Results for New Legislation

On July 22, 2019 the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) sent a Warning Letter to a major producer and distributor of CBD in Florida and elsewhere. The FDA reviewed the company’s web site, which accepted orders for various CBD-infused products.

The sort answer to the question of whether websites have to comply with the ADA is yes. If the business has a physical location visited by the public, the website that establishes the online presence of the brick and mortar business must comply with the ADA. That is the short answer, and it is the conclusion that one can draw from seeing how successful cases against companies in Florida have been, and how prevalent they have been, in recent history, as described in this article, https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-current-landscape-of-website-18986/ but that I will also explain below.

The cost of doing business successfully today, is that lawsuits are bound to happen, and many of them will be frivolous lawsuits. Routinely frivolous lawsuits are pursued by attorneys who know that even a frivolous lawsuit can be successful against companies who know it is cheaper to pay a settlement than spend years paying attorneys to wind through state court systems. There is a way to fight back, using a trick that puts frivolous lawsuit filers into waters they do not want to swim in, and may not be able to handle.

The word disability has a very broad meaning under the ADA, and conditions you would not think are disabilities can lead to costly lawsuits if an employer does not have a policy to properly handle ADA Accommodation requests by employees. Believe it or not, an appellate court has held an employer liable for not allowing an employee with a sleep disorder to show up to work late every day. However, not all accommodations are required. The most important thing for an employer to do when faced with an ADA Accommodation request is to follow the right process and procedure, but the employer needs to have and disseminate a written ADA Policy, in advance, to truly protect themselves.