{"id":1242,"date":"2019-03-18T19:07:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-18T19:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/full-house-of-defendants-colleges-face-consumer-protection-claims\/"},"modified":"2019-03-18T19:07:26","modified_gmt":"2019-03-18T19:07:26","slug":"full-house-of-defendants-colleges-face-consumer-protection-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/full-house-of-defendants-colleges-face-consumer-protection-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Full House of Defendants: Colleges Face Consumer Protection Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

The college admissions scam a\/k\/a \u201cOperation Varsity Blues,\u201d has dominated U.S. headlines over the past week.\u00a0 Beyond the Department of Justice\u2019s criminal charges, two Stanford University students have filed a civil, class-action lawsuit<\/a> against the universities implicated in the scandal\u2014USC, Stanford, UCLA, UC San Diego, UT Austin, Wake Forest, Yale, and Georgetown\u2014for racketeering, negligence, and two separate types of consumer protection violations: deceptive trade practices unfair competition.<\/p>\n

Deceptive Trade Practices<\/strong><\/p>\n

The California Consumers Legal Remedies Act (\u201cCLRA\u201d), as does Georgia\u2019s Fair Business Practices Act<\/a> and a number of other states\u2019 consumer protection acts, provides that it is a deceptive trade practice for a seller of goods or services to represent that \u201cgoods or services have sponsorship, approval,\u00a0 characteristics, ingredients, uses, benefits, or quantities that they do not have or that a person has a sponsorship, approval, status, affiliation, or connection that he or she does not have.\u201d\u00a0 According to the students, each university violated this portion of the CLRA because each of their websites state that admissions are based solely upon the student\u2019s merit, when in fact each of \u201cthe admissions processes at these universities have been tainted by corruption, such that those parents with children who had mediocre grades and test scores were allowed admission based upon the amount of bribery money they paid to university insiders.\u201d The students claim that they were damaged because they paid admission application fees based upon the universities\u2019 representations that their application processes were fair, neutral, and based on the applicant\u2019s merit.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0Unfair Competition<\/strong><\/p>\n

As its name implies, the California Unfair Competition Law (\u201cUCL\u201d) restricts people and\/or companies from engaging in unfair competition. The UCL defines unfair competition as:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. An \u201cunlawful\u201d business act or practice;<\/li>\n
  2. An \u201cunfair\u201d business act or\u00a0 practice;<\/li>\n
  3. A \u201cfraudulent\u201d business act or practice;<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cUnfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising\u201d; or<\/li>\n
  5. False advertising, as prohibited by Sections 17500 through 17577.5 of the California Business and Professions Code.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    These definitions are disjunctive, meaning that a practice may be prohibited as \u201cunfair\u201d or \u201cfraudulent,\u201d even if not \u201cunlawful.\u201d The students claim that the universities\u2019 conduct in representing that their application processes are based on merit while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the bribery of prominent university employees constitutes a violation of the UCL because it fits within the initial four definitions of unfair competition.\u00a0 The students further allege that the failure of each university to have audits and other quality control mechanisms in place to ensure this behavior did not occur is, in itself, an unfair business practices.<\/p>\n

    The students\u2019 first challenge will be to obtain the class certification necessary to proceed with their lawsuit.\u00a0 If their attorney\u2019s initial creativity in casting the scandal in terms of consumer protection issues is any indication, this should be an interesting case to follow.\u00a0 Regardless of whether it moves forward, this lawsuit serves as a reminder that businesses and other institutions cannot hold themselves out as being or doing one thing, while in truth, doing something very different.\u00a0 Those who do, may find themselves the subject of a variety of legal issues, including consumer protection claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Click<\/a> here for image source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The college admissions scam a\/k\/a \u201cOperation Varsity Blues,\u201d has dominated U.S. headlines over the past week.\u00a0 Beyond the Department of Justice\u2019s criminal charges, two Stanford University students have filed a civil, class-action lawsuit against the universities implicated in the scandal\u2014USC, Stanford, UCLA, UC San Diego, UT Austin, Wake Forest, Yale, and Georgetown\u2014for racketeering, negligence, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_mo_disable_npp":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,195,6],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFull House of Defendants: Colleges Face Consumer Protection Claims - Berman Fink Van Horn P.C.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bfvlaw.com\/full-house-of-defendants-colleges-face-consumer-protection-claims\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Full House of Defendants: Colleges Face Consumer Protection Claims - 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