Chile Lindo Closing Doors After Landlord Caught in Barrage of Disability Suits
Categories: Law & Order
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| Paula Tejeda is hitting the streets once again |
Yet closing down will not affect the damages for the past incidents cited in the lawsuit, Frankovich says. Chile Lindo owner Paula Tejeda "can do whatever she wants to do, and it will have no effect. She could have avoided it with the very minimal cost of buying a six-foot ramp from [Prairie View Industries] for 180 dollars." Actually, in Yates letter sent Tejeda on March 16 to complain about not being able to enter the take-out restaurant (which Tejeda says she ripped up in disgust), he suggested she contact the company to get a ramp and provided a phone number. Frankovich says neither he nor Craig Yates has any interest in the ramp company.
As for Tejeda's earlier claim that there's no room for a wheelchair to enter the restaurant, Frankovich argues, "I beg to differ that there's not enough room for a person in a wheelchair to go into that premises and order their food like anyone else, instead of being like a beggar on the sidewalk."
Original post:
"The Girl From Empanada," aka Paula Tejeda, has decided to close her restaurant, Chile Lindo, after her landlord was sued by a wheelchair-using man for not having a ramp leading into the takeout eatery. Tejeda says she wants to save her landlord from potential damages of at least $1,000 every time the plaintiff is denied entry to the empanada kitchen with a six-inch step.
"This is not fair to my landlord, who's been very good to me," she says of David and Sandra Lucchesi. David Lucchesi didn't immediately return a phone message Tuesday night.
Tejeda says she will continue to sell empanadas out of a basket to Mission bargoers -- the way she did for months in order raise the money to open the brick-and-mortar location on 16th Street at the beginning of this year.
Tejeda says she wants to be able to keep her payroll of employees and pay the bills until the lawsuit is sorted out.
We first wrote about the lawsuit last week -- one of an onslaught of Americans with Disabilities Act suits against Mission eateries and/or their landlords from Craig Yates, a disabled client of San Francisco attorney Thomas Frankovich. After filing suit in July, Yates last week returned to Chile Lindo to buy empanadas, and Tejeda excoriated him for coming to the restaurant for food while suing her landlord. Yates called Frankovich about the rumble, who then told us that Tejeda needed an "attitude fix ... It's like saying 'You're black, you're not going to eat at my restaurant because you're not welcome here.' Take her legs off and tell her to go crawl in there."
Well, it now looks like Tejeda will be needing those legs more than ever as she hits the pavement -- empanada basket in hand.
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