AI as a Force Multiplier: The New Era of Serial ADA Litigation

by Mofe Koya, Associate Member, University of Cincinnati Law Review Vol. 94

I. Introduction

Between 2009 and 2023, a total of 103,172 American with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) lawsuits were filed nationwide.¹ Of these cases, more than 80% were brought by serial litigants, also known as “professional plaintiffs” or “high volume plaintiffs”—individuals who file at least eight lawsuits annually.² These litigants have contributed to the 349% increase in ADA lawsuits filed nationwide from 2013 to 2021.³ Often times, serial litigants will use boilerplate complaints to sue many of the same types of businesses without ever visiting the business in person or seeking to purchase anything at all, demanding monetary compensation with settlements averaging $10,000 to $25,000 each.⁴ Today, artificial intelligence (“AI”) may be the most powerful legal assistant serial litigants have ever had. With a few prompts from the user, it can produce polished pleadings, organize evidence, and frame arguments persuasive enough to resemble professional legal work. But speed comes with risk: AI can just as easily mass produce ‑error filled‑ claims, fabricated citations, or boilerplate filings designed to overwhelm. This new landscape begs the question: what does AI truly mean for the future of serial litigation?

This Article will examine the intersection of serial litigation and the rise of AI. Part II provides context on the ADA and explains how its structure attracts serial litigants, while also exploring the psychology that prompts these continuous lawsuits. Part III discusses the growing role of AI in litigation and analyzes how the preexisting faults of the ADA’s enforcement structure may be exacerbated by overreliance on AI-assisted litigation and details the potential negative effects of AI-assisted litigation on the court system. Part IV concludes by synthesizing these findings and highlighting the implications for the legal system.

II. Background

A. The Americans With Disabilities Act

The ADA was passed with the purpose of providing a “clear and comprehensive national mandate for the elimination of discrimination against individuals with disabilities.”⁵ Title III of the Act, which outlines the required accommodations to be made by places of public accommodation, has become one of its most attractive sections for serial litigants.⁶ A “reasonable accommodation,” as defined by the ADA, is “a change that accommodates [people] with disabilities so they can do the job without causing the employer ‘undue hardship.’”⁷ Such accommodations may include acquiring or modifying equipment or devices, modifying work schedules to allow individuals to work part-time, adjusting or modifying examinations, training materials or policies, providing readers and interpreters, and making the workplace readily accessible to and usable by people with disabilities.⁸

Although its purpose is inherently curative—requiring owners of businesses to remove architectural, communication, and operational barriers—Title III’s “enforcement structure has increasingly produced an environment where private litigation is driven less by a genuine commitment to accessibility and more by the financial incentives.”⁹ This is because, under federal law, private plaintiffs who sue under Title III cannot receive compensatory damages; they can only receive injunctive relief and attorney’s fees.¹⁰ However, some states do allow statutory enhancements under state law.¹¹ Not surprisingly, these states, like Florida, California, and New York, see the majority of ADA claims.¹²

In Acheson Hotels, LLC v. Laufer, the Supreme Court addressed the issue of a circuit split created by a single plaintiff who had filed hundreds of lawsuits against hotels across the country. Acheson filed against hotels whose websites failed to state whether they had accessible rooms for people with disabilities, regardless of whether she intended to stay there.¹³ While Laufer was usually able to settle, some hotels began to push back, arguing she had not suffered any actual injury because she could not “be injured by the absence of information about rooms she ha[d] no plan to reserve.”¹⁴ Though Laufer ultimately decided to voluntarily dismiss her claims and the Court dismissed the case as moot, Justice Thomas’s concurrence found that Laufer lacked standing because “the ADA prohibits only discrimination based on disability–it does not create a right to information.”¹⁵ In his reasoning, Justice Thomas explicitly contrasted the present case from Fair Housing Act “testers” because:

In contrast to the ADA, the Fair Housing Act explicitly prohibits “represent[ing] to any person because of race . . . that any dwelling is not available for inspection, sale, or rental when such dwelling is in fact so available.” Accordingly, when Havens Realty told a black tester that no apartments were available but told a white tester that it had vacancies, the Court found that the black tester had standing to sue. The Court explained that the statute created “a legal right to truthful information about available housing.”¹⁶

In accordance with Acheson, federal courts have begun to increasingly dismiss cases where the plaintiff cannot prove they genuinely intended to visit the business they are suing.¹⁷ As a result, state courts who have not adopted the strict “injury-in-fact” requirements are seeing more ADA claims by serial litigants who want to avoid the more difficult standards of federal court.¹⁸

While financial incentives and procedural structures explain the general rise of ADA litigation, they do not fully account for the behavior of plaintiffs who file dozens of cases each year.¹⁹ To understand this subset of extreme filers, it is useful to consider research on hyperlitigious behavior.

B. Psychology of Serial Litigants

While monetary motivations are likely at the forefront of many serial litigants, the “hyperlitigious person” has also been studied in a medical context.²⁰ An article in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law describes the hyperlitigious person as an individual “who makes excessive and egregious use of the legal system for a primarily nonlegal purpose.”²¹ The phenomena was first described by German psychiatrist Johann Ludwig Casper, who asserted:

[A]ll human beings strongly resent real or imagined threats to their basic rights, leading them to take legal action to protect their rights … [and when] these individuals are not granted the rights they desire or are otherwise displeased with the outcome of legal proceedings, they become fixated on attaining justice. This fixation begins a downward spiral and eventually results in a full-blown delusional disorder.²²

Casper’s views regarding the serial litigant expanded from Germany to France, eventually being replaced by what French psychiatrist coined “delusions of revindication.”²³ Persons suffering from delusions of revindication “perceived that they had lost things that rightfully belonged to them and were bitterly revolting against the person or entity responsible for the seizure.”²⁴

Hyperlitigious behavior as a concept has been less recognized in English-speaking countries, including the United States. However, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (“DSM”) and the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (“ICD”) reference delusional disorders that resemble hyperlitigious behavior.²⁵ Paranoia querulans, also known as litigious paranoia, is recognized under ICD-10 and DSM-5, and is defined as “a type of paranoid disorder characterized by constant quarreling, claims of persecution, and insistence that one’s rights have been breached.”²⁶ This research does not suggest that most serial ADA plaintiffs suffer from diagnosable disorders, but it offers a framework for understanding why a subset of extreme filers may exhibit persistent, grievance-driven litigation patterns.

C. Impact of Artificial Intelligence Tools

Psychological research adds some context as to why certain individuals may be predisposed to pursue ADA litigation with unusual persistence. However, the modern landscape introduces an additional variable that significantly alters the dynamics of serial filing: AI. These tools have the capacity to streamline legal research by “reading case files, extracting key points, [and] drafting [summaries].”²⁷ As a result, traits that previously manifested in repeated filings can now translate into exponentially higher volumes of litigation, raising new concerns for courts, businesses, and the ADA’s intended enforcement structure.

Seyfarth Shaw LLP (“Seyfarth”), an AmLaw 100 law firm headquartered in Chicago, reported a 40% increase in “federal pro se ADA Title III lawsuits filed in 2025 than 2024.”²⁸ Seyfarth claims that the majority of pro se litigants they encountered use AI tools to help them litigate.²⁹ An article by NBC News noted this trend as well, quoting a paralegal at Phoenix‑based firm who said she has “seen more and more pro se litigants in the last year than I have in probably my entire career,” in reference to the growing use of AI chatbots like ChatGPT and PerplexityPro in litigation.³⁰ While the rise in AI usage can be seen as a beneficial advancement for the private enforcement of ADA claims, Seyfarth points out that there also consequences. Unlike actual lawyers who have been trained in professional ethics, “pro se litigants have been known to file briefs with fake cases and bombard defendants with frivolous accusations, demands or motions,” resulting in higher defense costs and additional burdens on courts tasked with managing such filings.³¹

III. Discussion

A. Structural Vulnerabilities in Title III Enforcement

The rise of AI usage in litigation, particularly in ADA claims that already attract hyperlitigious filers, presents significant structural concerns. The enforcement framework of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act relies on private litigation to ensure compliance.³² Because federal law limits relief primarily to injunctive remedies and attorney’s fees, the system has incentivized repeated filings in jurisdictions that provide additional statutory damages under state law. Even before the widespread use of AI, this enforcement structure created conditions in which a small number of individuals could benefit from filing large numbers of similar lawsuits.

Serial ADA litigation has long been controversial. Critics question whether plaintiffs who suffer minimal or no concrete injury—or who file hundreds of nearly identical lawsuits without any genuine intent to patronize the businesses they sue—should be rewarded through attorney’s fees and, in some states, statutory damages. While private enforcement plays an essential role in advancing accessibility, the perception that some plaintiffs are motivated primarily by financial return rather than remediation has complicated the legitimacy of the system.

B. Artificial Intelligence as a Force Multiplier

The rise of AI in litigation amplifies existing worries about filings brought by litigants acting in bad faith. Individuals who once had to invest substantial time drafting complaints and conducting legal research can now generate pleadings with minimal effort. For those predisposed toward repeated litigation—whether motivated by financial incentives, perceived grievances, or a fixation on procedural rights—AI functions as a force multiplier. The result is not simply more efficient litigation, but the potential for industrialized litigation.

This shift creates a structural disproportionateness. The cost of initiating a lawsuit decreases dramatically for the filer, while the cost of defense remains largely unchanged. Businesses must still retain counsel, investigate allegations, and respond formally to each filing. Courts must docket, review, and adjudicate every case. Even meritless claims impose real economic and institutional burdens. Case delays can cause businesses to suspend operations indefinitely, leaving employees without work.³³ In addition, federal district court rulings often carry substantial consequences for communities, businesses, and local economies.³⁴

C. Consequences

AI-assisted filings also risk undermining the credibility of legitimate accessibility enforcement. If courts encounter a growing number of boilerplate complaints, fabricated citations, or procedurally defective filings generated through AI misuse, judicial skepticism toward high-volume ADA plaintiffs may intensify. Recent standing disputes, including those highlighted in Acheson Hotels, demonstrate that courts are already scrutinizing injury-in-fact requirements more closely. A surge of AI-amplified filings could accelerate doctrinal tightening, potentially restricting access even for plaintiffs who have suffered genuine accessibility barriers.

Intensifying this concern is the imbalance AI introduces into the litigation process. Minh Vu, an attorney for Seyfarth Shaw, recently told Bloomberg Law that “her team of five partners who defend clients against Americans with Disabilities Act claims has handled at least four cases against an AI-powered pro se plaintiff since the middle of last year.”³⁵ Vu noted that because these litigants do not worry about the cost or time associated with filing, their cases are far more expensive than typical claims.³⁶ As Vu further explained, “While plaintiff lawyers historically considered financial issues—they’d pick cases that will win and file motions that will be effective—AI turns those constraints on their head. It can make up cases that convince litigants their positions are strong and enables them to quickly dispute any motion Vu files.”³⁷ If attorneys are spending more time and energy defending pro-se, AI supported cases by serial filers, the result is a process that becomes more expensive, less efficient, and less responsive to plaintiffs with legitimate barriers who rely on the ADA’s protections.

Importantly, this critique is not an argument against the ADA’s private enforcement model, nor against technological innovation. AI may also empower individuals with disabilities who previously lacked the resources to vindicate their rights. The concern is not the existence of the tool itself, but its interaction with a litigation framework already susceptible to high-volume exploitation. When technological efficiency converges with incentive structures that reward quantity over remediation, the result may be procedural congestion rather than meaningful accessibility reform.

In light of these concerns, targeted measures to reduce AI‑driven serial litigation are beginning to emerge. Legislators are exploring ways to regulate the use of generative AI in legal contexts, including proposals that would limit AI‑generated legal guidance and create accountability for misuse.³⁸ Courts, for their part, have increasingly turned to sanctions, fee awards, and heightened scrutiny of pro se litigants who file repetitive or AI‑generated pleadings, signaling a growing judicial willingness to deter abusive filings.³⁹ A researcher at at HEC Paris, a business school, reported that at least 24 pro se litigants in the US have been penalized with monetary sanctions since the second half of 2023 for litigating with AI.⁴⁰ More recently, Arnold & Porter a multinational law firm, sought more than $210,000 in fees for the time spent uncovering AI‑generated, fabricated case citations and responding to what the court described as “bad‑faith” litigation—including duplicative motions and the repeated use of fake authorities even after earlier errors had been acknowledged.⁴¹ The emerging pattern suggests that courts and policymakers are moving toward establishing clear standards and penalties to address improper reliance on AI in legal findings –and that formal, enforceable penalties may soon be unavoidable.

IV. Conclusion

The rise of AI-assisted litigation has the potential to transform the landscape of ADA enforcement. While the ADA remains a crucial tool for advancing accessibility, its private enforcement model, combined with the incentives created by attorney’s fees and statutory damages, has long been vulnerable to high-volume filing by serial litigants. AI magnifies these vulnerabilities, lowering the barriers to filing and enabling industrial-scale litigation that can strain courts, pressure defendants, and risk undermining the credibility of legitimate claims.

At the same time, AI is not inherently detrimental. It also offers opportunities for individuals with genuine accessibility barriers to assert their rights more effectively. The challenge lies in balancing technological efficiency with procedural safeguards that maintain the statute’s remedial purpose. Ultimately, the interaction between AI and serial litigation presents both risks and opportunities, and the legal system must adapt to preserve meaningful enforcement while preventing the industrialization of claims.

Cover Photo by Berke Citak on Unsplash

Mofetoluwa Koya

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