You might want to prove that an effort has been made to improve accessibility. Since many foundations and other granting bodies support accessibility projects, it can't hurt to put in a bunch of carefully prepared grant requests. If turned down, file the documents as evidence, tweak it, and send to the next foundation on the list.

Who knows, you might receive funding, which is great. If you don't, you are at least building a paper trail that proves you had made an honest effort.

Steve Hunter

The behavior of certain specific plaintiffs in this area has demonstrated that at least some of them darn well don't give a $#!+ if you're bankrupted or shut down.

In the other thread on rail libraries, there is one archive that is functionally "shut down" and inaccessible because the only place they have for it is a non-ADA-compliant second floor, and another one we try not to talk about because it resides in a city-owned non-ADA-compliant building (though anything could be brought down to the first floor to an area which is compliant).



Extortion schemes or not, if the courts agree with them (and they have in some cases), you're hosed.

You won't get far in this conversation if you are still confuising "compliant" with "accessible".

Only some places are required to be accessible. If you are not one of them, then you ARE compiant ALREADY. This describes the vast majority of us.

Those people are trolls and extortionists, not customers. Deal accordingly.

Are you quite sure this library actually needs to be shut down? Or was that done as a histrionic "sky is falling" overreaction to a misunderstanding of ADA law? I see the latter a lot, it's the ADA equivalent of physically removing a rail to islolate your tourist railway from the general system.

There's a good analog there: a lot of off-general-system tourist railways think they are "getting away with something" because the FRA inspector is "looking the other way" or "letting them slide". And many building owners think the same about the government and ADA. Wrong. The inspector is constrained by laws which protect you. But many inspectors tell white lies, making you think they're letting you slide when really, you're not required. If the law allowed them to require it, they would.



Yes, the court may agree with the "not" ones. I've never seen them agree with an extortionist. That I'd like to see. Cite, please.

(Mind you, most lawsuit trolls are actually right in fact and law. Molski's victims really did have the toilet paper 2 inches too low. Righthaven's victims really did copy those news articles. Prenda's victims really did steal porn. Doesn't help. The very act of lawsuit trolling is an attack against the court system itself. Hence the "white blood cell" type reaction.)

Know your plaintiff. First thing you do when sued, run down to the courthouse and pull their litigation history. Remember the Portland thing? Arwen Bird is not a troll, so apologize and fix it. If they've filed 10 other lawsuits same day as yours, claiming the same injury, then you're all out of bubblegum.

Legal stuff aside, the folks at the Wiscasset Waterville & Farmington Ry Museum did a very nice job is interpreting a bit of their history using a two-foot gauge boxcar that they built themselves from native Maine lumber cut along their right-of-way. Inside the car are some artifacts and photos. The 65 is located in Wiscasset adjacent to the Maine Eastern's main line from Brunswick to Rockport. The WW&F operation itself is situated about 4-5 miles inland from Wiscasset in the Maine woods. Superb operation.

Thanks!