Love v. Marriott Hotel Services, Inc.

District Court, N.D. California·Decided March 3, 2021·No. 3:20-cv-07137·Unknown

Opinion

SAMUEL LOVE, Case No. 20-cv-07137-TSH

Plaintiff, ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO v. DISMISS

MARRIOTT HOTEL SERVICES, INC., Re: Dkt. No. 16 Defendant.

Plaintiff Samuel Love brings this case under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 12101, et seq., challenging the reservation policies and practices of Defendant Marriott Hotel Services, Inc. Pending before the Court is Marriott’s Motion to Dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). ECF No. 16. Love filed an Opposition (ECF No. 21) and Defendant filed a Reply (ECF No. 23). The Court finds this matter suitable for disposition without oral argument and VACATES the March 11, 2021 hearing. See Civ. L.R. 7-1(b). Having considered the parties’ positions, relevant legal authority, and the record in this case, the Court GRANTS Marriott’s motion for the following reasons. Love is a paraplegic who is substantially limited in his ability to walk and uses a wheelchair for mobility. First Am. Compl. (“FAC”), ¶ 1, ECF No. 13. Marriott owns and operates the San Francisco Marriott Marquis located at 780 Mission St., San Francisco, California (the “Hotel”). Id. ¶ 2. Love needs an accessible guestroom, and he needs to be given information about accessible features in hotel rooms so that he can confidently book those rooms and travel Love “planned on making a trip in February of 2021” to the San Francisco area, and he chose the Hotel for lodging. Id. ¶¶ 14-15. On September 11, 2020, Love went to the reservation website at https://www.marriott.com/hotels/maps/travel/sfodt-san-francisco-marriott-marquis/ seeking to book an accessible room, but he alleges “there are very few, if any, accessible features identified for any given room.” Id. ¶¶ 16, 18. Instead, the reservations website has an “Accessibility” tab that “provides a general list of supposedly accessible features but does not provide any actual data or information beyond a naked label of ‘accessible.’” Id. ¶ 18. He maintains “it is nowhere near enough to permit a profoundly disabled wheelchair user to have any confidence or come to any conclusions about whether any given hotel room works for him or her.” Id. ¶ 23. He alleges that

because the defendant has failed to identify and describe—and/or failed to provide the necessary information to the third party operator of the website reservation system—the core accessibility features in enough detail to reasonably permit individuals with disabilities to assess independently whether a given hotel or guest room meets his accessibility needs, the defendant fails to comply with its ADA obligations and the result is that the plaintiff is unable to engage in an online booking of the hotel room with any confidence or knowledge about whether the room will actually work for him due to his disability. Id. ¶ 32. Love would like to patronize the Hotel but is deterred from doing so “because of the lack of detailed information through the hotel’s reservation system. Id. ¶ 37. Love filed this case on October 14, 2020 and filed an amended complaint on January 4, 2021. He brings claims (1) under the ADA, alleging Marriott’s failure to ensure its reservation policies and procedures identify and describe accessible features in the hotels and guest rooms in enough detail to reasonably permit individuals with disabilities to assess independently whether a given hotel or guest room meets his or her accessibility needs, and (2) under the California Unruh Civil Rights Act, which provides that a violation of the ADA is a violation of the Unruh Act. Cal. Civ. Code § 51(f). He seeks injunctive relief, compelling Marriott to comply with the ADA and Unruh Act, damages under the Unruh Act, and attorney’s fees and costs. Marriott filed the present motion on January 21, 2021, arguing that at least four courts in website fully complies with the ADA, and that commentary from the U.S. Department of Justice (“DOJ”) makes clear the Hotel has provided all the information that is required. A complaint must contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). Thus, to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, a complaint must plead “enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). Plausibility does not mean probability, but it requires “more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 687 (2009). A complaint must therefore provide a defendant with “fair notice” of the claims against it and the grounds for relief. Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (quotations and citation omitted); Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2) (A complaint must contain a “short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief.”). In considering a motion to dismiss, the court accepts factual allegations in the complaint as true and construes the pleadings in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. Manzarek v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Ins. Co., 519 F.3d 1025, 1031 (9th Cir. 2008).; Erickson v. Pardus, 551 U.S. 89, 93-94 (2007). However, “the tenet that a court must accept a complaint’s allegations as true is inapplicable to threadbare recitals of a cause of action’s elements, supported by mere conclusory statements.” Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. If a Rule 12(b)(6) motion is granted, the “court should grant leave to amend even if no request to amend the pleading was made, unless it determines that the pleading could not possibly be cured by the allegation of other facts.” Lopez v. Smith, 203 F.3d 1122, 1127 (9th Cir. 2000) (en banc) (citations and quotations omitted). However, a court “may exercise its discretion to deny leave to amend due to ‘undue delay, bad faith or dilatory motive on part of the movant, repeated failure to cure deficiencies by amendments previously allowed, undue prejudice to the opposing party . . ., [and] futility of amendment.’” Carvalho v. Equifax Info. Servs., LLC, 629 F.3d 876, 892–93 (9th Cir. 2010) (alterations in original) (quoting Foman v. Davis, 371 U.S. 178, 182 (1962)). As part of its motion, Marriott requests the Court take judicial notice of the following documents: 1) A copy of the “Landing page” and Accessibility Tab of Marriott’s website, https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/sfodt-san-francisco-marriott-marquis/ (Ex. 1). 2) A copy of the relevant pages from Marriott’s website showing the various accessible room descriptions (Ex. 2). 3) A list of Love’s cases filed in California federal court from PACER (Ex. 3). 4) A copy of relevant pages from the online building permit records for Marriott’s Hotel from the public website of San Francisco government, https://sfplanninggis.org/pim/?pub=true (Ex. 4) 5) The Consent Decree in United States v. Hilton Worldwide Inc., No. 10-cv-1924, ECF No. 5 (D.D.C. Nov. 29, 2010) (Ex. 5). Request for Judicial Notice (“RJN”), ECF No. 16-2. As part of its reply, Marriott requests the Court take judicia

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Love v. Marriott Hotel Services, Inc., (N.D. Cal. 2021).

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