Ass’n for Disabled Ams. Inc. v. Reinfeld Anderson Family, Ltd. – April 2015 (Summary)

ADA – ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES

Ass’n for Disabled Ams. Inc. v. Reinfeld Anderson Family, Ltd., No. 1:12-CV-23798 (S.D. Fla. Apr. 21, 2015)

The United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida denied a physician’s motion to dismiss an Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) lawsuit filed by a former patient finding that the patient had standing to sue and was entitled to discovery to prove that he was retaliated against when the physician terminated their patient-physician relationship. Plaintiff, a disabled, wheelchair-bound patient, visited the private offices of defendant, a physician. The patient alleged that the physician’s office was not handicap accessible and sued, seeking permanent injunctive relief under the ADA that would require the physician to make his office ADA-compliant. After the patient filed the lawsuit, the physician terminated the patient-physician relationship, informing the patient that the lawsuit he filed created a conflict of interest such that the physician could no longer treat him. The trial court initially dismissed the lawsuit, finding that because the physician-patient relationship had been terminated, the patient did not have standing to seek the injunctive relief as the patient no longer had any intent of returning to the physician’s office. Subsequently, however, the patient amended his complaint to add an allegation of retaliation under the ADA on the basis of the termination of the physician-patient relationship.

Upon reconsideration, the court denied the physician’s motion to dismiss and allowed the patient’s claims to move into discovery. The court explained that it had been error to dismiss the suit due to lack of standing given that the issue of standing is reviewed when a complaint is filed, and that the patient-physician relationship had not been terminated until after the filing of the complaint. Additionally, under the ADA, a plaintiff must only intend to return to the alleged non-compliant building in the future in order to seek an injunction, which is a very liberal standard. The court also determined that the patient properly pled that he was retaliated against under the ADA when the physician terminated their patient-physician relationship. The patient only had to allege that the termination of the patient-physician relationship was not “wholly unrelated” to his ADA protected activity, the filing of his lawsuit, which can be shown by a temporal proximity. The court did note that discovery may ultimately show that their patient-physician relationship was terminated due to a non-retaliatory reason – the conflict of interest created by the ongoing lawsuit – but at this point in the litigation the claim could not be dismissed.