Background
LaSandra Price, who uses a wheelchair due to Parkinson’s disease, visited a Family Dollar store in Fontana, California four times in the summer of 2021. Each visit confronted her with the same accessibility problems: poorly marked disabled parking spaces, uneven walkways, and aisles too narrow for a wheelchair. She sued the store and its owner, Wael Diab, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act.
When neither defendant responded to the complaint, the clerk entered defaults. Price moved for a default judgment and a specific injunction requiring the defendants to bring the store’s parking, walkways, and entrance into ADA compliance within 180 days. The district court granted both. Price then sought $9,364 in attorney’s fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. section 12205, which permits a “prevailing party” in an ADA action to recover a reasonable attorney’s fee. The district court denied the fee motion in a published decision, reasoning that Price was not a prevailing party because the injunction merely required the defendants to do what federal law already obligated them to do — no more, no less.
Price appealed. Neither defendant appeared in the Ninth Circuit.
The Court’s Holding
The Ninth Circuit reversed. Writing for a panel of three circuit judges, Judge Bress held that Price was unquestionably a prevailing party by virtue of the final injunction she obtained. Under the Supreme Court’s standard, a plaintiff prevails when actual relief on the merits “materially alters the legal relationship between the parties by modifying the defendant’s behavior in a way that directly benefits the plaintiff.” Price obtained an enforceable court order — a default judgment — requiring the defendants to take specific remedial steps at the Fontana store. That is a material alteration in the legal relationship: Price can now return to court to enforce the order if the defendants fail to comply, which she could not do before she filed suit.
The district court had misread the Ninth Circuit’s earlier decision in Fischer v. SJB-P.D. Inc. (9th Cir. 2000), which held that a plaintiff with an enforceable settlement or judgment “can force the defendant to do something he otherwise would not have to do” — not because there was no preexisting legal duty, but because the court order makes enforcement judicially available. Fischer, in fact, had already rejected the very reasoning the district court used: the defendant in Fischer had argued that the plaintiff could not prevail because the defendant’s “duty” to comply with the ADA was the same before and after the settlement, and the Ninth Circuit brushed that argument aside. The Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Lefemine v. Wideman confirmed the same principle.
The court remanded to the district court to determine the amount of a reasonable fee — noting that the district court’s concerns about the quality of the fee petition (including recycled papers with wrong pronouns for Ms. Price) may appropriately factor into reducing the award, but do not eliminate it.
Key Takeaways
- An ADA plaintiff who obtains a final injunction — even via default judgment — requiring a business to fix specific accessibility barriers is a “prevailing party” entitled to seek attorney’s fees under 42 U.S.C. section 12205.
- The fact that an injunction merely requires compliance with preexisting law does not strip the plaintiff of prevailing-party status; what matters is whether there is an enforceable court order that materially alters the parties’ legal relationship.
- The same logic applies to ADA consent decrees and settlements that require defendants to take specific remedial steps.
- Fee awards may be reduced — but not eliminated — where the fee petition was low-quality or boilerplate; the district court can consider the “quality of representation” factor in setting a reasonable amount.
- Defense counsel in ADA accessibility cases who lose on liability should contest the reasonableness of the fee request, not prevailing-party status itself.
Why It Matters
ADA accessibility litigation — particularly suits by disabled plaintiffs against small businesses over parking lots, ramps, and signage — is extremely common in California. The attorney’s fee question is often the most contested issue in these cases, since many defendants are small business owners with limited resources and many plaintiffs’ attorneys handle the cases on a contingency theory premised on winning fees. This ruling forecloses an emerging district court defense that prevailing-party status is unavailable where the injunction only forces compliance with existing law.
For California businesses, the ruling is a reminder that ignoring an ADA complaint — allowing a default to be entered — does not make the case go away. A default judgment carries the same fee-shifting consequences as a contested verdict. For disabled plaintiffs and their attorneys, the ruling confirms that injunctive relief in a default judgment context is a viable fee-generating outcome, though the court’s pointed comments about copy-pasted fee petitions signal that the quality of the fee application will matter on remand.
Read the full opinion (PDF) · Court docket