Love v. Biuon Inc.
- Alex Tse
- 3:19-cv-00987
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 3
In Love v. Biuon Inc., Judge Tse granted Biuon’s summary-judgment motion because Love’s ADA claim was moot and denied Love’s motion and request to amend.
Samuel Love’s ADA claim was resolved against him; Biuon Inc. obtained summary judgment, while Love’s amendment request and summary-judgment motion were denied. The remaining state-law claim was not heard under supplemental jurisdiction.
What happened
In Love v. Biuon Inc., Samuel Love claimed that Biuon’s gas station violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) because its customer parking had no wheelchair-accessible spaces. During discovery, the parties learned that the station no longer offered any public parking.
The court explained that the ADA does not require accessible parking when a business offers no public parking. Love also tried to rely on other barriers, including the lack of an accessible route to the convenience store, but he had not identified those barriers in his complaint. His expert report and later statements could not substitute for amending the complaint.
Judge Tse denied Love’s request for leave to amend because he had not shown diligence after the amendment deadline passed. The court granted Biuon’s motion for summary judgment, denied Love’s motion for summary judgment, and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Love’s remaining state-law claim.
The detailed version
- Love v. Biuon Inc. · No. 3:19-cv-00987
- Alex Tse
- Mar. 5, 2021
Background
Samuel Love sued Biuon Inc. under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), alleging that he encountered a discriminatory access barrier at Biuon’s gas station. The complaint identified one barrier: customer parking existed, but none of the spaces was accessible to wheelchair users.
Discovery showed that the gas station no longer offered public parking at all. Love’s expert reported that there were zero parking spaces reasonably associated with the facility, and Love did not dispute that the parking situation had changed. At the hearing, Love argued that he still could not access the convenience store because of other barriers, including the absence of an accessible route from the street. Those additional barriers had not been identified in the complaint; Love had instead referred to them in an expert report served during discovery.
Rulings
The court concluded that Love’s ADA claim was moot. Because Biuon no longer offered public parking, the current parking arrangement did not violate the ADA’s accessible-parking requirements. The court also explained that private ADA plaintiffs may seek only injunctive relief, meaning a court order requiring a defendant to stop or correct an ongoing violation. Love had not identified a current parking-related harm that could be enjoined.
The court refused to consider the additional barriers identified only in Love’s expert report because the complaint had not given Biuon adequate notice that those barriers formed the basis of the ADA claim. Love moved for leave to amend the complaint to add those allegations, but the court denied that motion. The deadline for amending the complaint had expired, and the court found that Love had not shown that he missed the deadline despite diligent efforts. The court noted that his expert had inspected the site three months before the amendment deadline.
The court granted Biuon’s motion for summary judgment and denied Love’s motion for summary judgment. It stated that the only federal claim had been dismissed before trial and declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over Love’s remaining state-law claim under 28 U.S.C. § 1367(c).
Read the full 3-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.