The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has busted a frequent filer of disability discrimination lawsuits known as “The Sheriff,” ruling that Jarek Molski crossed the line between “aggressive advocacy of legitimate claims and the frivolous assertion of false allegations.”

“False or grossly exaggerated claims of injury, especially when made with the intent to coerce settlement, are at odds with our system of justice,” the court said in affirming a trial judge who declared Molski a vexatious litigant in a case involving a Chinese restaurant.

Molski, a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair, has filed about 400 lawsuits against restaurants and other businesses in California since 2003. He sues under both the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides injunctive relief and attorney's fees, and California's Unruh Act, which entitles him to statutory damages of at least $4,000.

But in December 2004, U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie found Molski a vexatious litigant and ordered him to seek a judge's permission before filing an ADA suit in the Central District of California. He noted, among other things, that Molski often filed multiple complaints against separate businesses claiming that he had suffered identical injuries at each establishment on the same day.

Ruling that Rafeedie did not abuse his discretion, the 9th Circuit said in a per curiam opinion, “Common sense dictates that Molski would have figured out some way to avoid repetitive injury-causing activity; even a young child who touches a hot stove quickly learns to avoid pain by not repeating the conduct.”

The court recognized that because damages are not recoverable under the ADA, “most ADA suits are brought by a small number of private plaintiffs who view themselves as champions of the disabled.” But as important as the goal of disabled access may be, it continued,

serial litigation can become vexatious when, as here, a large number of nearly-identical complaints contain factual allegations that are contrived, exaggerated, and defy common sense.

Molski has taken a much lower profile since he was declared vexatious, filing only a handful of cases in the Southern District of California and a few state courts. In March, a different 9th Circuit panel reversed a defense judgment in his case against a Woodland Hills, Calif., coffee shop and ordered a new trial.

The “narrow issue in the case was whether [the defendant] failed to identify and remove architectural barriers,” the court said in Molski v. M.J. Cable, 481 F.3d 724, finding evidence of Molski's ulterior motives for suing businesses “far more prejudicial than probative.”

A key issue in any remaining Molski cases may be whether, or to what extent, the vexatious litigant order is admissible against him.