Disabled man's crusade a bane to business owners

"Sometimes I slide out of my wheelchair and drag myself up the steps, then pull my chair behind me," Mundy said with an impish smile.

In a diary he has begun keeping in the third person, he casts himself as an action figure serving others in need.

"When it comes to access, watch out!" reads an entry he's titled Ramps of Gold. "He'll roll through your business with a keen eye for wheelchair compliance, from parking lots to wheelchair ramps to narrow doorways."

While Mundy and Mehrban have racked up out-of-court settlements in all but a few cases, they lost one in mid-December.

A lawyer for a Garden Grove Del Taco franchise -- one of a handful of Del Taco outlets Mundy has sued -- cast him before a jury as an abuser of laws intended to help the disabled.

"The first thing he said wasn't even about Del Taco, it was about how 'Mr. Mundy can afford a Rolex watch,' and then he went after the number of lawsuits and the money I've made in settlements," Mundy said, apparently baffled at the portrayal of his work as something other than noble. "I wasn't able to talk hardly at all about all the good things I've done."

The setback won't derail his quest to right ADA wrongs, though, Mundy said.

"I'm just going to write it off," he said. "We just have to figure out how to beat them at their own game."

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carol.williams@latimes.com