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

The Michigan Department of Civil Rights announced Monday that it was filing a disability discrimination charge against Booth Patterson, PC, a law firm based in Waterford, alleging that the firm discriminated against a client with a disability by refusing to honor a request for a “reasonable accommodation during several 2023 meetings with the firm.”

The claimant, whose name is redacted in a copy of the charge document provided to Michigan Advance, first filed the complaint with the department in November 2023, according to a press release. An investigation was launched, and based on that investigation, the department said it “found sufficient grounds to formally charge the firm with Failure to Accommodate in a Place of Public Accommodation.”

“Refusing to make appropriate accommodations prevents people with disabilities from properly receiving the services they need. This is not just wrong, but illegal,” said Michigan Department of Civil Rights Executive Director John Johnson, Jr. “We all have a duty to enforce these standards and make our places of business available to everyone.”

The charging document notes that the claimant had six meetings with a representative of Booth Patterson, whose name is also redacted, between March and May 2023, after entering a binding agreement in December 2022 for representation in a civil case through June 15, 2023. Throughout that time, the client was billed a total of $1,860 for legal services.

The client verbally requested an accommodation — the specifics of which were also redacted — as early as March 15, 2023, which was not provided by the law firm, according to the charging document. When the client took it upon himself to acquire the accommodation, the law firm refused to reimburse for those services, which cost $130.

The charge document goes on to say that, with billable hours between the claimant and the lawyer set at $300 per hour, “there is sufficient evidence that paying for an [REDACTED] would not have been an undue financial hardship” for Booth Patterson, referring to reimbursement for the accommodation service.

David Lee, an attorney at Booth Patterson, told the Advance that the complaint stems from a deaf client who had his mother as an interpreter throughout legal proceedings on a civil case, which Lee was eventually removed from.

“When they say that I fail to accommodate, the only difference is that they say that I had to have a licensed interpreter, and I’d rather have the mother than a licensed interpreter,” Lee said, adding that he believed his client could communicate better with his mother.

Lee said that he completely denies any damage to him as a result of using the client’s mother, and said that he “did absolutely nothing wrong.”

“I served my client, I did everything, and I represented a client well,” he said. 

Now that the charge has been filed, it will be presented at a hearing with an administrative law judge, who will hear evidence from both the firm and the department. If that administrative law judge determines that discrimination had occurred, the matter would be brought to the Michigan Civil Rights Commission for a final ruling.

The department is requesting that the Civil Rights Commission require the firm to undergo disability training and reimburse the client for any time they spent without the necessary accommodation. The department is also requesting that they send certification of the discriminatory incident to the State Bar of Michigan and the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.