18th Annual Workplace Class Action Report - 2022 Edition

456 Annual Workplace Class Action Litigation Report: 2022 Edition accommodate claims under the ADA and § 504 must be dismissed because Plaintiffs had not sufficiently stated a claim; and (iv) that Plaintiff Pappas’ unlawful medical inquires claims also failed because the only alleged inquiries were job-related, and accordingly were not actionable under the ADA or § 504. First, the Court determined that Plaintiffs Lindsay and Mathies properly exhausted their administrative remedies under the ADA, while Plaintiff Malik had not. In so ruling, the Court permitted Lindsay and Mathies to rely on the EEOC charge filed by Pappas, as it raised sufficiently similar claims to meet the notice function of the EEOC filing requirement. However, due to factual differences underlying his claim, the Court ruled that Malik was not permitted to "piggyback" on the administrative exhaustion of Pappas. Further, the Court held that Plaintiffs Lindsay, Mathies, and Malik’s § 504 claims were barred by the statute of limitations. Turning to the remaining substantive claims in the matter, Defendants argued that Plaintiffs’ claims alleging that they failed to accommodate their disabilities could not survive. Under the ADA and § 504, a covered employer is required to make reasonable accommodations to the known physical or mental limitations of an otherwise qualified individual with a disability. According to Defendant, Plaintiffs were required to sufficiently allege that: (i) they were qualified individuals with a disability; (ii) their employer had notice of their disability; and (iii) their employer denied requests for a reasonable accommodation. While Plaintiffs did not dispute that they failed to make an affirmative request for accommodations, the Court found that Plaintiffs had adequately alleged that Defendant knew of their disabilities and desire for accommodation such that their failure to request accommodations was excused. Likewise, the Court opined that Plaintiffs adequately alleged that they were qualified individuals, and rejected Defendants’ argument that Plaintiffs could not have performed the job of an MPD officer. In so ruling, the Court pointed out that a determination of whether Plaintiffs’ requested accommodations were reasonable was inappropriate at this stage of litigation. Thus, the Court denied Defendants’ motion in this respect. As to Pappas’ unlawful medical inquiry claims, the Court held that he had not sufficiently alleged unlawful medical inquiries, and it granted Defendants’ motion to dismiss those claims. As such, the Court granted in part and denied in part Defendants’ motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(6). Schalamar Creek Mobile Homeowner Association, et al. v. Adler, 2021 U.S. App. LEXIS 13610 (11th Cir. May 7, 2021). Plaintiffs, a group of mobile home park residents and their homeowner’s association (“HOA”), brought a class action alleging that Defendants, the owners and operators of the mobile home park, violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”) and the Americans With Disabilities Act (“ADA”). Specifically, Plaintiffs alleged that Defendants acted as an enterprise for the shared common purpose of defrauding the residents through the forced surrender of the residents’ rights to assume their sellers’ prospectuses. They alleged that Defendants fraudulently induced prospective sellers whose properties were governed by an older, more favorable prospectus to adopt a different prospectus using bribes, misrepresentations, and other incentives via the mail or wires, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § § 1341 and 1343. As a result Plaintiffs alleged that: (i) they were injured because they were forced to pay a higher rental price than they would have paid under the preexisting prospectus, and (ii) they were deprived of their statutory right to assume their sellers’ existing prospectus. Further, the HOA also alleged that Defendants violated the ADA because some of the common areas of Schalamar Creek were not accessible to disabled residents in that the clubhouse was inaccessible to residents who were elderly and disabled persons with mobility, balance, gait, vision, and hearing difficulties. The District Court granted summary judgment in favor of Defendants on the basis that Plaintiffs did not have standing to pursue their claims. On Plaintiffs’ appeal, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the District Court’s judgment. The Eleventh Circuit held that Plaintiffs did not have standing as to their RICO claims because they failed to show that the injury they suffered was traceable to Defendants alleged scheme of forced surrender of residents’ rights to assume their sellers’ prospectuses. Instead, the Eleventh Circuit concluded that the residents’ injury was caused by their decision to purchase properties subject to a particular prospectus or the sellers’ agreement to that prospectus, not by the alleged scheme. In addition, the Eleventh Circuit disagreed with the District Court that the HOA did not have standing to bring an ADA claim. It found that the HOA had standing to bring such a claim because it had an interest in making sure that the common property and structural components of the mobile home park were accessible to residents with disabilities. However, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment in favor of Defendants as to the ADA claim on that basis that there was no evidence that the proposed modifications to the clubhouse were readily achievable. The construction of the clubhouse pre-dated the ADA, and although the complaint identified deficiencies with the clubhouse, the HOA presented no evidence that any of the proposed modifications were readily achievable. Even in response to the affidavit of Defendants’ expert explaining why the modifications were not readily achievable, the HOA did