covid-19

  • February 13, 2024

Part 4: Making a COVID-19 Tuition Suit Last

Class Action Litigation, Class Actions, Class Certifications, Legislation, Litigation, Massachusetts Decisions, US District Court - Mass
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We recently highlighted two Boston-based COVID-19 tuition refund class action suits, against Brandeis University and Boston College, and the impact of a provision in the Commonwealth’s Fiscal Year 2024 Budget that grants retroactive immunity from claims arising out of tuition or fees paid for the Spring 2020 term. In both cases, with orders issued just days apart, the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston found that provision, Section 80(b), was reasonable and narrowly tailored and therefore not unconstitutional. In the Brandeis case, the ruling ended the matter entirely, whereas the case against BC will proceed as to the non-Spring 2020 semesters.

A Refresher on the Boston-Based Cases

In Part 2 of our series, we reviewed the legal backdrop of this wave of class action litigation and explored some common pitfalls in education-based claims, building off of our initial post, which focused on suits against Suffolk University and Boston University. In

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  • February 01, 2024

The Budget Saves Brandeis: An Update on COVID-19 Tuition Litigation

Class Action Litigation, Class Actions, Current Affairs, First Circuit Decisions, Litigation, Massachusetts Decisions, US District Court - Mass
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In Part 2 of our series on our Massachusetts and Boston-based COVID-19 tuition refund class action suits, we reviewed the legal backdrop of this wave of class action litigation and explored some common pitfalls in education-based claims, noting that even where cases are able to proceed based on adequate framing of the claims and underlying facts, many lose their steam when a university successfully argues for denial of plaintiffs’ attempts to pursue their cases as class actions. One example of a Boston-area case in which class certification that we discussed was the May 2023 denial in Omori v. Brandeis University, which was dismissed earlier this month for an entirely different reason. We discuss that below, along with a similar ruling in Rodrigues v. Boston College issued just days prior.

Immunity for Tuition Claims in the 2024 Budget

Despite the defeat of its attempt to certify the proposed class (as well as the First Circuit’s denial of plaintiffs’

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  • 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
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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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