Wilshire v. L&M Development Partners
- Ona Wang
- 1:20-cv-07998
- U.S. District Court · Southern District of New York
- 11
In Wilshire v. L&M Development Partners, Judge Oetken partly granted and partly denied defendants’ motion, dismissing claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and some Fair Housing Act claims.
Coanne Wilshire’s claims against L&M Development Partners and the other defendants. The order ended her Americans with Disabilities Act claims and Fair Housing Act claims based on incidents before February 3, 2018, while allowing her timely Fair Housing Act claims and her Rehabilitation Act and New York State Human Rights Law claims to proceed.
What happened
In Coanne Wilshire v. L&M Development Partners, Coanne Wilshire, a Black tenant with a disability, alleged that the owners and managers of her apartment building denied her an accessible parking accommodation, treated her differently because of race and disability, and retaliated after she complained to government agencies. The defendants asked the court to dismiss her amended complaint for failing to state a valid claim.
The court dismissed all of Wilshire’s claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act because the private apartment complex and its owners and managers were not covered by the parts of that law she could invoke. It also dismissed Fair Housing Act claims based on events before February 3, 2018, because they were too old. The court allowed timely Fair Housing Act claims and claims under the Rehabilitation Act and New York State Human Rights Law to continue, including her discrimination, accommodation, and retaliation claims.
The court granted in part and denied in part the defendants’ motion to dismiss, and denied Wilshire’s request to amend because amendment would not cure the identified problems. The court also denied the request to dismiss L&M Development Partners. Judge J. Paul Oetken ordered defendants to answer the surviving claims within 21 days.
The detailed version
- Wilshire v. L&M Development Partners · No. 1:20-cv-07998
- Ona Wang
- Mar. 22, 2022
Background
Coanne Wilshire, proceeding without a lawyer, was a tenant of the Larkspur, a private apartment complex in Manhattan. She alleged that defendants—including Larkspur LLC, Larkspur Managers LLC, Lemle & Wolff Co., and L&M Development Partners—owned, managed, or had other interests in the building. The court noted that L&M disputed having an ownership interest, but Wilshire asserted that it did; the court therefore denied defendants’ request to dismiss L&M from the case.
Wilshire had been assigned a handicap parking space under a license agreement with Larkspur LLC. She alleged that garbage and refuse obstructed the space and its access aisle, that defendants denied her requests to transfer to another handicap space, and that defendants terminated her parking license after observing multiple vehicles in the space. She further alleged that White tenants and tenants without disabilities who engaged in similar conduct did not lose their parking licenses. After she complained to defendants and filed an administrative complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the New York State Division of Human Rights, she alleged that defendants threatened eviction and harassed her.
Defendants moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which allows dismissal when a complaint does not state a legally sufficient claim.
Court’s Analysis
Americans with Disabilities Act
The court dismissed Wilshire’s claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title I of that statute concerns employment and did not apply. Title II concerns public entities, and defendants were not public entities. Title III concerns public accommodations, and the court held that a private apartment complex was not a public accommodation. The court also found no support for Wilshire’s argument that the apartment complex’s parking lot could independently qualify as a public accommodation.
Fair Housing Act limitations period
The Fair Housing Act generally requires a civil action to be filed within two years of the last alleged discriminatory act. The court rejected Wilshire’s reliance on the continuing-violation doctrine because she had not identified an ongoing discriminatory policy or mechanism linking the alleged obstruction, refusal to transfer spaces, and termination of her parking license.
The court held, however, that the limitations period was paused while HUD investigated Wilshire’s administrative complaint—from November 18, 2018, through July 3, 2019, a period of 237 days. As a result, claims involving events on or after February 3, 2018, were timely. The court dismissed Wilshire’s Fair Housing Act claims based on incidents before that date.
The court rejected defendants’ argument that the New York State Division of Human Rights’ finding of no probable cause barred Wilshire’s timely Fair Housing Act claims. It also rejected the same argument as to the Rehabilitation Act and New York State Human Rights Law claims.
Rehabilitation Act and New York State Human Rights Law
Although Wilshire did not expressly identify claims under the Rehabilitation Act or New York State Human Rights Law in her complaint, the court construed her complaint and briefing as asserting those claims. Those claims survived the motion to dismiss.
Disparate treatment
The court held that Wilshire adequately pleaded disparate treatment under the Fair Housing Act. She alleged that she was Black and had a disability, that defendants terminated her parking license, and that defendants did not terminate the licenses of multiple non-Black tenants and tenants without disabilities who allegedly breached the agreement in the same manner.
Reasonable accommodation and retaliation
The defendants did not challenge the merits of Wilshire’s reasonable-accommodation claims under the Fair Housing Act and Rehabilitation Act, or her retaliation claims under the Fair Housing Act, until their reply brief. Because arguments raised for the first time in a reply are generally treated as waived, the court denied the motion to dismiss those claims.
Disposition
The court granted in part and denied in part defendants’ motion to dismiss. It dismissed all of Wilshire’s Americans with Disabilities Act claims and her Fair Housing Act claims based on incidents before February 3, 2018. Her remaining Fair Housing Act claims, Rehabilitation Act claims, and New York State Human Rights Law claims survived. The court denied Wilshire’s request to amend because it considered amendment futile. Defendants were ordered to answer the surviving claims within 21 days after the opinion and order.
Read the full 11-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.