Getting back to the facts of this ADA case - the plaintiff was injured by the police (and later had to have surgery due to that) when they arrested him and transported him in an inaccessible van. They took him out of his wheelchair and propped him up in their patrol car using his own belt to strap him to the seat. He repeatedly told them that they would injure him doing this.
Now imagine if you were arrested and there was no back seat in the patrol car so the police put you on top of the car and strapped you on with your own belt and while driving to the station you fell off the car, injured yourself and had to have surgery. Would you want the police to do this to the next victim they arrested?
The ADA makes it clear that public (local government) places, services, etc. must be made accessible....that is the law as congress stated it. The US government enacted a law and the local government did not comply with it.
>
>I am more inclined toward the Hobbesian position - the law is what
>the ultimate authority (the government) says it is and society
>accepts it. Thus there are no "inalienable rights" "good" or "bad"
>laws etc.- only the rights, responsibilities and privileges that a
>society and its governing institutions are willing to extend to its
>members. For example, if this society and its governing
>institutions pass the law that sociology is a form of witchcraft and
>its practicing is punishable by imprisonment, I may think it is a
>bad law (just as many people think of the 55 mph speed limit) and
>try to influence the public to change it, but that law per se is the
>law - neither good nor bad, but binding until society and its
>institutions decide otherwise. If I do not succeed in changing it,
>I always have an option of becoming and economist or a gardener, or
>going to the greener pastures where sociologists are welcome.
The US did extend rights to disabled inviduals but it has hardly made that promise a reality. So what are you saying pertaining to the ADA and punitive damages here?
>You cannot sue the society and its government for promulgating such
>a law (although you may take actions to change it), because this
>would imply the existence of some superior legal standards by which
>current laws can be judged. In the absence of any objective methods
>of establishing such superior standards, this open the flood gate
>for anarcho-individualism that prevails in today's collective
>consciousness in this country - everyone using his/her own standard
>of what the "just law" ought to be, following the law only to the
>extent that suits their interests, looking for every possible excuse
>to avoid responsibility for their own action or inaction, and
>seeking personal exemptions from the existing laws as they see it
>fit. I think that collectively people are better off with Hobbesian
>Leviathan than anarcho-individualism, which always creates ample
>opportunity for a few unscrupulous individuals to screw the rest.
>
>wojtek
This ruling affects an entire class of persons -- disabled whether blind, deaf, mobility impaired, developmentally disabled, "mentally" ill, etc. In no way is one "unscrupulous individual" trying to screw the rest. Rather, belonging to a class of persons, he has tried to see that the laws
-- Marta Russell Los Angeles, CA http://www.disweb.org