UPMC has become the latest target of a disability-rights activist who has retained a Pittsburgh-based law firm to sue nearly two dozen corporations in federal court in recent years over alleged violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In a complaint filed Friday in U.S. District Court here, Josie Badger, 34, of Ellwood City claimed that UPMC has not complied with the law in parking lots and pathways of several of its hospitals and clinics. 

Ms. Badger, who uses a wheelchair, said she was denied full and equal access to UPMC facilities because of her disability. 

The lawsuit said that in the past year, Ms. Badger has visited UPMC Passavant in McCandless and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC in Lawrenceville “where she experienced unnecessary difficulty and risk due to excessive slopes in a purportedly accessible parking space and because of other ADA accessibility violations ...” 

Ms. Badger is seeking class-action status.

“Every UPMC facility has a commitment to making sure that our patients, staff and visitors can fully access our locations and services,” UPMC spokeswoman Gloria Kreps said. “We are currently reviewing the complaint.”

The lawsuit names eight UPMC properties that it alleges have accessibility violations. UPMC St. Margaret in Lincoln-Lemington and UPMC Shadyside, as well as several outpatient locations were included. 

The properties all have accessible parking spaces with slopes exceeding 2.1 percent, according to the suit. The ADA standard for accessible parking spaces does not allow for a slope steeper than 2 percent. 

Other alleged violations at some of the properties, the suit said, included accessible spaces not marked with the required signs, no spaces designated as van-accessible, and curb ramps that had a flare with a slope greater than 10 percent.

“Unfortunately, more than 27 years after the ADA’s passage, many public accommodations are still not accessible. As a result, litigation is often the only effective means of enforcement for these important legal protections,” Ms. Badger’s lawyer, Benjamin Sweet, said Monday.

“UPMC has a legal duty to construct and maintain accessible parking features at its numerous facilities,” Mr. Sweet said. “With this said, the sloping threshold in particular is a real issue in a hilly region like western Pennsylvania, where excessive sloping can render a public accommodation wholly unusable for folks with mobility disabilities.”

Mr. Sweet said his firm has filed suits throughout the country on behalf of disabled people.

Ms. Badger herself has been a plaintiff in 20 other cases against such defendants as Costco, Circle K, Sears, 7-Eleven, Advance Auto Parts and Turkey Hill.

Ms. Badger was crowned Ms. Wheelchair America in 2011 and has a doctorate in health care ethics 

Other defendants sued in Pittsburgh by Mr. Sweet and his firm, Carlson Lynch Sweet Kilpela & Carpenter using other lead plaintiffs include Speedway, Walgreens and Cracker Barrel.

The Cracker Barrel litigation ended in August with a settlement that paid the law firm $830,000 and the lead plaintiff $7,500, court records show. It was the culmination of what Mr. Sweet called 2½ years of “time-consuming and, ultimately, needless litigation.”

The plaintiff, as reported by the Associated Press, was Sarah Heinzl, of Pittsburgh, who plays on the U.S. Women's Wheelchair Basketball National Team. She sued in 2014, claiming that the slope of parking spaces at the Cracker Barrel restaurant in Robinson caused her wheelchair to roll away before she could get into it. She said she had to bring her mother along to help her when she wanted to eat there.

Mr. Sweet said he was unable to provide details about any settlements “because most if not all of the settlement agreements in those matters are subject to confidentiality provisions.”

The Cracker Barrel settlement — the only public one Mr. Sweet and his firm have handled in parking cases — called for the company to bring the parking facilities of 107 restaurants up to federal standards.

Mr. Sweet said Ms. Badger wasn’t suing for the money and added that “most plaintiffs do not generally benefit economically from bringing ADA suits, as there is no provision for money damages....The reason courageous people like Josie Badger participate in accessibility litigation is simple: they want public accommodations to simply comply with a law that has been in place for nearly three decades.”

Ms. Badger’s lawsuit requests that UPMC takes steps to remove the architectural barriers and bring its facilities up to ADA standards.

UPMC’s “centralized design, construction, alteration, maintenance and operational policies and practices have systematically and routinely violated the ADA by designing, constructing and altering facilities so that they are not readily accessible and usable...” the suit said.

“From where our clients sit, the question shouldn’t be why are accessibility lawsuits being filed..” Mr. Sweet said. “Rather, the better question is why are ADA lawsuits of this type still necessary nearly 30 years after the law was enacted?”

Andrew Goldstein: agoldstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1352. Jonathan D. Silver: jsilver@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1962 or on Twitter @jsilverpg.

First Published: March 26, 2018, 10:42 p.m.
Updated: March 27, 2018, 12:37 a.m.