It all started with a parking spot.
On a breezy afternoon in September 2017, Chris Langer couldn’t find one that would accommodate his van and the ramp he uses for his wheelchair behind a San Diego lobster shop.
What transpired next has been the subject of arguments before two federal courts and opened a wide door to more federal disability lawsuits in California, home to more of these lawsuits in the last litigious decade than any other state.
Four months after that fall day, Langer filed a disability access lawsuit in federal court against the lobster shop, a smoke shop in the same building and the building’s owners, Milan and Diana Kiser, claiming a violation of his rights.
Langer has filed more than 2,000 claims like those over the past decade or so. For the last two years, his case against the Kisers was headed to defeat, with a federal judge ruling against him and questioning his motivation.
But last month, Langer prevailed before a three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Attorneys who argue federal disability cases say that victory, which itself is being appealed, could open the floodgates to more federal disability rights lawsuits after a brief slowdown last year.
If Langer wins the next round, attorneys who represent businesses sued in disability cases worry that the case would set a precedent for a broader claim of standing to sue among plaintiffs in California disabled access lawsuits.
Typically, these cases are settled — out of tens of thousands of federal disability rights lawsuits filed nationally, only a couple dozen have ever gone to trial, according to a review of federal appellate court decisions by Texas…
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