Johnson v. Qolor LLC

Background

Scott Johnson sued Qolor LLC under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act. He alleged that outdoor dining tables at Qolor’s Nam Giao Restaurant were not accessible for wheelchair users. Johnson sought damages, attorneys’ fees and costs, and an injunction requiring Qolor to provide wheelchair-accessible outside dining surfaces.

Johnson filed the action after visiting the restaurant three times during the month before filing suit. The opinion describes Johnson as a wheelchair user with quadriplegia and significant manual-dexterity impairments. Qolor did not answer. After Johnson showed that the complaint and summons had been served on a person who appeared to be in charge, and that service had also been made by mail, the clerk entered Qolor’s default on March 4, 2022.

Default-judgment standard

After a clerk enters default, a court has discretion to decide whether to enter default judgment. The court applied the factors identified in Eitel v. McCool, including the possible prejudice to the plaintiff, the merits and sufficiency of the complaint, the amount of money at stake, the possibility of factual disputes, whether the default resulted from excusable neglect, and the federal policy favoring decisions on the merits.

The court explained that factual allegations concerning liability generally are treated as true after default, but allegations concerning damages are not automatically accepted. Any relief granted also may not differ in kind from, or exceed in amount, what the pleadings demand.

Court’s analysis

To establish an ADA public-accommodations claim, Johnson had to show that he had a disability covered by the ADA, that Qolor was a private entity operating a place of public accommodation, and that Qolor denied him public accommodations because of his disability.

The court identified several deficiencies in the complaint. It did not specify whether the 1991 or 2010 ADA standards applied, although the court noted that both versions generally require at least 5% of tables fixed to walls or floors to be accessible. The complaint also did not clearly allege that the outdoor tables were fixed. Photographs submitted with an investigator’s declaration appeared to show that they were not fixed.

More importantly, the complaint contained no facts about the restaurant’s indoor dining facilities. The court said that alleging only that outdoor dining tables were deficient was not enough to support default judgment. Even accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, it was unclear whether Johnson had been denied any public accommodation in violation of the ADA. The court treated the Unruh Act claim as entirely dependent on the ADA claim, so the deficiencies affected the entire complaint.

The court also found a strong possibility of disputes about material facts and said that the policy favoring decisions on the merits weighed against default judgment. The remaining factors were essentially neutral: denying judgment caused Johnson some largely abstract prejudice, the court could not evaluate the reasonableness of the requested award without resolving the merits, and the record did not show whether Qolor’s default resulted from excusable neglect.

The court noted that some decisions have interpreted the ADA’s broad nondiscrimination requirement to require accessible seating even at establishments with no fixed tables. It did not decide that issue here. Instead, it held that the missing information about the indoor dining facilities, the uncertainty about the tables, and the other default-judgment factors made judgment inappropriate.

Disposition

Judge Richard Seeborg denied Johnson’s motion for entry of default judgment, without prejudice to a similar motion after an amended complaint, if leave to amend were granted. The court gave Johnson 21 days to file a motion seeking leave to file an amended complaint.