Yesterday our sister publication Cal Law had the man-bites-dog story of the Consumer Attorneys of California backing a tort reform measure: Senate Bill 367, which would explicity declare that promotional discounts and giveaways for laid-off and furloughed employees don't constitute a violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
Nobody has actually brought such a lawsuit, as best we could tell. But it appeared Consumer Attorneys might have had at least one lawyer in mind: Alfred Rava, a San Diego attorney who has brought numerous Unruh Act challenges to gender-oriented business promotions. Rava has generated negative headlines in the mainstream press and on the blogosphere for challenging such giveaways as an Oakland A's Mother's Day gift of floppy hats to women in 2004.
It looks as if Consumer Attorneys may be too late to stop Rava from making bad caselaw for plaintiffs. Today we got word that he lost a class certification motion against Bear Valley Ski Resort over a "ladies day" promotion. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Anthony Mohr issued a 13-page order [pdf] holding that, because the Unruh Act provides for minimum statutory penalties of $4,000 per violation, there's no need for a class action.
"Assuming plaintiff succeeds on the merits, Bear Valley Ski Resort would be liable for mandatory statutory penalties of $4,000 X 995 putative class members," Mohr wrote. "The product of $3,980,000 constitutes a draconian sum that would strip Bear Valley of its assets."
Rava was acting as the name plaintiff in the case, not as counsel. He was represented by Gregory Cartwright of The Cartwright Law Group in San Diego and Joseph M. Grant of Houston. Brian T. Clark of San Francisco's Knott & Glazier was lead counsel for Bear Valley while John Golper of Universal City's Ballard Rosenberg Golper & Savitt led a team for co-defendants Anheuser-Busch and Bacardi.
— Scott Graham
Attorney Rava has virtually ended the proliferation of the illegal marketing promotions across California, often innocuously called Ladies' Day or Ladies' Night, that treated male and female consumers unequally, working with the California Attorney General, ABC, DFEH, and other State agencies and officials. E.g., see http://ag.ca.gov/gambling/pdfs/NUM8LOT.pdf, which was a result of Mr. Rava's great work. It's no wonder he won a unanimous opinion by the California Supreme Court in Angelucci v. Century Supper Club (2007) 41 Cal.4th 160.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the author of this piece on Mr. Rava gets it with a defamation suit for his false statements about the A's giveaway being on Mother's Day because it wasn't, or that it was a "floppy hat" because it wasn't.
Not surprinsingly, Scott "False Facts" Graham publishes another false statement when he writes that Mr. Rava's clients' complaints against Squaw Valley had to do with Squaw giving discounted lift tickets to laid off or furloughed workers. Squaw was giving discounted lift tickets to only State employees, whether or not they were laid off or furloughed, clearly an Unruh Act violation, just like Squaw could not give discounts to private sector employees and charge State employees full price. I think this Scott Graham is a moron and should get his facts straight.
Posted by: Sue Nami | October 17, 2009 at 04:38 PM
What's missing from this story is the epilogue. It appears both Bear Valley and its co-defendant Anheuser-Busch, who sponsored Ladies' Day at Bear Valley giving female consumers free lift tickets while charging men $55 for theirs, thought this trial court's ruling would be reversed on appeal - after all, Bear Valley was supposedly insured for $50 million, and therefore settled the case and agreed to never again charge consumers different prices for the same goods or services.
Posted by: Jiggy | January 10, 2011 at 07:50 AM