Arizona’s Legislature joins fight against disability lawsuits

PHOENIX — The Arizona Senate and state attorney general are taking action against “drive-by” lawsuits targeting companies for purported shortcomings in disability access efforts as they continue to spread all across the country.

Legislation passed last week by the Senate would give businesses a notice period to fix state disability laws violations before being hit with lawsuits comes amid a nationwide struggle among lawyers, disability groups and small-business owners.

Senate Bill 1198 by Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, is meant to target what he calls “unscrupulous attorneys” who lawmakers say are exploiting businesses by finding violations with the Arizona Americans With Disability Act and filing lawsuits. The claims are often dropped after the businesses agree to pay a cash settlement.

The complaints against businesses typically result from plaintiffs’ visits to local parking lots where they look for infractions.

“Most of the victims of these predatory lawyers are small-business people who just recently bought a business who aren’t conversant in all of the intricacies of the ADA law,” Kavanagh said.

The issue led Attorney General Mark Brnovich to ask a state court to dismiss more than 1,000 accessibility lawsuits filed by a disability advocacy group called Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities on grounds the group did not have legal standing.

“Arizona is not going to tolerate serial litigators who try to shake down small hardworking businesses by exploiting the disability community,” Brnovich said in a statement.

But Peter Strojnik, Advocate for Individuals with Disabilities’ lead attorney helping plaintiffs file their lawsuits, said legislators are attempting to infringe on rights federal law has granted to the disabled.

“We have an interesting dynamic in Arizona, which is the dynamic between the political class favoring the businesses and the civil rights class protecting the disabled,” Strojnik said Friday. “Obviously one has greater power than the other.”

Besides Arizona, legislation shielding small businesses against disability lawsuits has been proposed in California, Florida, and Minnesota.

The Arizona measure would require someone alleging a claim under the state’s disability laws to send the business a written notice describing the issue, and to allow the owner at least 60 days to fix the issue if it costs less than $10,000. Problems costing $10,000 or more would give businesses at least 90 days to comply.