Upper West Side Gym Fined $30K For Breaking Promise To Blind Member

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — A woman won her court battle with a New York Sports Club on the Upper West Side after the gym broke a promise to accommodate her blindness.

When Joan Reveyoso joined the gym in 2011, located on West 62nd Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway, she was told that a gym employee would help her down a flight of stairs to an elliptical machine, according to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

Reveyoso's first six months at the gym went by smoothly, but that all changed on April 5, 2012 when a gym employee named Peter told her she wouldn't be getting any more help.

"I'm dropping everything to help you. Let's go. Really, no one's going to help you anymore," Peter allegedly told Reveyoso, according to a lawsuit.

When a manager, named George, told Reveyoso that the gym wouldn't help her access the equipment any longer the woman felt "humiliated and frustrated" and was forced to cancel her gym membership.

A judge ruled in favor of Reveyoso earlier this month and the gym will be fined $30,000, the New York Daily News reported.

"I think it was about some acknowledgment that they didn’t do what they were supposed to do," Reveyoso’s lawyer Arlene Boop told the Daily News. "What they were supposed to do was relatively minor."

Photo by Google Maps street view