Bill’s Take Out is a Santa Maria landmark that’s been serving cheeseburgers and fries to the public for more than 60 years. Manager Mario Barragan estimates he gets about 130 orders on any given day; at around $8 per order, that’s roughly $1,000 in revenue. The small restaurant makes enough to pay its bills and allow it to continue operating year after year.
But a lawsuit filed against Bill’s in Santa Maria court on Nov. 21, 2014, could cut into the restaurant’s profits. San Rafael-based attorney Thomas Frankovich is suing Bill’s on behalf of client Byron Chapman because of alleged disability access violations that he said his client experienced at the restaurant on several occasions.
Bill’s is just one of several small businesses in Santa Maria that have become the target of attorneys who use the Americans with Disabilities Act to collect a paycheck for alleged violations, even the slightest ones, according to Kim Stone, president of the Civil Justice Association of California, a Sacramento-based judicial reform group.
Stone said the practice is driving up the cost of business and causing owners to leave the market because of the monetary damages they must shell out to plaintiffs. Additionally, she said, construction costs to become ADA compliant are expensive for small businesses, and building codes can be hard to keep up with.
Every few years, according to Stone, California reissues a book of building code standards to cities across the state. The document is several inches thick, full of detailed drawings and highly technical writing.
“The pictures in the book are like schematic diagrams,” she explained. “They make the instructions on IKEA furniture look like they were written by Hemingway. The onus is on the business, and it’s a public policy failing.”
Frankovich, who’s made a career from representing disabled people like Chapman, doesn’t buy that argument. He said that all people have to do is read the manual.
“There’s nothing hard about it,” he said, adding that only about 5 percent of the book is technical. “Anybody with a high school education should be able to read it.”
Chapman, who’s confined to a wheelchair, visited Bill’s on four separate occasions between November 2013 and August 2014, according to court documents. There are several architectural features that made it hard for him to access the place, according to the lawsuit. These include dining tables that are inaccessible by a wheelchair, a narrow restroom door with round knobs instead of levers, a toilet with flush control on the wrong side, and no grab bars, among other things.
Chapman, Bill’s manager Barragan, and the restaurant owners didn’t want to talk to the Sun about the lawsuit. But according to court documents, Barragan said the fixes to Bill’s would cost more than $70,000. Chapman himself is asking for damages exceeding $25,000. Frankovich said his lawsuits aren’t frivolous, and he’s not necessarily doing this for money. He just wants access problems fixed so disabled people like Chapman can enjoy restaurants the way everyone else does.
“If you want to pass a law that tells people to stay out of your fucking restaurant, then do it,” Frankovich said. “Why can’t they just fix it? And then there’s no lawsuit. The ADA says you have a duty to identify and remove barriers. For 25 years, they’ve been saying this.”
Frankovich is fairly confident that he’ll prevail. He’s filed thousands of ADA lawsuits over the years, and about 99 percent of defendants immediately comply. California law allows plaintiffs to settle suits for up to $4,000 per violation. And once a suit is filed, Frankovich said, it’s only a matter of time before a client receives damages.
Chapman has been a plaintiff in multiple ADA lawsuits—at least 76 over the past 15 years. Chapman also filed suit against Santa Maria’s Taco Ranchero in October 2014 in federal court, alleging ADA access violations. And he’s not the only one with a plethora of ADA lawsuits filed on his behalf. For instance, Robert McCarthy has sued 254 businesses throughout California for disability violations, according to The Modesto Bee. Most recently, he filed lawsuits in Merced and Stanislaus counties, as well as against six businesses in San Luis Obispo County, according to The Tribune.
The trend of lawsuits coming from what Civil Justice Association of California President Stone calls “ADA trolls” has caught on with some state lawmakers. Kristen Olsen (R-Riverbank) and Adam Grey (D-Merced) each filed a bill in December 2014 that would attempt to rein in what they see as abuse. Olsen’s bill, AB 54, would enable plaintiffs to collect damages from an access claim filed within three years of a change in building code standard, but only if they provide the business with a notification letter at least 60 days before filing any civil action.
The bill is intended to help business owners who might be confused about the ADA, said Allison Wescott, Olsen’s communications director.
“Regulations are constantly changing, and a lot of business owners have a hard time keeping up with all of the changes,” Wescott said. “We just want to make it easy for them to be compliant before litigants hit them with these lawsuits.”
Stone said the best way for a small business to avoid getting hit with an ADA lawsuit is to hire a certified access specialist—someone licensed by the state to know how to make a business ADA compliant.
Contact Staff Writer David Minsky at dminsky@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 5-12, 2015.