Perfect Career for a Ex-Druggie
A fellow who knows depravity well, said he was traumatized by his Nov. 11, 2003, experience at the Anaheim West Car Wash. Gunther, who is wheelchair-bound, found a bathroom mirror mounted a few inches too high for him to “preen” himself. In a legal complaint, he insisted the experience caused him “anguish, anxiety, humiliation, anger, frustration, distress, embarrassment, apprehension and disgust.” He demanded that the owner of the business pay him $4,000. Would you believe that Gunther has the law on his side?
Since 2003, Gunther has filed more than 200 lawsuits against small businesses he claims have violated the accessibility provisions of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s tougher version, the Unruh Act.
Lawyers familiar with Gunther’s activities estimate he’s taken more than $400,000 in the last 36 months, mostly from mom-and-pop shops.
On just three days in July and August 2004, for example, he claimed in lawsuits that he’d needed to shop and use the bathrooms at nine different Ralphs supermarkets in Anaheim, Fountain Valley, Huntington Beach and Los Angeles. At some of the stores, he complained that he was “humiliated” because he couldn’t “preen” himself. The bathroom mirrors were inches too high…Based on the number of alleged violations contained in the nine lawsuits against Ralphs, he demanded more than $75,000.
So what did he do with his life before he came up with this legal scam?
I was able to obtain official documents detailing his admission to having a $100-a-day heroin addiction and to being a major narcotics trafficker in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In 1989, he was arrested and jailed for savagely beating girlfriend Belinda K. Callahan in front of their six-year-old daughter, according to records. He broke her arm and her nose.
If you read the link you’ll find a long list of crimes this poor disabled person has committed.
Well you have to feel sorry for those that are handicapped, don’t you?
Dewit and his office manager had another observation: Gunther was “able to get up from his wheelchair without great difficulty or discomfort,” according to a court record. But also this: during the three previous meetings from June 2002 to April 2004 they had watched Gunther walk into their office.
The problem isn’t that there’s people willing to abuse the law like this. The problem is that there is a law (The ADA) that is there to be abused.
That law came in with the best of intentions. But it was clear from the start that is was wide open to abuse. But the Washington elites (including George HW Bush) wouldn’t listen. You see if you live in Washington you don’t have to worry about the laws you pass onto the little people. That’s their problem.
Businesses have every reason to make their businesses accessible to their customers. Businesses have every reason to hire the most qualified to work for them. Congress shouldn’t meddle in what they can’t understand which as it turns out is most things.
