Langer v. Music City Hotel LP
- Phyllis Hamilton
- 4:21-cv-04159
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Langer v. Music City Hotel, Judge Hamilton allowed Langer to brief defendants’ late-raised mootness argument in this disability-access website case.
Chris Langer and the defendants in the disability-access case, including Music City Hotel LP.
What happened
In Langer v. Music City Hotel LP, Chris Langer alleges that the hotel violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to provide enough accessibility information on its website for reservations.
The defendants asked the court to dismiss the case and submitted a screenshot showing the website’s current accessibility information. Langer argued that the website had been changed after he filed the lawsuit, so the screenshot did not show the earlier version at issue.
Judge Phyllis J. Hamilton allowed Langer to file a brief addressing whether the case had become moot, meaning whether the dispute was still live. The brief could not exceed five pages and was due December 9, 2021; the defendants could not file another response. The order did not decide the motion to dismiss or the mootness issue.
The detailed version
- Langer v. Music City Hotel LP · No. 4:21-cv-04159
- Phyllis Hamilton
- Dec. 2, 2021
Background
This is a disability-access case under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Langer alleges that the defendants did not provide sufficient information on the hotel’s website to comply with the federal rule governing accessibility information for reservations.
The defendants moved to dismiss and submitted a screenshot of the website’s accessibility page. Langer opposed the motion in significant part by arguing that the webpage shown in the screenshot was different from the version that existed when he filed the lawsuit. The defendants raised for the first time in their reply brief the argument that any available relief was moot because the website then contained accessibility disclosures.
Court’s Action
The court explained that arguments first raised in a reply brief are generally disfavored because they do not give the opposing party a fair opportunity to respond. The court nevertheless found the mootness issue relevant because it could affect the court’s continuing authority to hear the case.
The court therefore allowed Langer to file a brief addressing only the defendants’ late-raised mootness argument. The brief could not exceed five pages and was due on or before December 9, 2021. Because the defendants had already presented their argument, the court did not permit them to file an additional response.
This order did not grant or deny the motion to dismiss and did not decide whether the case was moot.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.