After declaring victory, Joel Tudor continues crusade against Hawaiian Airlines in court of law

Fight on.

It would seem that Matt Biolos is not the only surfing personality currently involved in a lawsuit.  Three-time world champion and BJJ (i.e., the “let’s act like your opponent is just willing to go to the ground with you and couldn’t possibly be armed with a knife” martial art) black belt Joel Tudor has also taken his well-publicized spat with Hawaiian Airlines to San Diego County Superior Court, civil limited jurisdiction division. 

This lawsuit (which names both Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines as defendants) was filed on September 29th, and according to the docket, it currently remains pending, even after Joel very publicly declared victory over Hawaiian Airlines over its recently announced changes to its surfboard baggage policies.  And while I think Joel was certainly fighting the good fight here, one wonders why he still feels the need to pursue this lawsuit in light of this development, particularly because this is in “limited jurisdiction” (which means the recovery is capped at $35,000 exclusive of any contractual or statutorily available attorneys’ fees).   

There are also some things about this lawsuit that that can only be described as odd. 

To start, Joel filed a request to waive court fees, which the Court granted on October 1st. The actual request Joel filed is not publicly available, so I cannot tell what the specific reasons were. That being said, these types of fee waivers are reserved for truly impoverished persons who have demonstrated that they are unable to afford the filing fees. Did Joel Tudor knowingly underrepresent his financial situation in a court filing?  Or has he truly fallen on hard times financially? Needless to say, if he could have afforded the plane ticket on Hawaiian Airlines he is suing over, it would seem that he should be able to afford the $370 initial filing fee in the limited jurisdiction division. Hell, he can presumably afford to live in Del Mar and even I probably couldn’t afford to do that in this day and age. 

Joel is also represented by a Beverly Hills attorney named Judith Robenzadeh, whom I’ve never heard of, but I am completely enthralled by her ostensible culinary prowess just the same.  According to her website, she appears to be a solo practitioner who seems to do a bit of everything (which usually means an attorney isn’t particularly experienced or skilled in a more specialized area). 

According to her Instagram handle though, Judith describes herself as a “[l]awyer by day challah baker by night” and holy hell, does she ever have some delicious looking challahs (is that the plural of challah, or is it kind of like the word deer?) on her Insta. So, I don’t know about hiring her as an attorney (as I will explain), but I would buy one of her challah offerings in a heartbeat. In fact, I’d even buy two or more.  I further think she really could lean into the obvious law/challah alliterative potential here if she makes a business out of this. Challah and Order?  Breaking the Challah?  Above the Challah?  Letter of the Challah? This needs to happen.

Getting to the case itself, I’ve reviewed a copy of the Complaint, and it largely tracks the story Joel relayed on Instagram and in other interviews from a factual perspective, so I am not seeing any inconsistencies there.  The Complaint itself is a bit over-pled, including causes of action (i.e. claims) for: 1) Breach of Contract; 2) Breach of the Covenant of Good Faith And Fair Dealing; 3) Violation of California’s Unfair Competition Law; 4) Violation of California’s Consumer Legal Remedies Act; 5) Conversion; 6) Unjust Enrichment/Restitution; 7) Negligent Misrepresentation; and 8) Discrimination/Arbitrary Refusal of Services.

Our challah maven Judith also has incorporated into each cause of action a “prayer for relief” (i.e., a statement of the remedies requested, such as damages, attorneys’ fees, injunctive relief, etc.), rather than including the prayer for relief on each cause of action at the end of the Complaint, as any experienced litigator would. This tells me that Joel’s lawyer either might not be very experienced, or has just learned some very peculiar ways of practicing from someone else.  

As for the strength of Joel’s claims, it’s really going to depend on what Hawaiian Airlines’ ticketing terms and conditions say in terms of any contractual remedy.  For instance, that contract might actually say something like, “we will permit board lengths up to 115 inches in length, but we still have the absolute discretion to screw you over and refuse any baggage.”  The real teeth of the Complaint though, is the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act (the “CLRA”), which is a statutory scheme that protects individuals from business fraud.  The CLRA also provides for an award for attorneys’ fees for a prevailing plaintiff, which means that a plaintiff can prove only $1.00 in damages but still be entitled to his or her attorneys’ fees, even if those fees are in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

That being said, Joel’s attorney might be somewhat botching a fairly viable CLRA cause of action here.  This is because the CLRA provides a “safe harbor” provision for a defendant to cure the alleged CLRA violations within thirty days of receipt of notice of the violations in writing.  Sending that “safe harbor letter” to a defendant is a prerequisite to recovering damages under the CLRA, and you generally need to set that forth within the Complaint.  That has not been pled here, so the Defendants will likely move to strike the damages remedy in response to this Complaint unless it is amended to fix that problem first. 

The “discrimination” cause of action also makes utterly no sense here, because the Complaint does not allege that the Alaska Airlines employee acted in the way she did because of any personal characteristics like race, gender, religion, age, disability, etc.  Joel is also a middle-aged white male—not exactly an example of the oppressed and downtrodden.  There is no way that claim survives.

If this case does not settle, it is highly likely that the Defendants will move to compel “arbitration” (i.e., resolution by a private judge or panel of private judges) given that most airlines have mandatory arbitration clauses baked into their customer agreements.  Arbitration clauses are generally (but not always) enforceable depending on the verbiage and how prevalently they appear in within the contract.  Arbitration would also mean that Joel, who is claiming an inability to pay the court fees, would need to pay for half of the arbitrator’s fees unless his attorney advances those fees for him. 

And arbitration is not usually consumer friendly either, given that it is the big companies that are the ones including these arbitration clauses within their contracts.  In short, arbitrators know where their bread is buttered and tend to rule accordingly.  Unless there is some sort of egregious miscarriage of the law or a conflict of interest by an arbitrator, an arbitration award is generally not appealable, even if the arbitrator outright misapplies the law.

The Defendants’ deadline to respond to the Complaint is November 22nd, so we’ll see if this lawsuit is dismissed before then or whether Joel intends to carry on with his crusade.  To the extent that his lawyer is representing him on a contingency basis though, she is not going to want to dismiss this until she extracts a substantial payment of attorneys’ fees out of the Defendants.  Truth be told, there’s a part of me that wants Joel to really stick it to Hawaiian Airlines and go all the way with this lawsuit over a mere pittance when compared to the kind of money most other lawsuits involve.  If it were me though, I’d just take the public relations win and order a couple of those challahs.