HIP Heightened Independence and Progress, Inc. v. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, 693 F.3d 345 (3d Cir. 2012). Last year, the Third Circuit decided a case about the inacessibility of SEPTA rail stations in Philadelphia. This case relates to accessibilty issues at the PATH system’s Grove Street station. Plaintiffs alleged that reconstruction work at the station had triggered obligations to make the station accessible to persons with disabilities, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and state law.
The standards under the ADA are more “onerous,” as Judge Hardiman stated in his opinion for the Third Circuit, for new construction than are those applicable to alterations of facilities. The district court treated the work at the station as “alterations,” but also recognized that the work might qualify as “new construction and/or addition.” Applying the standard for alterations, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of plaintiffs on their ADA claim. In a separate ruling, the district court dismissed plaintiffs’ state law claims. The Port Authoritiy appealed the summary judgment, and plaintiffs appealed the dismissal of their state law claims. The Third Circuit vacated the summary judgment under the ADA and remanded for further proceedings, but affirmed the dismissal of plaintiffs’ state law claims.
The opinion contains an important appellate practice issue. In the Third Circuit, plaintiffs sought to defend their summary judgment on the ground that the more strict “new construction” standards should have been applied. Though Judge Hardiman ultimately found that the renovation work constituted “alterations,” not “new construction,” he also ruled that because plaintiffs had not appealed from the summary judgment, they could not “challenge” the summary judgment order as having been based on the “alterations” rules rather than the “new construction” rules.
That aspect of the decision, though perhaps not ultimately dispositive, seems to be in tension with two standard principles of appellate review. First, a respondent may defend the decision below on any available grounds, without having to file an appeal or a cross-appeal. Second, appeals are from judgments, not from opinions, so that a party cannot appeal (even if it wants to) the reasoning that led to a ruling. It appears that plaintiffs should have been entitled to defend the summary judgment in their favor on the ground that they need only have met, and did in fact meet, the more favorable (to plaintiffs) “new construction” standards rather than the “alterations” standards. Though the panel suggested that plaintiffs had to appeal from the summary judgment in their favor in order to argue for the “new construction” standards, plaintiffs arguably could not have appealed merely because the district court’s reasoning in reaching its pro-plaintiff result was not the reasoning that plaintiffs preferred.
Perhaps there is more to this issue than meets the eye from the opinion. Regardless, the panel’s ruling on this issue highlights the need to focus on whether a party who succeeds below needs to cross-appeal in order to raise particular arguments in the appellate court.
My thanks to my colleague Jeffrey A. Shooman for his research and insights on the issues in this post.