Panarese v. Berry Global, Inc

Background

Rusty Rendon and John Panarese, both described in the opinion as legally blind, sued Berry Global Inc. They alleged that Berry’s website was inaccessible to blind and visually impaired people, violating the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the New York State Human Rights Law (NYSHRL). Their complaint identified alleged barriers including headings that were not in numerical order, mislabeled images, unreadable investment charts, mislabeled headings and tags, and information pages that could not be read with screen-reading technology.

The opinion states that Berry operates a business-to-business website offering information about its plastics products and investment information. The website does not sell products to the general public, and transactions cannot occur on it. Rendon and Panarese described themselves as website-accessibility “testers” and alleged that they intended to return to Berry’s website after the accessibility barriers were corrected.

Motion and jurisdiction

Berry moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(1), which permits dismissal when the court lacks subject-matter jurisdiction. The court explained that Article III standing is the minimum constitutional requirement for subject-matter jurisdiction. Standing requires an injury that is concrete and particularized, a connection between the injury and the challenged conduct, and a likelihood that a favorable decision will remedy the injury.

For ADA website claims seeking an injunction, the court applied Second Circuit precedent requiring factual allegations supporting past injury, a reasonable inference that the problem will continue, and a reasonable inference that the plaintiff intends to return. The court said that a plaintiff must provide specific, plausible facts rather than merely repeat legal conclusions about visiting a website and intending to return.

Court’s analysis

The court found the plaintiffs’ allegations insufficient to establish a concrete and particularized injury. They did not provide details about the frequency of their past visits, what specifically they hoped to learn, how the alleged barriers prevented them from achieving their goals, why they became interested in investing in Berry, why they wanted to return, or when they planned to do so.

The court also rejected the allegation that the plaintiffs intended to return to Berry’s website to conduct business because, according to the opinion, Berry’s website did not permit public product purchases or transactions. The court said that the plaintiffs’ allegations about an informational injury were also insufficient. They did not explain what information they could not access, how that affected a decision about buying Berry stock, or what later harm resulted from not buying the stock.

The court further held that being an accessibility tester, by itself, did not establish standing. Testers can have standing, but they still must show an actual or imminent injury. The court characterized the plaintiffs’ stated intention to return at some unspecified time as the type of vague future intention that does not establish imminent injury. It also discussed the plaintiffs’ numerous similar ADA lawsuits and found that the copy-and-paste nature of the allegations made their standing allegations implausible.

Disposition

The court held that the plaintiffs had not alleged facts sufficient to establish Article III standing for their ADA claims and dismissed those claims without prejudice. The court declined to exercise supplemental jurisdiction over the NYSHRL claim. The conclusion states that Berry’s motion to dismiss for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction was granted without prejudice. The Clerk was directed to terminate the motion and close the case.