On August 23, 2019, Senior Judge Paul Huck of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida imposed severe sanctions—including two $59,900 penalties and an injunction prohibiting future filings without leave of court—on well-known Florida plaintiffs’ lawyer Scott R. Dinin and his client, serial plaintiff Alexander Johnson, after concluding Dinin and Johnson conspired to file frivolous claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Florida Civil Rights Act (FCRA), inflated recoverable attorney’s fees, and unethically shared in the profits of their scheme.
The Court’s searing order stems from a series of complaints Dinin filed on Johnson’s behalf against gas station owners in southern Florida. In the pleadings, Johnson alleged the owners’ failed to include close captioning on the news and entertainment videos playing on their stations’ pumps, and thereby violated his rights under Title III of the ADA and the FCRA. The owners did not respond to Johnson’s pleading and the Court held a hearing after Johnson, through Dinin, moved for default judgment. At that hearing, the Court concluded that Dinin had “egregiously inflated and misrepresented” his claimed fees and that Johnson’s FCRA claim was frivolous because Johnson pursued it notwithstanding his knowledge that it was procedurally defective. The Court subsequently convened a hearing on July 22, 2019, for Dinin and Johnson to show cause why sanctions should not issue.