You settled once. The data says you'll probably be sued again.

If you have already settled one ADA website lawsuit, the natural assumption is that you bought your way out of the problem. The filing data says otherwise, and so does the case law. This is the post we wish someone had written for the merchants we talk to, so here it is, with every number linked to its source.

The repeat-defendant numbers

UsableNet's year-end analysis of 2025 puts it plainly: "Of the more than 5,000 digital accessibility lawsuits filed in 2025, 1,427 targeted companies that had already faced an ADA web accessibility claim." Its 2025 year-end report counts those repeat cases as 45% of all federal filings.

And the share is growing. UsableNet's 2024 year-end report counted 961 lawsuits that year against companies that had a previous ADA digital lawsuit, 41% of federal cases. In one year the repeat-defendant share of federal filings went from 41% to 45%. Nearly half of federal ADA web litigation is now aimed at someone who has been through it before.

For e-commerce specifically, the same 2024 report notes that 82% of the top 500 online retailers, 411 companies, have faced ADA-related digital lawsuits since 2018. Being sued once is not an outlier event in this space. It is the entry point to a population that keeps getting sued.

Settling with one plaintiff does not moot the next one

The controlling illustration is Haynes v. Hooters of America (11th Cir. 2018). Hooters settled a website accessibility suit and agreed to a remediation plan. About six months later a different plaintiff, Dennis Haynes, sued over the same website. The district court dismissed the new case as moot because remediation was already promised. The Eleventh Circuit reversed, in a published opinion: "Hooters' assurance to an unrelated third party to remediate its website does not alone moot Haynes' claims for relief." The court also noted there was nothing in the record showing the remediation had actually been completed.

Read the qualifier honestly: the holding is "does not alone," not "never could." Part of what kept the second case alive was that the site had not been shown to be fixed. Which is exactly the practical point. The settlement agreement was real, the remediation plan was real, and neither one protected the company, because the website itself still had the problems. Legal-industry coverage of the decision is at JD Supra if you want the lawyers' read.

Why you specifically, again

UsableNet's 2025 report describes the mechanism without much varnish: "Plaintiff firms actively monitor prior defendants," and "an initial lawsuit should be treated as an early warning rather than an isolated incident." The 2024 report adds that new cases "may come from different plaintiffs, target sister brands or parent companies, or even focus on the same website."

The economics explain the pattern. A prior defendant is a proven payer with a documented history, and checking whether your site still fails is nearly free: the same automated scans that generated the first complaint can be re-run any time. Your settlement resolved one plaintiff's claims. It did not change what a scanner finds on your product pages today.

What actually reduces the odds

A settlement settles the lawsuit. Only remediation changes the site, and only re-checking keeps it changed. Sites drift: themes update, apps get added, new product pages ship without alt text, a redesign quietly reintroduces the contrast issue you paid to fix in 2024.

So the unglamorous program is: fix the cited issues at the source, in the code, then re-scan on a schedule so drift gets caught by you instead of by the next plaintiff's firm. Whether you do that with us, with your agency, or with a script your developer runs monthly matters much less than that someone is actually looking. Our free scanner is a reasonable place to start; it runs axe-core against any public URL and catches roughly 57% of WCAG issues, a baseline rather than a verdict. If a scan of your site comes back with the same findings your first complaint cited, treat that as the early warning UsableNet says it is.

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This post describes public filing data and court records. It is not legal advice, and the Haynes holding in particular is fact-specific. If you have received a demand letter or complaint, speak to a lawyer.

Sources: UsableNet, ADA Web Lawsuit Trends for 2026 · UsableNet 2025 year-end report (PDF) · UsableNet 2024 year-end report (PDF) · Haynes v. Hooters of America, 893 F.3d 781 (11th Cir. 2018) · JD Supra coverage