Earning disabled

Closed shop after suit over ADA access

A Manhattan restaurateur who shuttered his Italian eatery because it got too expensive to fight a serial plaintiff in court over handicap accessibility is asking a powerful lawmaker to protect other businesses against the same fate.

“There’s a glutton situation happening, and that’s why I wrote Schumer,” said Max Leifer, who owned Da Marcella on West Houston Street until last week.

Leifer wrote to Sen. Chuck Schumer asking the senior lawmaker to revise the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act to limit legal fees collected by plaintiffs’ lawyers and require a notice to businesses of violations before litigation.

“My understanding is that this has become a cottage industry for attorneys obtaining substantial fees,” Leifer wrote in his letter to Schumer.

A spokesman from Schumer’s office declined to comment.

Jose Figueroa, who has a spinal disorder, sued Leifer last year, saying his restaurant lacked a wheelchair ramp after he refused to pay $25,000 to avoid a lawsuit, the business owner told The Post.

Figueroa and his attorney, Stuart Finkelstein, have filed 21 other similar Manhattan federal court cases against businesses since 2017. The rash of local ADA suits is part of a 30 percent up- tick in similar disability-discrimination cases nationally over the last year.

Finkelstein declined to comment on the cases except to call Leifer “disingenuous.” He alleged that Da Marcella’s closing was due to a landlord-tenant dispute. “Not true,” Leifer said. The closure comes after another professional plaintiff, a wheelchair-bound Queens man named Arik Matatov, and his attorney, Jeffrey Neiman, sued 49 Manhattan stores and restaurants that refused to pay $50,000 settlement demands. Neiman said he chose the $50,000 figure because that’s what the state’s attorney general can fine busi- nesses for ADA violations.

Leifer said Finkelstein was demanding $25,000 in fees on top of his own legal-defense costs. Installing an ADA-compliant ramp would require Leifer to sacrifice 25 percent of his restaurant space, he said. So he shut Da Marcella’s doors and laid off eight employees.

A spokeswoman for the AG said, “We encourage anyone who believes they’ve been discriminated against based on a disability to immediately contact our office. We frequently take enforcement action based on these complaints to ensure accessibility at schools, offices, housing complexes, retail centers, poll sites and more.”