Education

  • May 23, 2023

Part 2 – Slowing the Spread of Litigation: An Update on First Circuit COVID-19 Tuition Refund Class Actions

Class Action Litigation, Class Actions, Class Certifications, First Circuit Decisions, Litigation, Massachusetts Decisions, US District Court - Mass
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Part 2: The Legal Backdrop

In Part 1 of this series, we provided a brief overview and introduction of the Boston-based COVID-19 tuition refund class action cases, noting generally that most similar suits haven’t made it very far, as courts tend to rule early and often for the educational institution. Below is a brief discussion of some common pitfalls that have repeatedly plagued this type of litigation.

Framing the Case

One threshold hurdle is that COVID-19 tuition reimbursement cases against public colleges and universities are often dismissed in the earliest stages of litigation under sovereign immunity, leaving cases against private institutions with the most possibility for advancement. Even in those cases, however, courts often find that plaintiffs’ claims are not properly framed. For example, although some states permit claims for educational malpractice, plaintiffs often run into problems in attempting to establish a basis on which to evaluate the quality of services provided by the educational institution. To

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  • April 28, 2023

Slowing the Spread of Litigation: An Update on First Circuit COVID-19 Tuition Refund Class Actions

Class Action Litigation, Class Actions, First Circuit Decisions, Litigation, Massachusetts Decisions, US District Court - Mass
Authors:
Practice area:

Part 1: Introduction and Overview

Earlier this month, Boston University prevailed in one of the few surviving Boston-based COVID-19 tuition refund class action suits. The U.S. District Court in Boston granted BU’s Motion for Summary Judgment finding that BU “did not make an open-ended promise to provide an ‘on-campus experience’ in exchange for a ‘semester cost.’” Unlike student-plaintiffs in other, largely unsuccessful COVID tuition refund litigation, the plaintiffs in this case made arguments based not on the difference in quality of in-person versus online education but rather based on their contracts with the university, which plaintiffs said constituted a “binding promise to provide students in-person instruction (or tuition refunds should in-person classes become unavailable), a promise on which students relied in prospectively paying their tuition.” Although the Court disagreed, Judge Richard Stearns, citing a still-live COVID tuition litigation case against Brandeis University, found that “BU must still provide restitution for the difference in value between what they were

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