said.
“The travesty is that businesses are forced to pay settlement fees even if they are innocent because the settlement fees are less than attorney fees needed to win at trial,” Sahelian said.
Yun, who works in the fashion industry as a watch designer, said he can afford Sahelian because the attorney charges a flat fee, regardless of the length of the legal proceedings.
The Cal Sushi suit was filed in December 2024. The trial has twice been postponed, and is now set for June 2026.
“We’re not opposed to the ADA law. We just want California law to allow time to make corrections before fines are imposed, like Federal law, and other states,” he said.
“Robert, you and your mom are our heroes,” Jarvis said at the Tiki Kai meeting’s conclusion.
La Paz #2 and done
Pilar and Fernando Valerio, owners of La Paz #2, are the only other Hermosa business owners who are refusing to pay a settlement after being sued sued for alleged ADA violations.
Pilar and Fernando followed family from their Mexico City birthplace to the South Bay in the mid 1980s. After arriving, Pilar worked for 10 years as a cleaning lady at the Grand View Hotel in downtown Hermosa Beach. Fernando delivered pizzas. In 1997, the couple used their savings to buy La Paz #2 from Fernando’s uncle, who owns La Paz #1 in El Segundo.
Over the next, nearly three decades, the Valerios bought a home in Lawndale, raised three boys and became American citizens.
Their restaurant is locally renowned for its $3 potato tacos.
Last year’s ADA suit against the couple and their landlord, Charles Howell, asked for $22,000.
The couple and Howell settled for $14,000.
The Valerios don’t know how much the plaintiff will settle for in the second lawsuit, filed this past January, because they have not responded to the lawsuit. Instead, they said, they are closing the restaurant at the end of this month.
“If we pay to settle, they’ll come back next year and ask for more,” Fernando Valerio said.
“The lawyers are like the Mafia. They come around every year and demand protection money,” Howell said. Howell helped pay off last year’s ADA lawsuit, and has offered to help pay off this year’s.
“They’re good tenants, and if they leave, I have to tell the next tenants they might get sued for the same thing,” Howell said. He said he may leave the building vacant rather than risk another suit.
Crystal Comeau, whose hair salon is a few doors down Aviation Boulevard from La Paz #2, started a GoFundMe page to save the restaurant.
Pilar Valerios said on Thursday, February 12, she is grateful for the effort but does not expect the restaurant to remain open. She and her husband, who are in their late 50s, have begun looking for other work.
“It’s too late,” she said.
Customers hope otherwise. The GoFundMe page raised $56 on its first day. A week later, $3,500 had been pledged toward the $5,500 goal. ER
Where does the money go when the businesses are sued and settle?
I am an attorney who has represented numerous clients sued on ADA law suits. It is an expanding business for ADA plaintiffs. Orginally I saw lawsuits alleging ADA parking violations, restroom fixture problems and counter highth issues. But now clients are being suied because their websites do not comply with recommended standards. Others because they email customers outside of business hours where the customer resides.
I have won the cases I have taken to trial because the plaintiffs are little more than cappers for lawyers who file hundreds of these lawsuits each month. The plaintiffs are very poor witnesses with little crediability. In one case I won, the plaintiff did not know what the business with the alleged noncompliant parking sold and was vague on why he was going there. In other words, I attack the plaintiff on the allegation that alleged defect really effected his/her ability to shop at the business.
I do not solicity these clients because I have never been able to defend a case for less than the settlemet demand.
Robert Aronoff
Hermosa Beach
I’ve been a lawyer in Los Angeles County for 45-years and I’ve represented a number of local stores who have been targeted by these scam artists who claim to represent ADA clients. While there is a need for ADA accessibility, the lawyers who write these demand letters are just looking for blood money from small businesses who can’t generally afford to fight back against the claims. The lawyers take a very large cut from any blood money paid by the small business and the affected person is just the key to open the door to these extortion suits. There is no easy solution to the problem.
The laws need to be changed. President George H.W. Bush said one of his biggest regrets in office was signing the Americans with disabilities act. He never realized how what appeared to be a good idea, would be exploited with such disregard for common sense.
MB