Brooke v. Grand Hyatt SF LLC

Background

Theresa Brooke alleged that she visited Grand Hyatt SF LLC’s website to rent a room and wanted to reserve an Executive Suite or Presidential Suite. She alleged that she did not reserve either suite because neither was accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). She asserted an ADA claim and a claim under California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.

Grand Hyatt moved to dismiss both claims and asked the court to declare Brooke a vexatious litigant and impose limits on her future filings. The opinion states that Brooke’s opposition incorporated an opposition filed in another case.

ADA Claim

The court held that the ADA claim was subject to dismissal for lack of standing and failure to state a claim. For standing, the court explained that a plaintiff must identify the barriers at the defendant’s business and explain how those barriers affected the plaintiff’s disability. Brooke alleged only that the suites were not accessible and contained barriers, without describing those barriers or their effect on her.

The court also held that, even assuming the two suites were inaccessible in some way, the ADA did not require the hotel to offer both an accessible and inaccessible version of the same room type. Instead, the hotel had to distribute accessible rooms among its various room classes and offer comparable, though not identical, choices. Brooke did not allege facts showing that the hotel’s other suites were not comparable to the two suites she identified.

Unruh Civil Rights Act Claim

The Unruh Act claim was based on the court’s supplemental jurisdiction, meaning the federal court’s authority to hear a related state-law claim along with a federal claim. After dismissing the ADA claim, the court declined to exercise that authority over the state-law claim because the case was still at the pleading stage and no apparent reason favored keeping the claim in federal court. The court dismissed the state-law claim without prejudice to filing it in state court or realleging it in this action if Brooke amended the ADA claim.

Vexatious-Litigant Request

Grand Hyatt argued that Brooke was a vexatious litigant and should face a pre-filing order limiting future ADA complaints. The defendant pointed to hundreds of ADA actions Brooke allegedly filed over four and a half years, including sixteen recent actions against other hotels in the district.

The court denied that request. It said the record was insufficient to support a vexatious-litigant order because none of the sixteen cases had been resolved on the merits with a finding of frivolousness or harassment, the court had not received documents about Brooke’s other cases, and it was premature to decide whether this action was frivolous or harassing while Brooke still had leave to amend.

Disposition

The court granted in part and denied in part the motion. It granted the portion seeking dismissal of the complaint and dismissed the complaint with leave to amend, requiring any First Amended Complaint to be filed by May 22, 2020. It denied the portion seeking an order declaring Brooke a vexatious litigant.