18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition 453 Court for the District of Massachusetts. Plaintiffs in all related actions, as well as certain Defendants from cases out of Texas and Wisconsin, opposed centralization. The Panel denied Defendant’s motion for centralization. It noted that it was “not persuaded that centralization is necessary for the convenience of the parties and witnesses or to further the just and efficient conduct of this litigation.” Id. at *1. Defendant pointed to the factual overlap between the allegations in the slew of ADA actions, but the Panel reasoned that this should be expected given that Plaintiffs were all ADA testers represented by the same attorneys. Moreover, the Panel found that the circumstances surrounding each Defendant’s website would likely vary in a significant manner since each hotel had its own room setup, accessibility standards, and online booking arrangements. The Panel further held that centralization was not warranted because the class actions did not appear “to have required a significant amount of judicial attention to date.” Id. at *2. The Panel referenced the 141 related ADA actions brought by Plaintiffs’ counsel, 96 of which currently remained pending. In light of this pattern, the Panel opined that “this history of early dismissals and settlements ‘suggests that the advantages centralization typically affords – i.e. , reducing duplicative discovery and motion practice, etc. – may not be relevant.’” Id. at *3. Therefore, for these reasons, the Panel denied Defendant’s motion for centralization of these actions. Jennings, et al. v. Wolf, 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 133479 (M.D. Penn. July 22, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of residents of Intermediate Care Facilities for Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities ("ICF/IID") in the state of Pennsylvania, filed a class action against Defendants Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services ("DHS"), the Secretary of the Pennsylvania DHS, Teresa Miller, Pennsylvania DHS Office of Developmental Programs ("ODP"), Deputy Secretary of ODP, Kristin Ahrens, ICF/IID Polk Center, Polk Center Facility Director, Sue Rodgers, ICF/IID White Havens Center, and White Haven Facility Director, Mark Georgetti alleging violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”) in connection with the closure of two intermediate care facilities. Defendants filed a motion to dismiss, which the Court denied. Plaintiffs claimed that Defendants knew or had reason to know that closing the facilities and thereafter placing Plaintiffs in other settings “would substantially increase Plaintiffs’ likelihood of injury from abuse, neglect, error, lack of appropriate services or other causes." Id . at *19. Defendants argued that any harm was purely speculative harm and insufficient to allege an injury-in-fact. The Court opined that Plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient to establish that the proposed facility closures violated the ADA. The Court noted that Plaintiffs specifically asserted that an institutionalized setting would be a reasonable accommodation rather than the community-based setting that Defendants intended to provide, which was sufficient to allege an injury-in-fact should the facilities close. The Court also agreed with Plaintiffs’ argument that if the State had the resources to provide the accommodations, then the facility closures would effectively violate the ADA. The Court held that Plaintiffs sufficiently asserted that the proposed class included qualified individuals suffering from disabilities who faced the denial of benefits of the services, programs, or activities of a public entity, even though Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program received federal financial assistance. For these reasons, the Court denied Defendants’ motion to dismiss. Landis, et al. v. Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District, 11 F.4th 1101 (9th Cir. 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of baseball fans with qualifying disabilities under Title II and Title III of the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”) who use wheelchairs for mobility, filed a class action alleging that the Seattle Mariners baseball stadium failed to comply with multiple requirements of the ADA and the Washington Law Against Discrimination. After a bench trial, the District Court ruled that the challenged sightlines over standing spectators were adequate and not in violation of the accessible stadiums standard. On appeal, the Ninth Circuit reversed and remanded the District Court’s ruling. The parties relied on competing expert testimony on the merits of the claims. Defendants’ expert asserted that the spectators using wheelchairs were "able to see over the shoulders and between the heads of people in the row immediately in front, and over the heads of people in the second row in front of the accessible seating." Id . at 1104. Plaintiffs’ expert evaluated the sightlines of spectators in wheelchairs by estimating the shoulder height of a spectator standing one row forward of the wheelchair-accessible seating and the full height of a spectator standing two rows forward of wheelchair- accessible seating and determined that the sightlines of spectators using wheelchairs were nearly always more obstructed than the sightlines of spectators not using wheelchairs. Id . The Ninth Circuit ruled that the District Court did not err in applying the accessible stadiums comparable-sightline standard. The Ninth Circuit reasoned that the accessible stadiums standard directs that a person using a wheelchair have comparable sightlines over standing spectators only when two requirements are met, including: (i) a person using a wheelchair must be able to "see the playing surface between the heads and over the shoulders of the persons standing in the row