Michigan Department of Civil Rights charges Waterford law firm with disability discrimination

Filed 47m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: The White House · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

Michigan's Department of Civil Rights has formally charged Booth Patterson, PC, a Waterford law firm, with disability discrimination after a deaf client alleged the firm refused a requested accommodation during six meetings in 2023 and then declined to reimburse $130 he spent securing it himself. The client had been billed $1,860 in legal fees during that period under a $300-per-hour arrangement.

The department's charging document argues the reimbursement would not have posed an undue financial hardship given those rates. Attorney David Lee told the Advance the dispute is really about his preference for the client's mother as interpreter over a licensed one, and said he ‘did absolutely nothing wrong.’

The case now heads to an administrative law judge, with a possible final ruling by the state Civil Rights Commission, which could require training, reimbursement, and notice to state bar and licensing authorities.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A firm charging $300 an hour finding $130 too rich for accommodating a client says something, and it isn't about the money. Insisting you know better than your own deaf client what interpreter he needs is a strange hill to defend so confidently. The mother may be a fine interpreter, but that's a decision that belongs to the person who can't hear, not the one billing by the hour.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Double Polka · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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