NEW YORK, Oct 14 (Reuters) - New York Law School is seeking
to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of misleading students about
their post-graduation employment prospects, calling the
plaintiffs' claims a baseless attempt to vilify the entire law
school industry.
The law school was hit in August with a putative
class-action suit in New York state court filed by three former
students, asking for as much as $200 million in tuition refunds
on behalf of all recent graduates, and an order forcing it to
be more transparent in how it reports post-graduate employment
and salary information.
In a motion to dismiss the complaint filed Thursday, the
law school said the plaintiffs relied on "broad generalities"
instead of concrete facts to back up their claims that the
school massaged its post-graduation statistics to lure
prospective students.
"The allegations are not only baseless, but also belied by
the plaintiffs' own complaint, which demonstrates this case has
nothing to do with New York Law School and everything to do
with a crusade against the entire law school industry," Michael
Volpe, an attorney with Venable representing the school, said
in a statement.
The school, which is located in lower Manhattan and has no
affiliation with New York University School of Law, argued that
it is in full compliance with American Bar Association
procedures for reporting post-graduation employment data. If
plaintiffs have a problem with that, the school argued in its
motion, they should target the ABA.
"These attacks on the ABA rules are wholly insufficient to
state claims for the three individual plaintiffs against NYLS,"
the motion stated.
TARGETING 15 LAW SCHOOLS
Jesse Strauss, an attorney with Strauss Law representing
the plaintiffs, said the school failed to address the
plaintiffs' primary allegations in its motion.
"The fact remains that when our clients paid the annual
tuition of over $40,000 to attend New York Law School, they did
so based on New York Law School's misleading representation
that they had an over 90 percent chance of getting a job, and
that those jobs paid certain salaries," Strauss said. "That
representation is demonstrably false."
Strauss is helping to represent plaintiffs suing Thomas M.
Cooley Law School in Lansing, Michigan, over similar claims. He
and co-counsel David Anziska recently announced they were
planning to file class-action lawsuits against 15 additional
schools in seven states over their reporting of post-graduation
employment rates.
Congress has also turned its scrutiny on law schools'
career statistics. In a letter sent Thursday, Republican
Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and California Senator Barbara
Boxer, a Democrat, asked the inspector general of the U.S.
Department of Education for a report focusing on the
"confluence of growing enrollments, steadily increasing tuition
rates and allegedly sluggish job placement" at American law
schools.
The case is Gomez-Jimenez et al v. New York Law School, in
the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York,
index no. 652226/2011.
For the plaintiffs: David Anziska of the Law Offices of
David Anziska and Jesse Strauss of Strauss Law.
For NYLS: Michael Volpe, Edmund O'Toole, Michael Hartmere
and Julia Davis of Venable.
(Reporting by Jessica Dye)
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