Munoz v. Peets Coffee, Inc.

• Court: District Court, N.D. California
• Decided: May 22, 2025
• Docket: 4:24-cv-01764
• Status: Unknown

Opinion

1 2 3 4 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 5 NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA 6 7 VERONICA MUNOZ, et al., Case No. 24-cv-01764-JST

8 Plaintiffs, ORDER GRANTING MOTION TO 9 v. DISMISS

10 PEETS COFFEE, INC., Re: ECF No. 48 Defendant. 11

12 13 Before the Court is Defendant Peet’s Coffee, Inc.’s (“Peet’s”) motion to dismiss the second 14 amended complaint. ECF No. 48. The Court will grant the motion. 15 I. BACKGROUND 16 Because the facts are well-known to the parties and the Court has summarized Plaintiffs’ 17 allegations in detail in its prior order, ECF No. 41, the Court will not repeat them here. In sum, 18 Plaintiffs Veronica Munoz, Jennifer Wilkinson, Katherine Hetherton, and Michelle Irwin bring 19 this action against Peet’s for allegedly discriminating against them on the basis of their 20 disability—being lactose intolerant and having milk allergies—by charging a “surcharge” to 21 substitute the dairy milk used in their drinks with non-dairy alternatives. 22 Plaintiffs allege violations of Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 23 California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act (“Unruh Act”), Massachusetts’s Anti-Discrimination Law, 24 and Texas’s Human Resources Code, and bring claims for unjust enrichment under California, 25 Massachusetts, and Texas state law. ECF No. 44 at 16–28. 26 II. JURISDICTION 27 The Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331, 1332(d). 1 III. LEGAL STANDARD 2 A complaint must contain “a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the 3 pleader is entitled to relief.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 8(a)(2). “Dismissal under Rule 12(b)(6) is 4 appropriate only where the complaint lacks a cognizable legal theory or sufficient facts to support 5 a cognizable legal theory.” Mendiondo v. Centinela Hosp. Med. Ctr., 521 F.3d 1097, 1104 (9th 6 Cir. 2008). A complaint need not contain detailed factual allegations, but facts pleaded by a 7 plaintiff “must be enough to raise a right to relief above the speculative level.” Bell Atl. Corp. v. 8 Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 555 (2007). “To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain 9 sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” 10 Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). “A 11 claim has facial plausibility when the plaintiff pleads factual content that allows the court to draw 12 the reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged.” Id. The Court 13 must “accept all factual allegations in the complaint as true and construe the pleadings in the light 14 most favorable to the nonmoving party.” Knievel v. ESPN, 393 F.3d 1068, 1072 (9th Cir. 2005). 15 However, the Court is not “required to accept as true allegations that are merely conclusory, 16 unwarranted deductions of fact, or unreasonable inferences.” In re Gilead Scis. Sec. Litig., 536 17 F.3d 1049, 1055 (9th Cir. 2008) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). 18 IV. JUDICIAL NOTICE 19 “As a general rule, [courts] ‘may not consider any material beyond the pleadings in ruling 20 on a Rule 12(b)(6) motion.’” United States v. Corinthian Colleges, 655 F.3d 984, 998 (9th Cir. 21 2011) (quoting Lee v. City of Los Angeles, 250 F.3d 668, 688 (9th Cir. 2001)). “When ‘matters 22 outside the pleading are presented to and not excluded by the court,’ the 12(b)(6) motion converts 23 into a motion for summary judgment under Rule 56,” unless those matters satisfy the 24 “incorporation-by-reference doctrine” or the standard for “judicial notice under Federal Rule of 25 Evidence 201.” Khoja v. Orexigen Therapeutics, Inc., 899 F.3d 988, 998 (9th Cir. 2018) (quoting 26 Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(d)). The Ninth Circuit has expressed concern with the practice of “exploiting 27 these procedures improperly to defeat what would otherwise constitute adequately stated claims at 1 present their own version of the facts at the pleading stage—and district courts accept those facts 2 as uncontroverted and true—it becomes near impossible for even the most aggrieved plaintiff to 3 demonstrate a sufficiently ‘plausible’ claim for relief.” Id. at 999. 4 “Judicial notice under Rule 201 permits a court to notice an adjudicative fact if it is ‘not 5 subject to reasonable dispute,’” i.e., the fact “is ‘generally known,’ or ‘can be accurately and 6 readily determined from sources whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned.’” Id. (quoting 7 Fed. R. Evid. 201(b)). 8 Peet’s requests that the Court take judicial notice of the following documents: nine 9 screenshots from the Peet’s website, including screenshots of its online menu and order pages; 10 screenshots from Tim Hortons’s website, including of pages generated after ordering at a Tim 11 Hortons store in Houston, Texas; and Defendant P.F. Chang’s Request for Judicial Notice in 12 Support of Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss Plaintiff’s Complaint filed in Phillips v. P.F. Chang’s 13 China Bistro, Inc., Case No. 5:15-cv-00344-RMW (N.D. Cal. February 27, 2015). See ECF No. 14 48-1 at 4–5. 15 As this Court has previously explained, “this Court rejects the notion that a document is 16 judicially noticeable simply because it appears on a publicly available website, regardless of who 17 maintains the website or the purpose of the document.” Rollins v. Dignity Health, 338 F. Supp. 3d 18 1025, 1032 (N.D. Cal. 2018). Unlike government websites, the websites of private parties “are not 19 inherently reliable,” and that “is particularly so when a party seeks to introduce documents it 20 created and posted on its own website, as [Peet’s] does here. When a non-governmental entity to 21 seek judicial notice of its paper records, the request is properly rejected because such documents 22 are subject to reasonable dispute.” Id. at 1032–33 (citing Ladore v. Sony Comput. Entm’t Am., 23 LLC, 75 F.Supp.3d 1065, 1074 (N.D. Cal. 2014)). 24 Peet’s argues that this Court “may take judicial notice of Peet’s Coffee’s website and the 25 content of these menu pages from the Peet’s Coffee Website and Tim Hortons Website because 26 the SAC makes multiple references to” the contents of both websites in support of its allegations. 27 ECF No. 48-1 at 3. But the portions of the second amended complaint do not support Peet’s 1 free menu targeted to persons with lactose intolerance or milk allergies,” they do not allege that 2 this was Peet’s or Tim Hortons’s online menu. See, e.g., ECF No. 44 ¶ 139. Indeed, Plaintiffs’ 3 briefing clarifies that they are referring to the physical menu board at various Peet’s locations. See 4 ECF No. 52 at 5. As Peet’s “is not explaining or arguing the allegations in Plaintiffs’ [SAC] – it is 5 trying to factually rebut them . . . , to grant the request for judicial notice would improperly 6 convert this Rule 12(b)(6) motion into a motion for summary judgment under Rule 56.” Rollins, 7 338 F. Supp. 3d at 1031 (citing Khoja, 899 F.3d at 998–99). Accordingly, the Court denies Peet’s 8 request for judicial notice of any of the documents relating to its or Tim Hortons’s website. 9 As to Peet’s request for judicial notice of the document filed in Phillips v. P.F. Chang’s 10 China Bistro, Inc., Case No. 5:15-cv-00344-RMW, the Court takes judicial notice of the existence 11 of the document, but not the truth of the matters asserted in the document. See Salas v. Gomez, 12 No. 14-CV-01676-JST, 2016 WL 3971206, at *5 (N.D. Cal. July 25, 2016); see also In re Bare 13 Escentuals, Inc. Sec. Lit., 745 F. Supp. 2d 1052, 1067 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (explaining that the court 14 “may take judicial notice of the existence of unrelated court documents . . . it will not take judicial 15 notice of such documents for the truth of the matter asserted therein”). 16 V. DISCUSSION 17 A. ADA Title III Claims 18 Plaintiffs allege that Peet’s violates the ADA because “it fails to make modifications to 19 persons with lactose intolerance and milk allergies but instead imposes a surcharge on this group 20 of persons, purportedly to cover the costs of such measures, even though there is no material 21 difference between the costs of regular milk and Non-Dairy Alternatives.” ECF No. 44 ¶ 138. 22 Plaintiffs advance two separate ADA-based theories: (1) the imposition of a surcharge on a 23 group of individuals with disabilities violates the ADA’s implementing regulations under 28 24 C.F.R. § 36.301, and (2) Peets fails to make reasonable modifications under 42 25 U.S.C. § 12182(b)(2)(A)(ii). 26 1. Illegal Surcharge 27 The Court previously found that Plaintiffs failed to adequately allege an ADA violation 1 under the two-part test laid out in Dare v. California. See ECF No. 41 at 3–5 (citing Dare v. 2 California, 191 F.3d 1167 (9th Cir. 1999)). The Court further distinguished the facts of this case 3 from those in Phillips v. P.F. Chang’s China Bistro, Inc., No. 5:15-CV-00344-RMW, 2015 WL 4 7429497 (N.D. Cal. Nov. 23, 2015), which Plaintiffs relied upon heavily and which did not apply 5 the Dare test. ECF No. 41 at 5–6. 6 Plaintiffs contend that they have sufficiently addressed the issues previously identified by 7 the Court by now alleging that just like in Phillips, Peet’s servers directed Plaintiffs to a “separate, 8 ‘dairy-free’ menu for persons who were lactose intolerant,” specifically referring to “menu boards 9 behind the registers or counters have a separate section for Non-Dairy Alternatives.” ECF No. 52 10 at 5. The Court finds Plaintiffs’ argument unhelpful. 11 First, as with Plaintiffs’ first amended complaint, the second amended complaint fails to 12 state a claim for an illegal surcharge under the Dare test. Under Dare, the Court considers (1) 13 whether the policy for which an entity levies the fee is “required to provide that individual or 14 group nondiscriminatory treatment as mandated by the ADA” and (2) whether the fee is a 15 surcharge at all—i.e., whether it is a charge that nondisabled people would not incur. “Dare, 191 16 F.3d at 1171. As the Court previously explained, Plaintiffs have not explained how Peet’s pricing 17 policy meets either Dare factor to constitute a surcharge. See ECF No. 41 at 4–5. 18 Second, although Plaintiffs continue to base their argument entirely on Phillips—which is 19 not binding on this Court—Plaintiffs’ new factual allegations are still distinguishable. In Phillips, 20 the plaintiff alleged that P.F. Chang’s had an entirely separate gluten-free menu that included 21 items that cost more than their exact analogue on the regular menu, even for items that were 22 already naturally gluten-free. See Phillips, 2015 WL 7429497, at *4; id., ECF No. 25 ¶ 18. Here, 23 Plaintiffs have primarily amended their complaint to allege that Peet’s servers also directed 24 Plaintiffs to a “separate, ‘dairy-free’ menu for persons who were lactose intolerant. See, e.g., ECF 25 No. 44 ¶ 139. But Plaintiffs’ briefing reveals that those “separate, dairy-free menus” refer to the 26 27 1 “Customize” sections of the menu boards at certain Peet’s locations. 2 3 4 TEAS HLF ee. | □□□ AGES eal he coin BREW & SIGNATURE en i : sme 8 □ | Pree y, fecal di Tea ain 3 i 5 puree 4 ESPRESSD | ise see nenicenstte gi0 640 600 2 | 59 fated Pres EN | coueee 515 670 620 1 co atcha taute ayo 540 589% BU ys BE □□ | cots row Oat barre gps gag 670 180 2 = Chai Latte pan jn cpa J rghata Cola Brew O3t Lane § 6 | cxésats was 8 | sean _—— 1 T -—— □ yas ac if 2 | abraded sg aia 315 3.60 ae 2 7 os sa ts ute ee sin 510 420 110 190 MONT a it 536 190 140. 16 ee a = FRapPe _—_—— See 8 iz us sleet Coa oat 625 370. 440° 570 = Srouarey Lemon □□□ Late SE eel 525 540 625 400 469 610 : Carpnal Marca? SINS SORE | ae 525 580 625 20 3h NON-COFFEE 9 Mecha gs $4 4M MP 41? ae cocoa 395 635 £65 420 530 6 Werscmceaiewxta SSF ae costewze Vanilla Frappe 525 5.80 625 370 470 a6 pncnecser [ee one = ade ee Vanilla Steamer 370 4.10 440 2 }

ll im: aoe om □ pe See ECF No. 52 at 5. 14

5 These menu sections list the customization options available and the additional cost of Oo 6 those customizations, including making drinks with not just non-dairy alternatives but also with

. . . . whipped cream, syrups, and sauces. See id. The menu sections thus neither solely target people

. . . . . 8 with lactose intolerance nor charge higher prices for the exact same drink from some separate 19 menu for people without lactose intolerance, as was the case alleged in Phillips. 50 Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs fail to plausible allege that Peet’s pricing policy constitutes an illegal surcharge under the ADA.

0 2. Reasonable Modification

33 The Court previously found that Plaintiffs failed to adequately allege that Peet’s violates

54 the ADA by failing to make reasonable modifications regarding pricing for drinks made with non-

dairy alternatives because Plaintiffs did not allege actually requesting a reasonable modification or

show that the modification sought was “necessary.” See ECF No. 41 at 6-9. A requested 5 modification is “necessary” when failure to provide the accommodation would deprive a disabled 4 38 customer from having a “like experience” as non-disabled customers. Baughman v. Walt Disney

1 World Co., 685 F.3d 1131, 1135 (9th Cir. 2012). 2 On the first issue, Plaintiffs have now sufficiently alleged that they requested that Peet’s 3 waive the additional cost of the non-dairy alternatives to accommodate their alleged disabilities. 4 See ECF No. 44 ¶¶ 30–33, 41–44, 52–55, 63–66. 5 As to whether the requested modification is “necessary,” however, Plaintiffs continue to 6 fall short. Plaintiffs have amended their complaint essentially to repeat what they argued in their 7 previous briefing—that consumers go to Peet’s to “order[] its specialty crafted coffee drinks, most 8 of which include milk products,” and so “in order to fully enjoy this experience,” those with 9 lactose intolerance or milk allergies “should be able to substitute the dairy milk in these drinks for 10 Non-Dairy Alternatives at the same cost.” Compare ECF No. 44 ¶¶ 93–94 with ECF No. 39 at 4. 11 But the Court already rejected this argument because Plaintiffs do not provide any authority that 12 Peet’s is required under the ADA to sell goods that accommodate a disability at the exact same 13 price as its “ordinary” counterpart to provide a “like experience.” See ECF No. 41 at 8–9. 14 Accordingly, Plaintiffs have not adequately stated a claim for failure to make reasonable 15 modifications under the ADA. 16 B. California Unruh Act Claim 17 California residents Munoz and Irwin bring an Unruh Act claim, arguing that Peet’s 18 “practice of surcharging Non-Dairy Alternatives purchased by consumers who are lactose 19 intolerant constitutes price discrimination in violation of the Unruh Act.” ECF No. 44 ¶ 148. 20 Plaintiffs advance two theories for their Unruh Civil Rights Act claim—one predicated upon a 21 violation of the ADA and the other on a theory of intentional discrimination. Because the Court 22 finds that Plaintiffs have not stated an ADA claim, the Court analyzes only whether Munoz and 23 Irwin have stated a case for intentional discrimination to support their Unruh Act claim. 24 To make a prima facie case of intentional discrimination under the Unruh Act, Plaintiffs 25 must allege “willful, affirmative misconduct with the specific intent to accomplish discrimination 26 on the basis of [a protected trait].” Martinez v. Cot’n Wash, Inc., 81 Cal. App. 5th 1026, 1036, 27 (2022), review denied (Nov. 9, 2022) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). While 1 “it cannot alone establish such intent.” Id. 2 As discussed above and in the Court’s previous order, Plaintiffs have not adequately 3 alleged that Peet’s has singled out those with lactose intolerance or milk allergies for its non-dairy 4 alternative milk pricing. Peet’s pricing policy is facially neutral and applies equally to customers 5 who are not lactose intolerant but prefer non-dairy alternatives in their drinks. And the “separate 6 menu” (the “Customize” section of the menu) that Plaintiffs now point to does not plausibly 7 reflect any specific intent to target individuals with lactose intolerance or milk allergies. See 8 Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, Inc. v. Cable News Network, Inc., 742 F.3d 414, 426 9 (9th Cir. 2014) (finding that a bare assertion that “CNN intentionally excluded deaf and hard of 10 hearing individuals from” accessing” its website “fail to establish even a minimal showing of 11 intentional discrimination and are belied by the record”). 12 C. Discrimination Claims under Massachusetts and Texas State Law 13 Hetherton alleges a violation of Massachusetts Public Accommodation Law, Chapter 272, 14 § 98, and Wilkinson alleges a violation of Texas Human Resource Code § 121.003(a). ECF No. 15 44 at 23–25. As the Court previously explained, both state provisions generally apply 16 coextensively with the ADA. See ECF No. 41 at 10. The Court thus dismisses Hetherton’s and 17 Wilkinson’s claims under these state laws for the same reasons as those identified in the 18 discussion on Plaintiffs’ ADA claims. 19 D. Unjust Enrichment Claims 20 Plaintiffs raise unjust enrichment claims under California, Massachusetts, and Texas state 21 law. Under the law of all three states, unjust enrichment only applies when it would be unjust for 22 that party to retain a benefit it wrongfully received. See County of San Bernardino v. Walsh, 158 23 Cal. App. 4th 533, 542–43 (2007) (explaining that unjust enrichment focuses “on the wrongdoer’s 24 enrichment”); Eun Bok Lee v. Ho Chang Lee, 411 S.W.3d 95, 111 (Tex. App. 2013) (stating that 25 unjust enrichment occurs when a person has received a benefit which “it would be unconscionable 26 to retain”); Sacks v. Dissinger, 178 N.E.3d 388, 397 (Mass. 2021) (defining unjust enrichment 27 under Massachusetts law as the “retention of money or property of another against the 1 833 N.E.2d 171, 176 (Mass. 2005)). 2 Here, Plaintiffs’ unjust enrichment claim is based on the same allegations and theory as 3 || their ADA claim—that Peet’s “enriched itself at the expense of Plaintiffs and the putative class 4 || members by its illegal levying of the Surcharge for Non-Dairy Alternatives.” ECF No. 44 4 192, 5 197, 206. Because the Court has found that Peet’s pricing policy does not constitute a 6 || discriminatory “surcharge” under the ADA, there is no wrongful conduct such that it would be 7 || unjust for Peet’s to retain the benefit conferred by Plaintiffs in purchasing their drinks. 8 CONCLUSION 9 For the reasons stated above, Peet’s motion to dismiss is granted, and Plaintiffs’ claims are 10 || dismissed without leave to amend. All other pending motions are denied as moot. The clerk is 11 directed to enter judgment on behalf of Peet’s and close the case. IT IS SO ORDERED. : 13 Dated: May 22, 2025 . .

JON S. TIGAR 15 nited States District Judge

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