- At least 29 Gainesville businesses faced website compliance lawsuits from June to September 2026, alleging unauthorized data tracking under Florida law.
- Dr. Wendy Flynn countersued the plaintiff, accusing the lawsuit of being a shakedown, while a law professor said the claims have no legal merit in civil court.
A new wave of website compliance lawsuits has hit at least 29 Gainesville-based businesses since June and at least another 150 businesses throughout Florida.
Butler Plaza, Celebration Pointe, Radiant Credit Union and SIMEDHealth were each sued, according to court documents reviewed by Mainstreet Daily News. The plaintiff, Heriberto Valiente of Miami, primarily filed against medical establishments in Gainesville, including dentists, optometrists, counselors, family doctors, plastic surgeons and chiropractors.
Valiente’s lawsuits are nearly identical to each other and claim that businesses’ websites are collecting and distributing site visitor data without consent. The filings say internet users have a recognized expectation of privacy in their online browsing and that these businesses are spying on customers as part of a prolific data enterprise.
The cases bear resemblances to the steady filing of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuits against 49 Gainesville businesses that Mainstreet reported in December 2025.
Each of Valiente’s lawsuits were filed in Miami-Dade small claims court with a maximum $8,000 payout. The vast majority of the sued businesses are located hours away in Tampa, Orlando, Gainesville, Jacksonville or Tallahassee.
The lawsuits started with 11 filings on June 2, and another batch of filings happened nearly every week until Valiente stopped suing on Sept. 3. So far, 11 Gainesville businesses have notices of settlements for their cases; one was voluntarily dismissed and the rest remain open.
Dave Barber Jr. of Dave Barber’s Paint & Body in Gainesville said he wondered what he could have done for somebody to sue him. Then he saw it was for website compliance.
“It blew my mind when I got [the lawsuit],” he said.
In this article:
- Impacted businesses react
- The legal claim
- Law professor weighs in
- Gainesville defendants fighting back
Affected Gainesville business owners said Valiente and his Miami attorneys, PereGonza The Attorneys, calculated the lawsuits to end with settlements. By the time a business is aware of the lawsuit and the already scheduled pre-trial conference in Miami, it’s easier to pay $8,000 or a lower negotiated settlement than hire an attorney to review the claim and show up to court.
But Dr. Wendy Flynn with Gators Spine and Wellness Clinic has countersued against Valiente and his attorneys with racketeering charges in federal court. Her counter calls the lawsuits “a shakedown.”
Other local businesses agreed in principle with Flynn’s actions. The cost of a legal battle, though, pushed them to settle for differing amounts.
Professor Jane Bambauer with UF’s Levin College of Law reviewed Valiente’s carbon copy claim attached to each of the suits and said they seem designed to result in settlements.
But Bambauer’s opinion is that the lawsuits have no legal basis to appear in civil court.
Impacted businesses react
Barber’s father started the body and paint shop with $500 in 1965. It was located where Curia on the Drag now resides off NW Sixth Street, and the business included his uncles and grandfather. The family made a good living, he said.
Now, it’s harder to compete with large auto chains. Barber said the corporate shops use the same PPG paint as he does, but they’re able to buy direct and get 40% off the price.
Barber said it blew his mind when he got the lawsuit in July. The shop settled; he said there didn’t really seem to be a choice. The time it took from being served to settling was around three weeks.
“I can’t believe people get away with stuff like that,” Barber told Mainstreet.
He had an attorney look over the complaint and negotiate the settlement. The small business paid $6,000.
It’s been a slow year, Barber said, and while not a make-or-break amount, he said it’s a chunk of money to pay at once. But fighting the lawsuit could be five to six times more costly.
Dr. John Tyrone, owner of North Florida Plastic Surgery off Tower Road, was sued in late June.
He said the cookies on his website were basic. Because of that, he pushed back against the complaint, using his IT guy to draft a report on how the website legally complies. The back-and-forth ended in a negotiated settlement, but it did not list the amount because of a non-disclosure agreement.
His advice for business owners: educate on the specifics of your case, and if it’s a strong case, fight it.
“They know what they’re doing,” Tyrone said about PereGonza, who represents Valiente. “This isn’t just random that they’re in Miami suing people far away as they can with some plaintiff that literally had no plan to visit these businesses. They’re just fishing for these cases.”
Kristen Roberts, vice president of support services for SIMEDHealth, said the company would love to fight the lawsuit on principle. She said the lawsuit disturbs the company to no end.
But an $8,000 settlement versus much higher costs to defend against the case made it a simple decision for the business and its patients.
Roberts said Valiente was in it to make a quick buck and good businesses were being punished for a technicality.
The legal claim
According to the lawsuits, Valiente accessed these businesses’ websites, and, without his consent, the sites began tracking ingoing and outgoing metadata about him and his visit.
The metadata could show his IP address and where he was coming from on the internet. It’s information that Google Analytics, a tool used by website owners, compiles as a matter of course.
Or, as the attorneys with PereGonza phrase it in the complaint:
“Defendant violated the privacy rights of Floridians in Florida by installing electronic surveillance processes on their computers, capturing their electronic data without consent, deanonymizing their otherwise private digital identity and data, which was then used to surveil and spy of Floridians in Florida resulting in tortious conduct in violation of the Florida’s Security of Communications Act.”
The complaints, with an example published at the bottom of the story, rely on what’s called “trap and trace devices” and “pen register devices.” These are tools used to collect facts and information about a communication, but not the actual contents of that communication—often called metadata.
For a phone call, these devices would collect when a call was made, who made the call, who was on the other end of the line, and how long the call lasted. But these devices don’t record the communication itself, what was actually said on the phone call.
In the complaint, Valiente references the widespread phenomena of targeted advertising following a web browsing session or conversation. Someone searches and visits a jewelry website, and the next time they pop onto Facebook, ads for different jewelry start popping up.
The end of each complaint included screenshots of a report generated by scanning the website in question. The report shows the likelihood on website compliance out of 100. It also shows likely pre-consent trackers, with many coming from google.com or Google Analytics.
“Floridians have a recognized expectation of privacy in their online browsing, however a substantial commercial industry has developed around ‘identity resolution’, which seeks to deanonymize users and monetize their digital activity in a form of commercial cyber stalking, infringing upon Americans’ most basic expectation of privacy,” the complaints say.
PereGonza responded to Mainstreet’s request for an interview with the following statement.
“Online privacy has become an increasingly important issue in today’s digital world and remains at the forefront of the national debate,” the PereGonza statement said. “Individuals have a right to expect that businesses will protect their online privacy and implement appropriate safeguards to secure their personal information.”
For Tyrone, the plastic surgeon, these complaints seem better fitted for a lawsuit against a Fortune 100 company like Google or Meta.
He said these small businesses don’t monetize and spy on website users. These websites typically use basic “cookies” to learn how to improve their internet presence.
“There’s two different levels to it,” he said. “There’s the small people like us that are just informational versus the data collectors.”
Law professor weighs in
The law referenced in the complaints, the Florida Security of Communications Act, deals with wiretapping, eavesdropping and electronic communications. It tells when law enforcement can use these methods for criminal cases and what hoops they must jump through, such as getting judicial authorization.
The complaint says that the sued websites failed to inform users of any tracking or collecting of data through a consent popup or banner. Or it claims that those activities took place prior to the popup appearing.
“Yet, Defendant has failed and refused to deploy a consent banner which would not only advise its visitors that it is capturing their electronic data but would also comply with legal requirements,” the complaints say.
Bambauer is the Brechner Eminent Scholar at the Levin College of Law and at the College of Journalism and Communications. She teaches First Amendment, media and privacy law.
Her first reaction to reading the complaint was that it’s not a case that aims to protect privacy interests of Floridians. She said it looks as if Valiente is using a highly technical violation to push through their case and not to vindicate real rights.
She said the plaintiff relies on ambiguous phrasing in the Florida Security of Communications Act for his arguments—and creates just enough confusion to make a settlement attractive.
“Even if this is a faithful reading of the statute, this claim seems to be taking a technical violation that almost everyone in ordinary internet-enabled society has come to take for granted and has turned it into a lawsuit that can really threaten small businesses,” Bambauer said.
Bambauer said she was surprised Florida statutes could cover this type of claim, saying she didn’t think the law was designed for such a case.
“If cookies are effectively illegal in Florida, why did I not know about this?” she asked.
The technicalities for the lawsuit would be similar to Floridians being pulled over for going 31 miles per hour in a 30-mph zone.
But Bambauer took the analogy further. She said it’s like an error in state drafting causes a small stretch of the interstate to technically not have the same 70 mph standard. Then a civilian, not law enforcement, picks who it’s going to pull over as everyone drives through the section at the normal rate of speed.
Bambauer looked up the Florida Communication Security Act and reviewed the complaint. Her analysis is that the complaint is a misreading of state law, which is why the argument has never advanced far enough to attract broader attention.
Websites collect metadata, so the lawsuits are restricted to regulations on trap and trace or pen register devices.
But according to Bambauer, Florida statutes doesn’t allow civil litigation as a solution for someone who feels their metadata was violated—or that these devices were used against them illegally.
“There’s not supposed to be a lawsuit at all,” Bambauer said. “In theory, these defendants, these small companies, could file a motion to dismiss and say there’s a failure to state a claim because there is no claim. There is no civil claim that can be filed based on this violation.”
Valiente’s lawsuits have stayed in small claims court since he started suing in June, and at least 65 have already been closed. If each settled for $8,000, that would total $520,000.
Bambauer said the lawsuits seem geared toward settlements, especially with the majority of defendants being small businesses.
“It also shows that even without a proper claim, anyone who’s willing to file based on either a good faith misunderstanding of the statute or even a bad faith exploitation of the statute, can get pretty far and can maybe cause some problems before it’s worth it for somebody to either do some investigative reporting, or for companies to band together, or for one to take on the role of challenging these claims for everyone else’s benefit,” Bambauer said.
Gainesville defendants fighting back
Flynn started Gators Spine and Wellness Clinic in February 2025 after practicing in Illinois. She was served her lawsuit in late July and countersued in federal court in early September.
In her reply, posted at the bottom of the story, she calls Valiente a professional plaintiff and “front man for a fraudulent litigation enterprise operated by PereGonza The Attorneys, PLLC.” She said the law firm uses bots to scrape Florida websites and search for potential defendants.
She filed her countersuit, which is against Valiente and his three attorneys from PereGonza—Juan Perez, Roberto Gonzalez and Renzo Mora—under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act.
Valiente and the attorneys countered and are trying to have the case sent back to Miami-Dade small claims court.
In a statement to Mainstreet, Flynn said she refuses to be intimidated because she believes the lawsuits are designed to harass and extort small businesses.
“I will not back down,” she said. “Our goal in pursuing these counterclaims is to ensure justice is served, to expose these predatory tactics, and to protect other healthcare providers and business owners so they can focus on serving our community without the threat of manufactured litigation.”
Another Gainesville defendant, Rising Calm Center, filed a motion to dismiss. The motion relies on Bambauer’s reasoning: state law fails to provide a civil remedy for trap and trace violations, and the data collection was only metadata and not the actual communications.
The motion also states that Valiente has no concrete injury from the alleged violations of the Florida Security of Communications Act.
Another Gainesville business, Gainesville Direct Primary Care Physicians, continues to file legal responses to requests for interrogatories, production and admissions after failed mediation.
Bambauer said if the sued companies find it worthwhile, they could try to fight back against the litigation.
“If there’s enough smoke or evidence that the plaintiffs understand that they are misdescribing what the statute does and filing bad cases dozens or even hundreds at a time, that might be a good case for malicious prosecution,” she said.
But in order to file this action against PereGonza and Valiente, Bambauer said the businesses can’t settle their cases. She said it would require foresight, which is another barrier for sued businesses.
“It’s like, okay, ‘let me go to an attorney, let me have them defend my claim in small claims court, but then when we’re done and we win, I can turn around and bring this lawsuit,'” Bambauer said, explaining the foresight needed.
After four months with lawsuits filed nearly every week, Valiente has not sued since Sept. 3—the day after Flynn filed her countersuit for RICO charges.
RICO charges, malicious litigation torts and the foresight to prepare for it, website compliance, pen and register devices and automated bots that scrape webpages—they’re not just for lawyers and IT teams.
Dozens of Gainesville business owners are taking a crash course.
List of Gainesville businesses or branches sued:
- Butler Plaza (Open)
- Tioga Dental and Orthodontics (Open)
- Sira Gainesville (Open)
- Gainesville Healing House (Open)
- Gators Spine and Wellness Clinics (Open; sent to federal court)
- Celebration Pointe (Open)
- Dermatology Associates of Gainesville (Notice of Settlement)
- Chiropractic Associates of Gainesville (Notice of Settlement)
- Gainesville Vision LLC (Open)
- Gainesville Direct Primary Care (Open)
- Gainesville Dermatology and Skin Surgery (Notice of Settlement)
- SIMEDHealth (Notice of Settlement)
- Classic Collision LLC (Open)
- Cruz Davis Family and Cosmetic Dentistry (Open)
- Sadove Cosmetic Surgery (Open)
- Kiddie Academy of Gainesville (Open)
- Kinetix Physical Therapy (Open)
- The Orthopaedic Institute (Open)
- Radiant Financial Solutions LLC (Notice of Settlement)
- Florida Acupuncture and Counseling (Voluntarily Dismissed)
- Rising Calm Center (Gainesville branch) (Open)
- Florida Surgery Consultants (Open)
- Harmony United Psychiatric Care (Open)
- North Florida Foot & Ankle Specialists (Notice of Settlement)
- Dave Barber’s Paint and Body (Notice of Settlement)
- Accent Physician Specialists (Notice of Settlement)
- John W. Tyrone Plastic Surgery (Notice of Settlement)
- Pure Aesthetics (Notice of Settlement)
- North Florida Cataract Specialists and Vision Care (Notice of Settlement)