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L&L owner ordered
to pay $137,000 in
fees for disability cases

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By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

A U.S. magistrate today ordered L&L Drive-Inn operator Eddie Flores to pay another $77,000 in lawyer's fees and expenses to Honolulu attorney Lunsford Phillips for costs incurred in Americans with Disabilities Act cases Phillips handled for wheelchair-bound clients Eric Parr and Hank Emerick.

Magistrate Francis Yamashita yesterday had ordered Flores to pay $60,000 to Phillips after finding that Parr was the prevailing party in access cases against three L&L restaurants, even though some of the claims had been dismissed because the barriers had been removed.

Today, he made similar rulings in four more cases, one filed on behalf of Parr and three for Emerick.

In one of the three rulings, Yamashita said that Flores "delayed remediation and responded only when it was absolutely necessary."

"Without this litigation, defendant would not have attempted to bring this particular property into ADA compliance," Yamashita said in ruling on a case against Pawaa L&L.

Flores could not be reached for comment early today.

Phillips said he is glad to be "vindicated" by Yamashita's rulings. He said Flores "had taken the very public position that these lawsuits were frivolous and without merit."

"We take great satisfaction in the fact that the judge, after listening to all the evidence, has pretty conclusively determined that the lawsuits did indeed have merit," Phillips said.

Flores maintained throughout the cases, which began in 1997, that he had always tried to bring his restaurants into compliance with the ADA. Yamashita's ruling yesterday, however, found that Flores' "limited attempts to comply with the ADA were not in good faith."

Yamashita ruled in May that L&L was in violation of the ADA in three out of seven cases filed by Phillips on behalf of Parr and other clients.

Both Flores and Phillips filed court claims for reimbursement of trial-related expenses, such as legal costs and consultants' fees. In the three cases decided yesterday, Yamashita denied Flores' claims and accepted most of those made by Phillips.

From the start, Flores had hoped for favorable rulings, saying he feared victory by Phillips' clients would lead to actions against more of the 50-plus L&L restaurants in the islands. Although he made what he believed were the changes required by law to bring the restaurants into ADA compliance, he refused to settle the cases out of court, as hundreds of other businesses have done.

Flores has claimed some victories, despite the string of rulings against his businesses. Originally, L&L faced 11 ADA cases. Four were dismissed and plaintiffs were required to pay attorneys' fees in two of those.

Flores and his attorney, Ken Kuniyuki, said in May they also scored a victory for businesses by winning a ruling that a person with one disability, such as being confined to a wheelchair, may not sue for a disability he or she does not have, such as blindness.

Kuniyuki could not be reached for comment today.

Although several of the restaurants are separately owned franchises, Flores' company L&L Franchise Inc. was the defendant in all of the cases. Yamashita today told Flores to pay Phillips $109,000 in attorneys' fees at $225 an hour, plus $28,000 in costs. The L&L cases were the first disputed ADA claims to be filed in Hawaii.