United States v. 2020-11-03 | 19-56345 | ADAM GHADIRI V. CARPET AND LINOLEUM CITY | nonprecedential | memorandum disposition |

NOT FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

ADAM GHADIRI,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

CARPET AND LINOLEUM CITY, a
business entity; et al.,

Defendants-Appellees,

and

JACQUELINE COX,

Defendant.

No. 19-56345

D.C. No.
8:18-cv-01869-AG-ADS

MEMORANDUM
*

Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Central District of California
Andrew J. Guilford, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted October 13, 2020
**

Pasadena, California

Before: GOULD and OWENS, Circuit Judges, and KORMAN,
***
District Judge.

*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.

**
The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision
without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

FILED

NOV 3 2020

MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS

2
Appellant Adam Ghadiri is a frequent filer of Americans with Disabilities Act
(“ADA”) cases. A review of cases on PACER indicates that Ghadiri has filed over
100 lawsuits in the Central District of California since 2018, which commonly allege
that small businesses in the region fail to designate handicapped parking or provide
handicapped bathrooms. Ghadiri often brings lawsuits for injunctive relief and the
$4,000 statutory minimum damages under California law. Ghadiri frequently files
his complaints in pro per, using the same template that he used in this action. In a
handful of cases, Ghadiri is represented by counsel, including his attorneys in this
case. See, e.g., Ghadiri v. Rainbow 1, LLC, No. 8:19-cv-00713 (C.D. Cal.).
Ghadiri’s lawsuits often settle. Indeed, because it appears that Ghadiri is willing to
settle for $4,000, it may not pay for a defendant to retain counsel and litigate the case
at the additional risk of paying Ghadiri’s counsel fees should he prevail.
Appellees own a modest retail carpeting store. In a six-page pro per
complaint, Ghadiri alleged that Appellees’ business failed to designate any space for
handicapped parking. He sought an injunction requiring Appellees to correct the
defect in their parking lot, as well as at least $4,000 in statutory damages available
under California law. Ghadiri subsequently substituted Center for Disability Access
(“CDA”) to represent him in the lawsuit. Before Ghadiri retained CDA, virtually no

***
The Honorable Edward R. Korman, United States District Judge for
the Eastern District of New York, sitting by designation.

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activity had taken place in the case, so that the case file consisted mostly of a six-
page complaint and a ten-page answer. In the four months that Ghadiri was
represented by CDA, only one motion was filed—Ghadiri’s summary judgment
motion, for which CDA did not even file a reply. Discovery in the case was also
modest. The only deposition taken in the case was Appellees’ deposition of Ghadiri.
As CDA itself noted in its motion for attorney’s fees before the District Court, this
“case has not seen a tremendous amount of work.”
Nevertheless, despite the minimal amount of work required, CDA billed 75.8
hours and moved for an award of $34,873.50 in attorney’s fees after prevailing on
summary judgment. The District Court awarded CDA $15,000 in attorney’s fees.
The District Court based its fee award on a “global view of reasonableness,” after
finding that CDA’s hourly rates and the hours it billed in the case to be unreasonable.
We review the District Court’s award of attorney’s fees for abuse of
discretion, but review questions of law that underlie a court’s fee award de novo.
Vogel v. Harbor Plaza Ctr., 893 F.3d 1152, 1157 (9th Cir. 2018). “Under this
standard of review, we affirm unless the district court applied the wrong legal
standard or its findings were illogical, implausible or without support in the record.”
Gonzalez v. City of Maywood, 729 F.3d 1196, 1201–02 (9th Cir. 2013) (internal
quotations and citations omitted). We may permit a fee award to stand if we
conclude that any error on the part of the District Court in calculating the fee was

4
harmless. See Corder v. Gates, 947 F.2d 374, 378 (9th Cir. 1991).
We hold that the District Court’s fee award was not an abuse of discretion
given the circumstances of this case. As the Supreme Court recognized in Fox v.
Vice, 563 U.S. 826, 838 (2011):
[T]rial courts need not, and indeed should not, become green-
eyeshade accountants. The essential goal in shifting fees . . . is
to do rough justice, not to achieve auditing perfection. So trial
courts may take into account their overall sense of a suit, and may
use estimates in calculating and allocating an attorney's time.

That is what the District Court did here. Even though the District Court did
not use explicit mathematical calculations to determine the fee award, he said that
he was “reduc[ing] the amount of fees requested to reflect a more reasonable rate,”
and cited cases in which CDA had requested a maximum fee rate of $425 an hour as
recently as a year before its fees motion in this action. See Lopez v. Macca Corp.,
2018 WL 5310770, at *6 (C.D. Cal. Oct. 22, 2018). CDA argues that a $425 hourly
rate, which was based on a rate that it had first requested 2011, was unreasonable.
Nevertheless, even if the District Court had accepted the hours CDA billed as
reasonable, the $460 an hour blended rate one arrives at by dividing the total number
of fees requested ($34,873.50) by the total number of hours billed (75.8) is greater
than the maximum fee rate CDA requested only a year earlier.
The District Court’s criticism of the hours CDA expended on this case also
indicates that it clearly thought that many of the hours billed were excessive in terms

5
of the work performed. For example, the District Court criticized CDA for charging
$2,000 to review the case file, which consisted of a six-page complaint and ten-page
answer. Nevertheless, a cursory review of the time sheets CDA submitted to the
District Court demonstrates that CDA spent approximately 32 hours on the
following activities, which captures the essential tasks that CDA represented it
performed: (1) reviewing the case file, (2) tasks related to summary judgment, (3)
tasks related to Plaintiff’s deposition, (4) tasks related to Defendant’s anticipated
appeal of the District Court’s summary judgement order, which was voluntarily
dismissed before Defendants even filed an appeal brief. Applying the $460 blended
rate to time spent on these activities yields a total of $14,720, which is only $280
less than the District Court’s fee award.
In sum, the District Court had great familiarity with cases alleging violations
of the ADA and its California state law equivalent. Indeed, at the fee hearing, the
District Court mentioned that “[ADA] cases have come to take up . . . maybe 20
percent or more of the calendars of District Court judges across the Central District.”
Under these circumstances, the District Court’s “assessment” of the reasonableness
of time spent on activities like case analysis, motion drafting, and discovery-related
tasks is “entitled to considerable deference because of the district court’s superior
understanding of the litigation.” Welch v. Metro. Life Ins. Co., 480 F.3d 942, 949
(9th Cir. 2007) (internal quotations and citation omitted). We cannot say that the

6
District Court’s fee award was based on findings that were “illogical, implausible or
without support in the record.” Gonzalez, 729 F.3d at 1201–02.

AFFIRMED.