This was published in the comments section of Letters to the Editor at The Dallas Morning News - Bet you 10-1 NorthPark Makes Them Delete It

tE. Ponymous

3:32 PM on 12/14/2011

NorthPark Center may be one of the most visited malls in America, but it should be the last place anyone with a disability should spend their money or visit.

Anyone with respect for those who are disabled should avoid spending any time at this mall. There are a multitude of other great shopping destinations available, where the management respects the rights of the disabled to access their facilities as well as accessing their patron's wallets.

It is wrapped up in its best holiday decor so as to display the spirit of the season, whereas what goes on in the mall is very nasty indeed and those that operate the mall, NorthPark Management Company, is the story of greed and excess, wherein disabled shoppers have been continuously discriminated against by the owners of the mall to generate enormous amounts of money by flouting the law with regards to the Americans With Disabilities Act.

As some of you may have noticed, the valet parking service is no longer allowed to obstruct access to disabled parking spaces by enclosing them with the valet barricades, and charging disabled persons valet parking fees to make use of these disabled spaces.

That is my work and a burden for me to over the past three years and four months of fighting with the Department of Justice and NorthPark to get changed.

On November 28, 2011 NorthPark Management finally signed an agreement with the Department of Justice to bring their facilities into compliance with the ADA and provide evidence of that compliance within 60 days of their signing.

The DOJ staff leaned on me, and I mean leaned on me heavily, in order to convince me to participate in their mediation process, before asking for a complete investigation. They suggested that my complaint would be looked upon less favorably by the DOJ staff if I did not try to resolve the complaint prior to asking the DOJ to investigate. I foolishly agreed to do so.

In preparation for this mediation I incurred attorney fees of the nearly $9,000 which I am still out of pocket with no hope of assistance from the DOJ in recovering any of it. It seems unfair to me that I as a private citizen should have to subsidize the DOJ in it's actions and then when a settlement benefiting all disabled persons, be left uncompensated.

My attorneys turned out enormous amounts of documents and communications leading up to the mediation. Turns out the whole mediation process is a sham. The only party to possibly benefit from it were the folks at NorthPark Management, because they could say they acted in good faith by going to mediation, despite their conduct therein. All the while the could still collect an enormous amount of revenue by leaving their valet and parking arrangements in violation of the ADA.

Both Carmen Romero and her supervisor, Jana Erickson at the DOJ have known all along that I had spent out of pocket these expenses. Yet they negotiated the agreement with NorthPark which will require them to bring their facilities into compliance with the ADA and it was Ms. Romero and Ms. Erickson who presented to me, a waiver written by the attorneys for NorthPark, giving up any and all of my rights to make any further attempt to collect my out of pocket expenses.

That's right folks, the Department of Justice expected me to just swallow the loss of nearly $8,000 in addition to the indignities and abuse NorthPark's security and contractors heaped on me when I tried to get access to a disabled parking space the day described in my original complaint filed with the DOJ and which you can read on a separate page of this blog.

In my opinion, any reasonable person might expect that they, Ms. Romero and Ms. Erickson would at least have tried to get me reimbursement for my expenses before suggesting I give up all other legal remedies for collecting them on my own. I think that speaks volumes about the character of both these ladies. I refused to sign the Waiver and Release in exchange for $1,000 because I hope to recover all of my expenses, somehow, in the future. But as I live on disability I no longer have any funds available to pursue this matter through the courts.


To add insult to injury, Carmen Romero, Department of Justice, Civil Rights Section, Disabilities Division, on the day she presented me with the waiver from NorthPark refused to provide me with a copy of the settlement of my own complaint. Consequently, I have had to file a Freedom of Information Request and will probably have to wait months to get the document(s).

Is this the sort of location and operation that you would wish to support with your holiday dollars? I hope not. I hope that the holiday season reflects not only your desire to spread good will through gifts and charities but also the larger belief that retailers should not be compensated for taking advantage of the disabled.

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