By ROB JOHNSON
Staff Writer
 

Judge Says 25 Courthouses Named in Lane Suit Aren't Similar Enough to Qualify

Disabled Tennesseans who may have had difficulty entering one of 25 county courthouses won't be able to share in potential damage awards should individual plaintiffs prevail in a long-running federal lawsuit, a judge ruled yesterday.

U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell denied class-action status in Lane vs. Tennessee, a suit brought by a paraplegic man who refused either to crawl or be carried up the Polk County Courthouse steps to answer to a criminal traffic complaint. He sued after he was charged with failure to appear.

The 1998 lawsuit eventually landed in the U.S. Supreme Court, which held in May that the Americans With Disabilities Act gave citizens the right to sue for damages if a state does not live up to the act's promises of equal access.

Now the lawsuit is proceeding in U.S. District Court in Nashville. The plaintiffs had argued last week that the case be certified as class action and make eligible for potential awards any adult Tennessean who had difficulty walking or climbing stairs in one of 25 county courthouses since Jan. 26, 1993. Furthermore, they would have had to have been discriminated against because of their disability.

Campbell denied the motion yesterday.

In a nutshell, he found that there were too many variables to make class-action claims viable.

He wrote that the plaintiffs had not proved the proposed group met the class-action criteria required by law, criteria that require a high degree of commonality among the class.

''The courthouses in the individual defendant counties are not the same,'' he wrote. ''They have unique designs and unique features — or lack thereof. The individual courthouses were built at different times, are in different states of repair, and are maintained and operated by different entities. Liability for one courthouse does not necessarily mean liability for another courthouse.''

Therefore, determining liability would be different in each instance, he ruled, and there would be no common question of damages.

''Obviously, we are disappointed by the decision,'' said Martha Lafferty, an attorney with Tennessee Protection and Advocacy Inc., which is pursuing the case on behalf of Lane and five other plaintiffs. She said that plaintiffs are considering whether an appeal of Campbell's ruling is warranted.

The plaintiffs had argued that Tennessee's overall program for ensuring ADA-compliant access to the state's courts has been insufficient and that the program itself was the common thread that warranted class-action status.

The defendant counties, many of which have old, historic courthouses, are Polk, Bledsoe, Cannon, Chester, Claiborne, Clay, Cocke, Decatur, Fayette, Grainger, Hancock, Hawkins, Hickman, Houston, Jackson, Jefferson, Johnson, Lake, Lewis, Meigs, Moore, Perry, Pickett, Trousdale and Van Buren.

The case is set for trial in 2005.

Rob Johnson can be reached at 664-2162 or at rhjohnson@tennessean.com.