A federal appeals panel has undone class certification in a lawsuit demanding tuition refunds from Bradley University for allegedly breaching its contract with students when it closed the Peoria campus to in-person learning during the early days of the Covid pandemic.
The U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, issued April 12, follows a July 2022 opinion from the same court reviving litigation facing Loyola University and a March opinion doing the same with respect to Illinois Institute of Technology. Unlike those actions, which focused more on the factual disputes between students and schools, the Bradley opinion turned on the federal judge’s approach to class certification.
Judge Joel Flaum wrote the panel’s opinion; Judges Michael Scudder and Amy St. Eve concurred.
U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Joel Flaum
U.S. District Judge Michael Mihm, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of Illinois, certified two classes for the claims of Orion Eddlemon, a Bradley undergraduate in the spring 2020 semester. His claims echoed those of the Loyola and IIT students: halting in-person classes breached the contract the school had with its students and unjust enrichment for failing to issue adequate refunds following a shift to online education. He also noted the school never made up a canceled week of classes.
According to Eddlemon’s complaint, Bradley’s 2019-2020 course catalog specifically stated it “serves as a contract between a student and Bradley University.” He said the school did give prorated refunds for room and board to students forced to leave on-campus housing, but didn’t refund any of the $17,100 tuition it charged for in-person students in the spring semester or the $85 activity fee. Judge Mihm certified one class for tuition payors and a second for those who paid the activity fee.
“The district court’s certification order does not reveal whether the court examined the record,” Flaum wrote. “What is evident, however, is that the district court repeatedly referred to Eddlemon’s allegations without addressing his proffered evidence (e.g., the academic catalog) or examining how he would prove his allegations with common evidence.”
The panel said Judge Mihm was obligated to go beyond a claim all class members suffered the same legal injury and didn’t fully scrutinize whether there were common questions among all putative class members or a series of individual issues. Doing so requires breaking down claims into their constituent elements, Flaum explained, which Mihm didn’t attempt.
“The court should have identified the elements of Eddlemon’s two claims and separately analyzed them to better understand the relationship between each claim’s common and individual questions,” Flaum wrote. “Instead, it listed one common question for each class without explaining that question’s ‘relative importance’ to each claim, whether any individual questions exist, or how the common question predominates over individual ones.”
Flaum explained Mihm “repeatedly and heavily relied” on an opinion from federal court in Arizona that didn’t establish a precedent when he should’ve conducted requried analysis.
“The court did not confront Bradley’s key arguments,” Flaum wrote. “It did not address the university’s assertion that Eddlemon’s breach of contract claim would lead to many individual questions regarding damages, and it dismissed Bradley’s related arguments regarding Eddlemon’s unjust enrichment claim by stating, without explanation: ‘The court is confident that … it will be able to fashion an appropriate formula for damages.’ ”
Delivering such an incomplete analysis, the panel said, established an abuse of judicial discretion that warranted a remand.
However, the panel disagreed with Bradley’s position that Judge Mihm was wrong to reject its challenge to the adequacy of Eddlemon’s allegations as “more closely related to the merits” of his claims. Specifically, the dispute over whether the course catalog actually established an enforceable contract isn’t germane to class certification, so Mihm was right to disregard that contention, Flaum explained.
Eddlemon has been represented in the action by attorney Matthew T. Peterson, of the firm of Varnell & Warwick, of Tampa, Florida.
Bradley University has been represented by attorneys Gregory E. Ostfeld, Tiffany S. Fordyce and Kara E. Angeletti, of the firm of Greenberg Traurig, of Chicago.