Application fees. It's a classic class action kind of case. Small damages per plaintiff, but a huge sum in total. Lots of evidence of a rigged process.
Celebrity admissions scam implicates Stanford and USC
- Thread starter ttowncoug
- Start date
Here's what I'd say. When I was applying to law schools, I applied to Texas and Virginia, even though they had policies which clearly favored their own citizens for admission. The credentials required of their citizens vs. the credentials of non-citizens were markedly different. But they told me that and in some detail; I made an informed decision to make my application. The plaintiffs here will apparently argue they couldn't have known when they plopped down their money that the process was rigged/corrupted.
I that argument flies anywhere, it'll be in the 9th Circuit. But it shouldn't. I don't think a single individual applicant will be able to show that they were damaged.
Maybe...if the next two people on the waiting list who didn't get in could document that that was the case, they could argue that they were excluded because the Loughlin kids got in fraudulently. But even those two will have a hard time proving damage if they went to a school equivalent to USC. The kid who was 1,574th on the waiting list and didn't meet admission requirements anyway has no case.
Plus, there's a question of how liable is the university for the fraudulent acts of a few individuals? Even in the cases where coaches and admissions people were rigging the system, those individuals were not acting on the university's behalf, and I guarantee will not be defended and represented by the university.
Sure, there's an argument that they were placed in a position to make the fraud possible, and you could argue that their supervision was lax...but at what point are you allowed to trust your employees to do their jobs? Do you need to have two people monitoring every record and every transaction, to make sure one doesn't cheat? What happens if they both accept bribes...should you have a third person for every record and transaction? Where does it end?
As opposed to muttland, which prefers the higher-paying out of state and international students. Fun fact - only 60% of muttlake campus students are from Washington as of Fall, 2018. https://studentdata.washington.edu/quick-stats/
Mutt flame aside, I keep coming back to the fact that USC is a private school. Who says they have to let any particular student in? So what if the Loughlin girl got in and they didn't? USC can accept or reject whoever they want. Or so I would think.
I've sent three kids to college. I guarantee the websites don't say "We can take whomever we want on whatever basis we choose."
With respect to the flame, there isn't a public college out there who wasn't looking to increase out-of-state and international tuition payers over the past 10-15 years.
The argument is they paid a fee to engage in what was represented to be a largely merit based application process.
How do you know it was only two “unqualified” students that made it in. What it was 50 or 100? The only way to be sure is to throughly scrutinize the admissions process. No university will want that.
I sent two. My daughter is a double Coug grad. My son, a Western grad. But I made him apply to the uw (he was accepted) just so that he can always say he could have gone there but chose not to. My big mistake is that I should have grabbed that acceptance letter. He didn't really care and probably pitched it out years ago. But Dad cares.
And yes you are correct about OOS and furriner enrollment- in fact not long ago we were debating WSU's great plan to solve their financial woes by doubling or tripling international enrollment. A complete reversal of Elson Floyd's "WSU educates Washington kids" mantra.
As long as you have a crush on mom's anything is ok, right? One of the somewhat sad lessons coming out of all this is the daughter getting most of the media attention was a social media "influencer" in the makeup industry making an estimated $30-50K per post! She's as vapid and entitled as you would imagine but her social media career is going down in flames due to the bribery case.
What mom could have legally done is make a huge donation to $C which is legal. Instead she went the rigging the system route for kids who probably didn't have much desire in attending college in the first place.
That still doesn’t show that they were damaged. They may be able to claim that they themselves were defrauded by the process, but they’ll never make that fly. The system didn’t defraud them, a few peoples’ abuse of it did.
I don’t. But I know there were two Loughlin daughters, so they took 2 seats.
Doesn’t really matter if there were 2 or 200 - if you can’t show that you would certainly have been admitted if not for the fraud, then you can’t show that you were damaged.
If you think WSU is any different, you’re mistaken. We recruit international students heavily, and go to significant efforts to keep them. In-state students look good for PR, but they’re the worst to bring to campus from a financial perspective.
That’s not the point. You paid an application fee believing the process was fair. You were entitled to fair consideration of your application.
It’s a weak claim. Even with the application fee, the loss of which could represent damage, you have to be able to show that you were excluded primarily because of the fraud. The very fact that you were that close to the cutoff will make that exceedingly difficult.
Compare the academic records of those who were denied admission with the Loughlin girls.
The Loughlin's were not in the regular pool of applicants since they were considered athletes.
You see why USC would not want light shone on their admissions?
And they were fake athletes.
So if a raffle is conducted on the premise that 1,000 tickets will be sold, and instead 1,500 are sold, are you saying the ticket buyers haven’t been harmed because they weren’t likely to win anyway? Personally, I think money has been taken under false premises.
There's almost no question $C does not want any additional light shone on their admissions process or institution in general. With the Loughlin daughters though the pool impacted would have been athletes rather than normal applicants. Couldn't only a perspective crew athlete argue they were impacted?
Gee - read my subsequent post (prior to yours). Isn't that exactly what I said?
That’s not a comparable scenario. Your scenario doesn’t exclude participants, but the change reduces their win potential. The Stanford/SC/etc fraud doesn’t change the process for most students. They were still evaluated and admitted or not based on the merits of their applications (I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary). Because of the fraud, there are obviously a small number at each campus whose potential spots were taken by “unqualified” frauds.
But, the very fact that they weren’t admitted shows that they were on the cusp anyway, so proving that they were excluded only because of the fraud will be a tall order. Even more difficult at the private schools.
Here’s a better comparison. A new club or restaurant opens to huge hype. Everyone wants to go. Opening night, the line stretches down the block. People wait for hours to get past the doorman. Limo drives up, out steps the high roller in a suit and his gorgeous daughter. They walk to the doorman, daddy puts a couple folded hundreds in the doorman’s hand, and his daughter goes into the club. No line, no waiting. Daddy goes back to limo, while the regular folks stand on the sidewalk and wish they had a couple extra hundreds. But nobody sues. Nobody thinks it’s really fair, but they really haven’t lost anything but time.
Application fees don’t entitle you to admission. They really don’t even entitle you to a particular process. They’re a processing fee that say you’ll be reviewed and considered. You might get passed over for someone with a better GPA, better test scores, or both. Or for someone with more community service and involvement. Or for someone whose intended major is in a program of emphasis. Or for someone who brings greater diversity to campus. Or - particularly at private schools - someone who brings a little bragging rights, like celebrity kids. There are a lot of factors evaluated in admissions, and while grades and test scores are among them, they aren’t necessarily decisive, especially when down to evaluating candidates that are close to the cut line.
Even at state schools, if two kids are equal in every way, except that one has a parent who’s a donor...guess which one is getting in?
The class action is for application fees paid on the basis that the process would be fairly conducted. No part of that requires them to prove they would have gotten in. The chance was misrepresented under their theory. And each applicant parted with $50? $75? $100?
I wonder if the California Unfair Trade Practices Act might provide a remedy for an applicant to a private school like Stanford or USC. In many states, those acts don't require any intent to defraud, just that the product or services weren't as advertised. I don't know if damages have to be proven or if violation of the statute gives rise to some amount of statutory damages and attorneys fees automatically. In this case, the violation of the act would be the claim, presumably published on the school's admission website, that admission is merit-based.
Very true. I think most of us Washingtonians would think about a Consumer Protection Act violation first, even before looking at common law claims. Most states have some “little FTC Act”.
I hate to cast any bad light on the American legal profession, but this seems like a good time to make note of the ambulance chasers that filed this ridiculous lawsuit. Which does nothing to help anyone actually harmed by the cheating scandal, or bring the alleged perpetrators to justice. But who cares about any of that. Let's sue someone and make some money!!
Funny how quickly the bloodsucking leeches descend on any situation.
http://www.medlerlawfirm.com/
https://www.zimmreed.com/
Funny how quickly the bloodsucking leeches descend on any situation.
http://www.medlerlawfirm.com/
https://www.zimmreed.com/
Class actions can raise plenty of ethical issues. They are very reliant on the judge to inspect the requests for attorneys' fees and approve settlements. However, it would be ridiculous for each individual claimant to bring his or her own individual claim for an application fee too. And we largely regulate and reform commerce through private party actions--the alternative to a larger police state.
