Applebee’s Class Action Says Parking Lots Violate ADA

A class action lawsuit claims that an owner of 61 Applebee’s Grill & Bars in the Northeast United States violates the Americans with Disabilities Act by making its facilities inaccessible or difficult to access by people with disabilities.

Plaintiff Amanda Ferguson says she uses a wheelchair because she has spinae bifida, a birth defect characterized by the spinal cord not forming properly.

She claims that she visited an Applebee’s location owned by T.L. Cannon Management and had “unnecessary” difficulty accessing the parking area.

According to Ferguson, the difficulty that she experienced was caused by excessive slopes in the parking lot, as well as a range of other problems.

The Applebee’s class action lawsuit says that the Applebee’s location that Ferguson visited violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, as do multiple other locations owned by the T.L. Cannon Management Corporation. 

Allegedly, the Applebee’s restaurants had a range of problems, including the following:

• Accessible parking spots with slopes exceeding 2.1 percent
• No level landing surfaces at the top of the curb ramps
• Obstructions in the corner of parking spots labeled as accessible

Allegedly, many other disabled people are affected by these problems, in addition to Ferguson.

The Applebee’s class action lawsuit says that these elements violate the Americans with Disabilities Act because they make the Applebee’s locations inaccessible or not easily accessible by wheelchair users or other people with disabilities. Allegedly, this denies them full and equal access to the facilities, as required by the ADA.

Ferguson asserts that the company’s violations of the ADA are systemic, and demonstrate that the company “either employees policies and practice that fail to design, construct, and alter its facilities so that they are readily accessible and usable and/or [the company] employs maintenance and operational policies and practices that are unable to maintain accessibility.”

The Applebee’s wheelchair access class action lawsuit goes on to stress that the designs are common across T.C. Cannon Management’s locations, and that the designs and policies governing them are centralized.

Ferguson seeks an injunction requiring T.L. Cannon to remove the barriers that are currently in place in their Applebee’s facilities. She also seeks an injunction requiring T.L. Cannon to change its policies and practices that enable the inaccessibility to continue.

The Applebee’s accessibility class action lawsuit also seeks any other relief that the court deems appropriate, for Ferguson and other affected individuals.

Have you experienced accessibility problems at Applebee’s? Let us know your experience in the comments below.

Ferguson is represented by Benjamin J. Sweet of The Sweet Law Firm PC, and by Jonathan D. Miller of Nye Stirling Hale & Miller LLP.

The Applebee’s Wheelchair Accessibility Class Action Lawsuit is Amanda Ferguson v. T.L. Cannon Management Corporation, Case No. 1:19-cv-01101-FLS-CLH, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.

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