Wheelchair User Files Class Action Over ‘Excessive’ Slopes in Pizza Hut Parking Lots

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A proposed class action lawsuit alleges the operators of more than 100 Pizza Hut restaurants throughout the eastern United States have failed to ensure that the facilities’ parking lots are fully accessible to customers with mobility disabilities.

The 16-page lawsuit was filed in North Carolina by Rachelle Chapman, a wheelchair user and advocate for people with disabilities who was featured on TLC’s “Rattled: A Paralyzed Mother’s Story.” The plaintiff says she experienced “excessive sloping conditions” in the parking lot of a Durham, North Carolina Pizza Hut that subjected her to “unnecessary difficulty and risk of physical harm” when entering and exiting her vehicle and navigating the parking lot.

According to the case, defendants Tasty Hut, LLC; Tasty Hut of NC, LLC; and TH PROPCO, LLC have failed to ensure that their more than 116 Pizza Hut restaurants across North Carolina, Kentucky, South Carolina, Illinois, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia are equipped with accessible parking spaces, access aisles and curb ramps that comply with the sloping requirements specified by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The plaintiff looks to require the defendants to fix the allegedly excessive slopes in their Pizza Hut parking lots and modify their policies to ensure that the restaurants’ parking areas remain compliant with ADA specifications.

The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff’s investigators visited 15 of the defendants’ Pizza Hut restaurants and reported excessive sloping conditions that allegedly include:

• Curb ramps leading to building entrances with running slopes exceeding 8.33 percent;
• Parking surfaces with slopes of more than 2.1 percent;
• Landings at the top of curb ramps with running and cross slopes of more than 2.1 percent; and
• Curb ramps that projected into access aisles.

According to the suit, the “widespread excessive sloping conditions” present at the defendants’ restaurants are proof of the companies’ “discriminatory, unreasonable, [and] inadequate” internal maintenance protocols and will continue to reoccur absent a change in procedure.

The plaintiff looks to represent all wheelchair users with a qualified mobility disability who were denied full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages or accommodations at any of the defendants’ locations in the U.S. on the basis of the disability because they encountered accessibility barriers stemming from the companies’ failure to comply with the ADA’s slope regulations in parking areas.

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