Kendall v. Cubesmart L.P.
| Decision Date | 21 April 2016 |
| Docket Number | Civil Action No. 15-6098 (FLW)(LHG) |
| Parties | STEVEN KENDALL, on behalf of himself and others similarly situated, Plaintiff, v. CUBESMART L.P., CUBESMART, CUBESMART MANAGEMENT LLC, CUBESMART ASSET MANAGEMENT, LLC, CHRISTOPHER MARR, AND XYZ COMPANIES, 1-10, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of New Jersey |
**NOT FOR PUBLICATION**
This matter comes before the Court on a motion filed by Defendants CubeSmart L.P.; CubeSmart; CubeSmart Management LLC; CubeSmart Asset Management, LLC; Christopher Marr; and XYZ Companies 1-10 (collectively "Defendants"), seeking dismissal of the Complaint filed by Plaintiff Steven Kendall ("Kendall" or "Plaintiff") pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Plaintiff leased a storage space from Defendants in 2010 and subsequently discovered that his personal property had been damaged by a water leak in the rental unit. Plaintiff now brings suit alleging that (1) on a putative class-wide basis, the leasing documents for the rental unit included provisions which violate clearly established consumer rights under decisional law in New Jersey; the New Jersey Self Service Storage Facility Act ("SSFA"), N.J.S.A. 2A:44-187, et seq.; and the United States Bankruptcy Code, 11 U.S.C. § 365, in violation of the New Jersey Truth-in-Consumer Contract, Warranty and Notice Act ("TCCWNA"), N.J.S.A. 56:12-14, et seq., and (2) individually, that Plaintiff's leasing documents contained a limitation on liability provision which violated the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act ("CFA"), N.J.S.A. 56:8-1, et seq. For the following reasons, Defendants' motion to dismiss is denied in part and granted in part.
Specifically, Defendants' motion to dismiss Count I is denied to the extent that this Count sufficiently alleges four violations of N.J.S.A. 56:12-15 as to all Defendants, except Marr; all of Plaintiff's claims against Marr in Count I are dismissed without prejudice. Defendants' motion to dismiss Counts I and II of the Complaint is granted to the extent that those counts fail to allege violations of N.J.S.A. 56:12-16, and those claims are dismissed without prejudice. Defendants' motion to dismiss Count III is granted, and Plaintiff's claim under the CFA is dismissed without prejudice.
The following facts are drawn from the Complaint and attached exhibits, and are assumed to be true. Defendants1 operate a storage facility located in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Compl. ¶¶ 17-18. On October 20, 2010, Kendall executed a Self-Storage Lease ("Lease") to rent a storage space from Defendants for a term of one month, which automatically extended each month.2 Id. at ¶ 18; Ex. A. Kendall alleges that Defendants sent him monthly invoices for rent and annual rate change notices, which informed him of rent increases and that "[a]ll other terms of [the] rental agreement continue to remain in effect." Id. at ¶¶ 40-43; Ex. D.
According to the Complaint, the Lease allegedly contains provisions which (1) purport to exculpate Defendants from all liability including, but not limited to, liability for personal injury claims by business invitees arising out of Defendants' own intentional or negligent acts or omissions; (2) permit Defendants to sell personal property at (i) private sales (ii) without notice; and (3) permit Defendants to declare the Lease in default in the event that a lessor files for bankruptcy. See generally id. at ¶ 94(a)-(d); Ex. A ¶¶ 14, 15, 17. In addition, the Lease included a provision in un-bolded, non-underlined text which limited the value of the property Kendall could store in the rental unit to $5,000. Id. at ¶¶ 109-10; Ex. A, ¶ 9. Kendall alleges that the text of this provision was never modified in any of the monthly invoices for rent and annual rate change notices he received from Defendants. Id. at ¶¶ 113-14. Defendants also provided Kendall with a New Jersey Rider ("Rider") when he executed the Lease.3 Id. at ¶ 30; Ex. B.
Kendall used his rental unit to store furniture and other personal items. Id. at ¶ 38. Kendall alleges that he "intended to store these goods in his rented storage unit until he and his wife purchased a new home at which time [Kendall] would move his personal property from the storage unit into the new home." Id. at ¶ 39. On December 20, 2014, Kendall and his wife went to unload their personal property from the rental unit "and have it shipped to a new home in Florida," when he discovered that his property was water damaged and that there was a "tear in the roof of his rented storage unit that was also wet." Id. at ¶ 46-48. At Defendants' suggestion, Kendall submitted a claim under his renter's insurance policy to recover the value of his damaged personal property, but that claim was denied based on a policy exclusion for water damage resulting fromwear and tear. Id. at ¶¶ 54, 57-58. On February 1, 2015, Kendall requested that Defendants pay him $40,874.96 to "resolve the property damage matter."4 Id. at ¶¶ 59-60; Ex.'s I, J.
By letter dated February 9, 2015, Defendants responded to Kendall's demand by highlighting that Kendall had declined to participate in CubeSmart's Property Guard program, as indicated in Section 2 of the Property Guard form, which stated that "[t]he most the Owner will pay for loss of or damage to your property under this program is $0," and that the Lease required Kendall to not store more than $5,000 of personal property in the storage unit. Id. at ¶¶ 61-63; Ex. K. Nevertheless, Defendants offered to settle Kendall's claim for $5,000 and attached a General Release of Liability for Kendall's signature. Id. at ¶¶ 63- 64, Ex.'s K, L. Kendall did not sign the General Release of Liability. Id. at ¶ 65.
On July 2, 2015, Plaintiff filed this putative class-action lawsuit against Defendants in the Superior Court of New Jersey, Law Division, Middlesex County, under docket no. MID-L-3867-15. On a class-wide basis, the Complaint alleges that Defendants violated the TCCWNA because the Lease (Count I) and Rider (Count II) contain terms which violate the New Jersey decisional law, the SSFA, and the United States Bankruptcy Code. With respect to these counts, the Complaint seeks only the minimum civil penalty of $100 under TCCWNA for each Lease and Rider, for a total of $200 per class member, plus attorneys' fees, interest, and costs of suit. Id. at ¶¶ 97, 102. The Complaint also asserts an individual claim (Count III) alleging that Defendants violated the CFA, and requests the "replacement cost of Plaintiff's damaged personal property"and the "cost of moving Plaintiff's damaged personal property from Defendants' New Brunswick location to his home in Florida for storage," id. at ¶ 119(a), (b), and treble damages.
On August 10, 2015, Defendants removed this action under the Class Action Fairness Act ("CAFA"). On September 9, 2015, Plaintiff filed a motion to remand, which this Court denied on November 19, 2015. See Kendall v. CubeSmart L.P., et al., No. 15-6098, 2015 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 156447 (D.N.J. Nov. 19, 2015). While the remand motion was pending, Defendants filed the instant motion to dismiss on October 5, 2015.
Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6) provides that a court may dismiss a claim "for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." When reviewing a motion to dismiss, courts must first separate the factual and legal elements of the claims, and accept all of the well-pleaded facts as true. See Fowler v. UPMC Shadyside, 578 F.3d 203, 210-11 (3d Cir. 2009). All reasonable inferences must be made in the plaintiff's favor. See In re Ins. Brokerage Antitrust Litig., 618 F.3d 300, 314 (3d Cir. 2010). In order to survive a motion to dismiss, the plaintiff must provide "enough facts to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face." Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 570 (2007). This standard requires the plaintiff to show "more than a sheer possibility that a defendant has acted unlawfully," but does not create as high of a standard as to be a "probability requirement." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009).
The Third Circuit requires a three-step analysis to meet the plausibility standard mandated by Twombly and Iqbal. First, the court should "outline the elements a plaintiff must plead to a state a claim for relief." Bistrian v. Levi, 696 F.3d 352, 365 (3d Cir. 2012). Next, the court should "peel away" legal conclusions that are not entitled to the assumption of truth. Id.; see also Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678-79 (). It is well-established that a proper complaint "requires more than labels and conclusions, and a formulaic recitation of the elements of a cause of action will not do." Twombly, 550 U.S. at 555 (internal quotations and citations omitted). Finally, the court should assume the veracity of all well-pled factual allegations, and then "determine whether they plausibly give rise to an entitlement to relief." Bistrian, 696 F.3d at 365 (quoting Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 679). A claim is facially plausible when there is sufficient factual content to draw a "reasonable inference that the defendant is liable for the misconduct alleged." Iqbal, 556 U.S. at 678. The third step of the analysis is "a context-specific task that requires the reviewing court to draw on its judicial experience and common sense." Id. at 679.
Generally, when determining a motion under Rule 12(b)(6), the court may only consider the complaint and its attached exhibits. However, while "a district court may not consider matters extraneous to the pleadings, a document integral to or explicitly relied upon in the complaint may be considered without converting the motion to dismiss into one for summary judgment." Angstadt v. Midd-West Sch. Dist., 377 F.3d 338, 342 (3d Cir. 2004) (citation omitted); see also In re...
To continue reading
Request your trial