by Colin G. Meeker, Attorney at Law
email: [email protected] :: 
office: 330.253.3337 :: 
mobile: 330.603.7173
A local man files a breach of contract lawsuit against Summit County for alleged improper repairs with the improvements that were agreed to be made to the county parking deck.
Spencer Neal of Akron filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court in June 2018 against the county, asserting that the county was in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and the Rehabilitation Act of 1990 regarding the Summit County Parking Deck located at 200 S. High St. Said lawsuit was dismissed after Neal and the county came to an agreement that the county would remediate certain alleged accessibility barriers.
After the agreement, Neal was optimistic about the outcome of the settlement negotiations and was proud that he got to further his goal that all public and private entities will educate themselves on the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act so that he, and the rest of the disabled community, can go everywhere and do all the same things that mobile people can do on a daily basis.
The county also seemed optimistic about the agreement, having already made some modifications when Akron Beacon Journal quoted Greta Johnson, the county’s public information officer, as saying “We take accessibility very seriously and are working to improve accessibility in the parking deck and everywhere people need to be in the county.”1
All modifications to the parking deck were to be completed by August 1, 2022.
August 1, 2022, came and passed, and Neal continued to face obstacles in the parking deck. Optimistic as he is, he assumed that the county was simply behind schedule. In January of 2023, Neal again enlisted the help of law firm Blakemore, Meeker & Bowler Co., L.P.A., who Neal employed for the initial lawsuit, to reach out to the county and notify them of the deficiencies.
On March 8, 2023, the site was inspected by an ADA expert. Although Neal already knew what the inspection would reveal through encountering the barriers personally, Neal was crushed to learn that the county had not, in fact, done all that they promised to fix.
Still, Neal tried to push through and persevere, but he has decided that enough is enough. Summit County made a legally binding agreement to fix specific barriers to access in the Sumit County Parking Deck. It is not fair to Neal, or to the disabled community, to allow the county to go back on their word and leave clear accessibility issues present.
Colin Meeker, an attorney with Blakemore, Meeker & Bowler Co., L.P.A, had this to say, “My disappointment knows no bounds. If you can’t trust your own local government to look out for the disabled community, who can you trust?”
On October 2, 2024, Neal filed suit against the county in the Summit County Court of Common Pleas. Neal and the team at Blakemore, Meeker & Bowler are hopeful that the Court will force the county to not take shortcuts in the repairs to the parking deck this time and that the disabled community will be able to access the parking deck as easily as mobile individuals do.
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