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L&L franchiser
to appeal legal fees
in ADA cases

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Star-Bulletin staff

L&L Drive-Inn franchiser Eddie Flores will appeal a federal magistrate's ruling that he must pay $137,000 to a lawyer who handled Americans with Disabilities Act cases against several L&L restaurants.

Ken Kuniyuki, L&L's attorney, said today that U.S. Magistrate Francis Yamashita erred in ordering L&L to pay attorneys' fees in several cases where the court ruled in L&L's favor.

Yamashita, however, ordered L&L to pay Lunsford Phillips, attorney for wheelchair-bound plaintiffs Eric Parr and Henry Emerick, his expenses in cases that L&L won as well as those it lost.

Yamashita said Parr and Emerick were the prevailing parties because L&L would not have complied with the ADA if the lawsuits had not been filed.

L&L already has appealed several of the original decisions in which Yamashita found L&L in violation of the ADA.