Sued by Gottlieb & Associates over your website?

Gottlieb & Associates PLLC is a New York law firm that files a large number of website accessibility lawsuits. If your business was named in one, here's what the complaints say and what to do first.

This is a technical accessibility assessment, not legal advice, and automated testing cannot establish ADA compliance.

What the court records show

Between September 14 and October 7, 2026, the firm filed 40 ADA cases in the federal court for the Southern District of New York, by our count of the public dockets on CourtListener. We read 14 of those complaints. All 14 were about a website, all were against businesses that sell online, and all were filed as class actions.

What the complaint says

The 14 complaints we read follow the same outline and run to about 30 pages:

• The plaintiff is legally blind and uses screen-reading software.
• The plaintiff visited the website, usually to buy a product the complaint names, and gives the date of the last visit.
• The plaintiff could not finish because of barriers on the site. The barriers are described in general terms, such as broken links and images without alternative text.

Each one makes four claims: under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the New York State Human Rights Law, the New York City Human Rights Law, and New York General Business Law § 349.

What it asks the court for

• An order requiring you to make the website accessible to blind users.
• Certification of the case as a class action.
• Money damages under the New York state and city laws.
• The plaintiff's attorneys' fees and costs.

What any of this means for your business is a question for your attorney. How these lawsuits work, in plain English.

Common questions

Is the lawsuit real?

A filed case has a case number, such as 1:26-cv-08834. You can look it up free on CourtListener or on PACER, the federal courts' own system. If the case is there, it's real.

We aren't in New York. Why were we sued there?

The complaints say the website sells to customers in New York. Whether that is enough for a New York court to hear the case is a legal question; ask your attorney. More on New York cases.

The complaint is vague. How do I know what's actually wrong?

Because the barriers are described generally, the first technical job is to find out which ones exist on your pages today. Some will, some won't. That's what a technical assessment is for.

First steps

1. Write down the date you were served and talk to an attorney. A lawsuit has a short, fixed deadline to respond. Ignoring it doesn't make it go away.
2. Find the product and the visit date in the complaint. They tell you which pages to look at first.
3. Get the technical facts. Check which of the claimed barriers exist on your home, product, cart and checkout pages.
4. Fix the real issues in the site itself. Step-by-step fixes: Shopify, WordPress. An accessibility widget doesn't change the code the complaint is about: do widgets stop lawsuits?
5. Keep dated records of what was wrong, what you changed and when.

How we counted

On October 8, 2026 we searched CourtListener for federal civil-rights cases coded "ADA – Other" that list Gottlieb & Associates as plaintiff's counsel and were filed from September 14 to October 7, 2026. Cases that haven't reached CourtListener aren't counted, so the real number may be higher. We read the complaints that were available as public documents. We have no connection to the firm or its clients. If anything here is wrong, tell us and we'll correct it.

Sued by a different firm? See East End Trial Group.