Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca2-14-03987/USCOURTS-ca2-14-03987-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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14‐3987‐cv

Range v. 480‐486 Broadway, LLC, et al.  

In the 

United States Court of Appeals 

For the Second Circuit ________

AUGUST TERM 2015

No. 14‐3987‐cv

KING RANGE,

Plaintiff‐Appellant,

v.

480‐486 BROADWAY, LLC, MADEWELL, INC., AND J. CREW GROUP, INC.,

Defendants‐Appellees.

________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of New York

________

   

SUBMITTED: OCTOBER 23, 2015

DECIDED: NOVEMBER 24, 2015

________

Before: KEARSE, WALKER, and CABRANES, Circuit Judges.

________

On appeal from an oral order of the United States District

Court for the Southern District of New York (Lewis A. Kaplan,

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Judge), reflected in a docket entry, granting a motion by Defendants‐

Appellees to stay Plaintiff‐Appellant’s civil action for two years in

order to avoid unnecessary litigation costs.    We DISMISS the

appeal for lack of appellate jurisdiction.

________

Glen H. Parker, Parker Hanski LLC, New York,

NY, for Plaintiff‐Appellant.

Joel L. Finger and Eric D. Witkin, Littler

Mendelson PC, New York, NY, for Defendants‐

Appellees.

________

PER CURIAM :

Plaintiff‐appellant King Range appeals from the September 24,

2014 order of the United States District Court for the Southern

District of New York (Lewis A. Kaplan, Judge) staying his action for,

inter alia, injunctive relief under Title III of the Americans with

Disabilities Act (“ADA”), 42 U.S.C. § 12182 et seq.  We conclude that

we are without jurisdiction to hear the appeal.    Accordingly, we

DISMISS for want of appellate jurisdiction.    

BACKGROUND

Range filed this lawsuit against defendants 480‐486 Broadway,

LLC (“Broadway”), Madewell, Inc. (“Madewell”), and J. Crew

Group, Inc. (“J. Crew”) on April 8, 2014.  In his complaint, Range,

who is confined to a wheelchair, alleged that a retail property in

New York City owned by Broadway and leased by Madewell and J.

Crew does not comply with the ADA’s accessibility requirements.  

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According to Range, the property fails to meet the ADA’s standards

in thirty‐three different respects.  Among other problems, there is no

permanent ramp from the street to the entrance, some interior

spaces are too narrow to permit navigation by a person in a

wheelchair, and the International Symbol of Accessibility is not

displayed as the law requires.  

On June 19, 2014, the parties appeared for a status conference

before the District Court.  Counsel for defendants represented that

defendants wished to bring the property into compliance, explaining

that the property was located in a historic district and the New York

City Landmarks Preservation Commission (“LPC”) had rejected an

earlier application to build a permanent ramp in front of the

property.  Counsel also argued that discovery should not commence

because discovery was not necessary: it was plain from Range’s

complaint that his attorney had visited the property and catalogued

its alleged shortcomings.  Instead, counsel submitted, discovery

should be stayed and a settlement conference scheduled.  The

District Court agreed to stay discovery, and it referred the case for a

settlement conference.   

The parties failed to settle and appeared for another status

conference on September 24, 2014.  On that same day defendants

filed a new application with the LPC seeking leave to construct a

permanent ramp; they were scheduled to be heard on October 21.  

Before the District Court, counsel for defendants argued that the

discovery stay should remain in place for two reasons: first, Range’s

complaint identified all of the property’s alleged problems; second,

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defendants had begun the process of bringing the property into

compliance.  Accordingly, proceeding with discovery would serve

only to saddle the parties with unnecessary costs.

The District Court agreed.  In an order entered on September

24, 2014, the District Court noted that defendants had “assured the

Court” that they were “in the process of correcting [any lack of

compliance] to the extent it is within their power to do so,” had filed

a new application with the LPC, and would be heard before the LPC

on October 21.  S.A. 52.  In consequence, wrote the Court, it made

“very little sense to run up legal fees and expert fees . . . reasonably

likely to be utterly without ultimate purpose.”  S.A. 53.  The District

Court therefore stayed the action, but not without this caveat: “If the

plaintiff wishes in the interim to have me modify this order, they

are, of course, at liberty to make an application.”  Id.  The order was

reflected in a docket entry made two days later, on September 26,

2014, stating that the action was stayed for two years.  

Range appeals this order, arguing that the District Court

abused its discretion by staying his action.  As a threshold matter, he

asserts that we have jurisdiction to decide this question either

because the stay order is a final decision under 28 U.S.C. § 1291,

because it is an appealable collateral order, or because he is entitled

to a writ of mandamus.  We reject each of these arguments and

therefore dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction.

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DISCUSSION

I. Final Decision

Range first argues that the District Court’s order is “final”

within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291, which vests the courts of

appeals with “jurisdiction of appeals from all final decisions of the

district courts of the United States.”  A stay order ordinarily does

not qualify as a final decision, but the Supreme Court has

recognized an exception to this general rule.  Moses H. Cone Mem’l

Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 10 & n.11 (1983).  When a

stay puts a plaintiff “effectively out of court,” the stay order is final

and appealable.  Id. (internal quotation marks omitted).  Range

argues that the District Court’s order does just that by preventing

him from pursuing his case for two years.

We disagree.  “[A] decision is ordinarily considered final and

appealable under § 1291 only if it ends the litigation on the merits

and leaves nothing for the court to do but execute the judgment.”  

Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., 517 U.S. 706, 712 (1996) (internal

quotation marks omitted).  “[M]ost stays do not put the plaintiff

‘effectively out of court’” and so are not reviewable final orders.  

Moses H. Cone, 460 U.S. at 11 n.11; Steele v. L.F. Rothschild & Co., 864

F.2d 1, 2 (2d Cir. 1988) (stay orders “ordinarily are not appealable . . .

‘final orders’”).

While a stay order may be a final order if it effectively cedes

federal jurisdiction “by refus[ing] to proceed to a disposition on the

merits” or imposing “lengthy or indefinite delays,” Blue Cross & Blue

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Shield of Ala. v. Unity Outpatient Surgery Ctr., Inc., 490 F.3d 718, 723‐

24 (9th Cir. 2007); see id. at 724 (reviewing stays that were “both

indefinite and expected to be lengthy,” as “[t]hey could easily last . .

. five[ ] or six[ ] year[s] . . . or even longer,” depending on the

possible initiation and completion of criminal proceedings), the stay

order here is “an ordinary delay in the interest of docket control”

over which we lack jurisdiction, Moses H. Cone, 460 U.S. at 11 n.11.

II. Collateral Order

Nor is the District Court’s order appealable under the

collateral‐order exception to the rule of finality.  Under this

exception, an order that does not finally resolve a litigation may

nevertheless be appealed if the order 1) “conclusively determine[s]

the disputed question;” 2) “resolve[s] an important issue completely

separate from the merits of the action;” and 3) is “effectively

unreviewable on appeal from a final judgment.”  Gulfstream

Aerospace Corp. v. Mayacamas Corp., 485 U.S. 271, 276 (1988) (internal

quotation marks omitted).  A stay order can qualify as an appealable

collateral order, see, e.g., Discon, Inc. v. NYNEX Corp., 4 F.3d 130, 133‐

34 (2d Cir. 1993) (reviewing an order that stayed a blameless

plaintiff’s lawsuit until its counsel, over whom plaintiff lacked

control, complied with an order to pay sanctions), but this one does

not: it founders on the first requirement, that the order “conclusively

determine the disputed question.”  Gulfstream, 485 U.S. at 276

(internal quotation marks omitted).  

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A nonfinal order does not conclusively determine an issue

unless, “although technically amendable, [it is] ‘made with the

expectation that [it] will be the final word on the subject

addressed.’”  Id. at 277 (quoting Moses H. Cone, 460 U.S. at 12 n.14).  

If the order is of a kind that “a district court ordinarily would expect

to reassess and revise . . . in response to events occurring in the

ordinary course of litigation,” it is not conclusive.  Id. (internal

quotation marks omitted).  So too if the district court

“contemplate[s]” that the order “may be modified or revised as the

litigation proceeds.”  In re Repetitive Stress Injury Litig., 11 F.3d 368,

372 (2d Cir. 1993).   

Here, though the docket entry reflecting the District Court’s

order speaks in absolutes — “Action stayed for 2 years” — the

Court’s oral ruling quite plainly contemplates future revision.  The

stay was entered because “[t]he defendant has assured the Court

that to whatever extent there is any lack of compliance on the subject

premises, they are in the process of correcting it to the extent it is

within their power to do so.”  S.A. 52.  The District Court stated that

Range could, “in the interim . . . make an application” to “modify

[the] order.”  S.A. 53.  We read the order to indicate that if

defendants do not proceed in good faith as promised during the

period of the stay and Range applies to the District Court for relief,

the Court will revisit the stay.  Moreover, in the event that plaintiff

maintains that further remediation is necessary after defendants’

promised work is complete, the District Court will address those

claims.  Because it is clear that the stay order is subject to

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modification in light of changing circumstances, it does not

“conclusively determine the disputed question” and is therefore not

an appealable collateral order.  Gulfstream, 485 U.S. at 276 (internal

quotation marks omitted).

III. Mandamus

Finally, we conclude that mandamus relief is not warranted in

this case.  A writ of mandamus is an “extraordinary remedy,”

available only in “exceptional circumstances amounting to a judicial

usurpation of power or a clear abuse of discretion.”  In re City of New

York, 607 F.3d 923, 932 (2d Cir. 2010) (internal quotation marks

omitted).  The party seeking the writ must show that “its right to

issuance of the writ is clear and undisputable.”  Gulfstream, 485 U.S.

at 289 (internal quotation marks omitted).  Though a district court

possesses inherent authority to “control the disposition of the causes

on its docket” and has power to stay an action as an incident of that

authority, Landis v. N. Am. Co., 299 U.S. 248, 254 (1936), a stay order

may warrant mandamus relief “in exceptional cases,” Gulfstream,

485 U.S. at 288 n.13.

This is not such a case.  The decision whether to stay an action

calls on a district court’s “studied judgment,” requiring the court to

examine “the particular facts before it” and determine “the extent to

which . . . a stay would work a hardship, inequity, or injustice to a

party, the public or the court.”  Louis Vuitton Malletier S.A. v. LY

USA, Inc., 676 F.3d 83, 99 (2d Cir. 2012).  The record shows that the

District Court acted within its authority in deciding, based on the

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circumstances of the case and the interests of the litigants and the

Court, that this action should be stayed.  The Court took note of

defendants’ plans to address Range’s concerns about the property

and the lack of any apparent need for discovery, concluding that

permitting the active litigation of the case at present would only

waste the parties’ resources and the Court’s time.   

In arguing that he is entitled to a writ of mandamus, Range

ignores the fact that the District Court explicitly kept the door open

to revisiting the stay in the event that defendants fail to proceed in

good faith.  To be sure, stay orders are not automatically sustainable

or precluded from review merely “because conceivably the court

that made it may be persuaded at a later time to undo what it has

done.”  Landis, 299 U.S. at 257; see also Trujillo v. Conover & Co.

Commc’ns, 221 F.3d 1262, 1264 n.3 (11th Cir. 2000).  This is not such a

case, however, as the District Court conditioned the stay on prompt

remediation by defendants.  

Range emphasizes that defendants’ promise to remedy the

property is not judicially enforceable and that these ADA violations

should not be permitted to persist, immune from judicial challenge,

for two years.  Both points may be granted.  But in view of the

District Court’s avowed willingness to modify its order should

circumstances change, it is clear that the Court has not abdicated its

role — and equally clear that Range is not entitled to the

extraordinary relief he seeks.

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CONCLUSION

In sum, we hold that the District Court’s stay order is neither

“final” within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 1291, nor an appealable

collateral order, nor a clear abuse of discretion warranting

mandamus relief.    Accordingly, for the reasons set out above, we

DISMISS the appeal for want of appellate jurisdiction.

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