It has been a relatively slow week for ADA accessibility filings in North Texas, with only one new lawsuit against a strip center in Plano. However, that new lawsuit provides a nice case study of the kinds of legal issues these cases raise.
The problems of standing mentioned in my last post are present in abundance. The plaintiff alleges that she went to the shopping center to visit a restaurant and “ran into” architectural barriers at the center. It is clear from the complaint itself that she didn’t run into all the barriers to access that she lists. For example, she claims that there is no accessible route to the center from the nearest public sidewalk and that there is not adequate accessible parking. If she took a car, then the public sidewalk wasn’t a problem for her. If she took a bus then the parking didn’t matter. She might have been injured by one kind of discrimination or the other, but not both. There are also general allegations of excessive slopes and a lack of accessible routes to “many of the businesses.” Since the plaintiff states that she visited the center to go to a specific restaurant the lack of accessible routes to other businesses could not have caused her any injury. More