Jury Awards $7.4 Million to Professor Who Uses Mobility Device

By: Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight LLP via GlobeNewswire

December 20, 2024 at 11:15 AM EST

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 20, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On December 19, 2024, a nine-person jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California determined that AQUA 388 Community Association, AQUA Maintenance Corporation, and FirstService Residential California LLC owed Dr. Emma Adams $7 million in compensatory damages (against Defendants AQUA 388, AQUA Maintenance, and FirstService) and $400,000 in punitive damages ($100,000 against AQUA 388 and $300,000 against Aqua Maintenance) as a result of their violations of the Fair Housing Act (FHA).

Plaintiff Adams is a biological sciences professor at various colleges in Southern California. Dr. Adams is paraplegic and uses a powered wheelchair for mobility. She drives a modified accessible minivan, requiring eight feet of passenger-side clearance to enter and exit via a deployable ramp.

Since early 2017, Dr. Adams has owned a condominium in one of two Aqua towers comprising 556 units in Long Beach, California. The towers are situated above three levels of a parking structure that contains nearly a thousand spaces. Before moving into her condominium, Dr. Adams requested a parking space with the requisite clearance to accommodate her vehicle — a basic accommodation that, in turn, would have allowed Dr. Adams to fully enjoy her new home. She lodged her request with Aqua’s management, but the request was denied: Dr. Adams would have to use her deeded, normal-sized space.

Through correspondence with Aqua employees, Dr. Adams reiterated her request for an accessible space on numerous occasions, even proposing several approaches that management could take in order to address her needs. She was regularly forced to drive long into the night (as many as three hours, in at least one instance) to find a spot in the Aqua garage, which took a severe physical, mental, and emotional toll on her day-to-day well-being. Dr. Adams would, as a last resort, park in loading zones and hope that her vehicle would not be towed before she returned the next day.

Because her initial requests went unheeded, Dr. Adams took the initiative to attend an Aqua HOA board meeting in May 2017, where she submitted yet another request for an accessible space in the parking garage. The evidence presented at trial included that one board member responded dismissively to Dr. Adams’ request, going so far as to indicate that Dr. Adams should “sell and go” if she did not like the parking situation. Shortly thereafter, the HOA’s general counsel formally rejected the request.

For three years, then, Dr. Adams continued to suffer. She hated coming home. Dr. Adams even wished for death and considered suicide; she withdrew and lost contact with all of her friends. Only in 2020 was she ultimately granted a temporary accessible spot in the Aqua garage, and only this year was that parking assignment made permanent. All told, Dr. Adams’s fight to vindicate her basic human rights and secure the same enjoyment of her home as her able-bodied counterparts was a seven-year ordeal.

Today’s jury award helps compensate Dr. Adams for the substantial suffering she has faced at the hands of Defendants in this case, and it helps to restore her dignity and humanity as a person with a disability who uses a wheelchair. She hopes that the verdict will make Aqua a more inclusive living community for all. Plaintiff Adams was represented by Kevin Sharp, Russell Kornblith, and Brent Hannafan of Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, LLP. An original trial on Dr. Adams’ claims was held in July 2024; Sanford Heisler Sharp McKnight, LLP entered the case in October 2024, after the Court ordered a retrial.

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