Opinion ID: 200332
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The nature and cost of the barrier removal;

Text: 28 b. MMC's overall financial resources, number of employees and the effect of the barrier removal on MMC's expenses and resources; and 29 c. MMC's type of operation. 30 Unless Defendant removes the barriers in the Family Center, Plaintiffs and other people who use wheelchairs will continue to be excluded from the Family Center and therefore unable to enjoy the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations provided to non-disabled persons who stay in and use the Family Center. 31 The claims and defenses are well-presented by the Commission Report. 32 The Commission's Report detailed MMC's position on whether renovating a room in the Family Center was readily achievable under 42 U.S.C. § 12181(9). The Report outlined MMC's revenue for the fiscal year ended September 2000, its expenses, and its capital budget. It specified that the estimated cost of renovating a patient room and associated bath/shower room was $62,000. There would be additional costs from closing that room while renovations were done. If money was spent on this renovation, MMC said, it would have to postpone other ADA physical barrier removals, such as a wheelchair ramp, or cut back elsewhere. MMC also noted that it is a relatively rare occurrence to have a wheelchair-using patient give birth, and there was not another such patient between November 1999 and March 2001. MMC took the position that it would be irrational to spend the money as plaintiffs desired, as the labor and delivery unit has the lowest incidence of use by mobility-impaired patients of any of the in-patient units. 4 The facts at issue are limited in number, and easily discoverable, and this suggests simplicity. 33 But this simplicity is not enough to create fitness. Even though the legal issues may be clear, a case may still not be fit for review: 34 [T]he question of fitness does not pivot solely on whether a court is capable of resolving a claim intelligently, but also involves an assessment of whether it is appropriate for the court to undertake the task. Federal courts cannot — and should not — spend their scarce resources on what amounts to shadow boxing. Thus, if a plaintiff's claim, though predominantly legal in character, depends on future events that may never come to pass, or that may not occur in the form forecasted, then the claim is unripe. 35 Ernst & Young, 45 F.3d at 537. [P]remature review not only can involve judges in deciding issues in a context not sufficiently concrete to allow for focus and intelligent analysis, but it also can involve them in deciding issues unnecessarily, wasting time and effort. W.R. Grace & Co. v. United States EPA, 959 F.2d 360, 366 (1st Cir.1992). Moreover, this is not a situation in which a decision is unavoidable, as in Stern. 214 F.3d at 10. Here, that the future event may never come to pass augurs against a finding of fitness. 36 The chain of contingencies lying between the plaintiffs' current state and their complained-of future injury bolsters that conclusion. Like the situation in Ernst & Young, the present case also depends on a chain of contingencies. In Ernst & Young, the threatened injury was contingent upon a series of eight events which may or may not come to pass, a long string of contingencies, we found, so long that [Ernst & Young's] assertion of fitness for judicial review trips over it and falls. 45 F.3d at 538. 37 Similarly, the present case is one in which the threatened injury is contingent on several events which may or may not happen. First — as the magistrate judge recognized — the keystone is that McInnis-Misenor may or may not become pregnant. Second, there is no way of knowing when, if ever, McInnis-Misenor will become pregnant, and so there is no way of knowing whether MMC will by then have Family Center facilities available to mothers in wheelchairs. Other contingencies include: if she delivers at MMC (as is likely) she may or may not be eligible for transfer to the Family Center; her delivery may pose complications, as last time, which prevent her transfer; and there may or may not be room available at the Family Center on the day she would want to transfer. We do not suggest, however, that these latter conditions alone would defeat standing. 38 As in Ernst & Young, the case that [plaintiffs] argue [ ] is, at this stage, largely hypothetical, and such cases are seldom fit for federal judicial review. Id.