An advocacy group that has come under fire for filing hundreds of lawsuits against Valley businesses has now flooded Arizona Attorney General’s Mark Brnovich's office with complaints.
In essence, it's a political statement, an effort to call out Brnovich, who has taken a hard line on the aggressive tactics used by Advocates for Individuals with Disabilities (AID).
Since the beginning of the year, the local non-profit has sued more than 1,700 businesses for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. That led Brnovich to intervene recently on behalf of more than a thousand of the defendants.
Brnovich argues, among other things, that AID is "abusing" the judicial system with "frivolous" lawsuits for its own gain. Many of those sued end up paying thousands of dollars to go to court or to settle.
Brnovich also said the group should be coming to his office first with possible violations, rather than immediately suing a business.
This week, AID took him up on that request and delivered twenty boxes of ADA complaints.
"I’ll guarantee that those 9,000 cases are not going to get resolved in months like the cases AID has filed have for the most part been," attorney Jack Wilenchik, who is representing AID, told KJZZ.
"AID has accomplished more in the space of months than the attorney general's office has done in the space of 22, 26 years," he said.
The attorney general receives about 100 complaints a year for possible violations of the Arizonans with Disabilities Act, the state version of the federal law.
But Brnovich's spokesperson Ryan Anderson said they intend to investigate every single one delivered by AID.
"What AID has done is give us 90 years' worth of complaints at once and then started boasting that we can't get them all done fast enough," Anderson said.
Anderson could not give an exact time frame for how long it will take to resolve all of them, but said it will be "all hands on deck" to deal with the deluge of complaints.
“We contact the business and then we get the situation resolved. What AID has accomplished is collecting likely a million dollars off of settlements from businesses over technical signage violations that did not bar anyone's access,” Anderson said.
AID's lawsuits focus on parking lot regulations like the height of a sign or the width of an accessible space.
A judge recently granted the state's motion to consolidate more than a thousand of the lawsuits. Brnovich has said he intends to ask the judge to dismiss the lawsuits.
Meanwhile, AID has asked a panel of appellate judges to transfer the case to another judge and void everything that has happened since late August.
