Guide
You settled. Will you get sued again?
It is the question every defendant asks after writing the check, and the data says it is the right question: in the federal court records we track, at least 1 in 13 named defendants sued since 2020 appears in more than one ADA case, and exact-name matching means the true repeat rate is higher, before counting state courts and demand letters that never become filings. Repeat exposure is not bad luck; it is mostly determined by what you do after settling.
Why businesses get sued twice
- They settled without remediating. The settlement resolves one plaintiff's claim; the barriers stay live for the next tester. Serial filers re-test, and a site already known to settle is an attractive re-test.
- A different plaintiff, a fresh claim. Your agreement typically binds the plaintiff who signed it. It is not a shield against everyone else who loads your site with a screen reader, which is why "we already settled this" is not a defense to a new complaint.
- The site drifted. Fixes made in 2024 do not survive a 2026 redesign, a theme update, or a new marketing popup. Accessibility is a property of the current site, not a milestone you passed.
- The fix was an overlay widget. The barriers stayed in the code, and overlay-equipped sites keep getting sued.
What actually lowers repeat risk
- Remediate what the settlement promised, in the code. Almost every agreement includes a fix commitment with a timeline. Missing it is not just repeat-lawsuit risk; it can be breach of the agreement itself.
- Keep a dated independent record. An audit after remediation documents what a tester would find, when. If a template complaint arrives anyway, your attorney answers it with evidence instead of assurances. That is our signed audit: $490, 48-72 hours, reviewed and signed by an IAAP-certified specialist.
- Publish an accessibility statement that says what conforms and how to reach you about barriers. It routes real complaints to your inbox instead of a law office, and it is the artifact courts and regulators expect to see.
- Re-check on every redesign. The free one-page check costs nothing between audits; the $149 automated audit re-baselines the whole site after big changes.
The honest limit
Nothing makes a website lawsuit-proof: not remediation, not an audit, not ours. Anyone promising immunity is selling the promise the FTC fined an overlay vendor $1 million for. What the sequence above does is remove the findings serial filers screen for, take you out of the easy-settlement pool, and leave you with a factual record if a claim comes anyway. The difference shows up in the settlement dynamics: defendants with documented remediation negotiate from a different position than defendants caught flat.
Common questions
How soon after settling do re-suits happen?
There is no fixed clock. Serial filers work from scans and target lists; a site that still fails the obvious checks can be re-tested within months. The practical answer is to be out of the failing pool before anyone looks again.
Does my settlement stop the same law firm from coming back?
Read the agreement with your attorney: some bind the firm's other clients, many do not. The federal filing record shows the same firms filing against repeat defendants; assume the paper protects exactly what it says and nothing more.
Is ongoing monitoring worth paying for?
A subscription that re-scans the machine-checkable layer is a convenience, not a shield, and cheaper versions of it exist for free. What matters is that someone owns re-checking after changes; whether that is a calendar reminder and our free check or a paid monitor is a budget question.