In a Steven Spielberg movie from 1982, Poltergeist, a young girl is terrorized by paranormal activity. By the end of the movie the ghosts are gone. However, in Poltergeist II, the demons return and continue to terrorize. In a famous scene, a little girl screams, “They’re back.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqSxQrDYsIc
I am reminded of this line in the movie as I see that Theresa Brooke and her attorney, Peter Kristofer Strojnik, are back suing local hotels for purported ADA access violations. It has been many months since Brooke filed multiple actions contending primarily that hotels did not have the appropriate lift in swimming pools and spas. Those cases died, particularly since Brooke did not claim she even attempted to come to town. Rather, she paid an investigator to travel up and down the Valley to see which hotels had lifts and which ones did not.
The current round of cases involves a couple of swimming pool lifts. Brooke still has not alleged that she visited those hotels or attempted to use the swimming pool.
However, the majority of cases allege a violation of loading zone access requirements. Brooke claims that she came to Fresno on January 13, 2018 and visited various hotels. If the hotel did not have appropriate loading zone access, she left without checking in. (That’s very convenient when she was probably not attempting to check in anyway.)
We have written about ADA access cases, as well as about Brooke and Strojnik. We expect more cases to be filed. After all, why make a trip to Fresno and only visit a handful of hotels when you can visit scores of them and file so many more lawsuits.
We encourage property owners to contact their legal counsel. We also encourage them to contact an access specialist to inspect their properties for potential ADA access violations and to fix them before a lawsuit is filed.