While working as Georgia prosecutor, lawyer filed more than 600 disability lawsuits
A lawyer who filed more than 600 Americans With Disabilities Act lawsuits in federal court against hotels and was found to have repeatedly inflated his attorney fees has been suspended from practicing in Maryland.
At the time, Tristan Wade Gillespie was also employed as an assistant district attorney in Georgia and in private practice, the Maryland Supreme Court opinion states. According to the State Bar of Georgia website, Gillespie has no record of discipline there and is a member in good standing.
Gillespie filed lawsuits against hotels throughout the country claiming hotel websites lacked information about accessibility as required by the ADA, the opinion states. The lawsuits were filed on behalf of two plaintiffs who were posing as customers but did not intend to visit the sites, the opinion says.
In July 2023, Gillespie was suspended from practicing in federal court in Maryland; that suspension has ended, and he can apply for reinstatement to the Maryland Bar after a year has passed, the opinion states.
Previously, a disciplinary panel found that Gillespie misrepresented the amount of time he spent on each case in a way that was “repeated and blatant,” according to the opinion.
He filed attorney fee petitions that often requested a higher billable rate, claiming that litigation was causing negative publicity and limiting his ability to find other work, the court said. However, at the time Gillespie filed these fee petitions, he was employed full-time as an assistant district attorney and worked at a firm filing the tester cases, according to the opinion.
He’s also been disciplined in several other jurisdictions, including New York.
The disciplinary panel previously found Gillespie failed to adequately communicate with clients and failed to act with candor toward the court and opposing counsel, the Maryland Supreme Court noted in its decision. He was also found to have failed to “fully acknowledge the seriousness of his transgressions,” the court said.
Writing for the unanimous court, Justice Jonathan Biran found that a four-month suspension, as requested by Gillespie and the Attorney Grievance Commission of Maryland, was not enough. Biran wrote that the “egregious nature” of Gillespie’s misconduct warranted a more serious sanction.
“The protection of the public and the integrity of the legal profession demand more,” Biran wrote.
The panel found that Gillespie was “an experienced litigator who should and did know better,” Biran wrote.
It also noted that Gillespie initially said under oath he wasn’t aware a firm investigator was the father of an ADA client’s grandchild but later admitted he knew.
Maryland Bar Counsel Tom DeGonia declined to comment as did William C. Brennan Jr., Gillespie’s attorney.
The allegations against Gillespie are serious, says Robert D. Dinerstein, immediate past chair of the American Bar Association Commission on Disability Rights.
Also co-chair of the Civil Rights and Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, Dinerstein says there are a few lawyers who file multiple cases in the way Gillespie did, but there are still challenges to ensuring enforcement of accessibility under the ADA.
The allegations depict someone with a “business that is quite problematic,” and are not “indicative of the bar in this area, says Dinerstein, a professor of law emeritus at American University Washington College of Law.
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