COVID Case Against Brandeis University May Proceed

I am still working my way through a backlog of material that accumulated while I was taking a teaching break from blogging.  This decision is from October.  The facts and allegations are pretty familiar from all of the other cases in which college or university students sued their institutions alleging breach of contract or unjust enrichment in connection with the move to online education in response to the COVID pandemic in March 2020.  

In Omori v. Brandeis, the Federal District Court for Massachusetts denied Brandeis’ motion for summary judgment.   The court had earlier dismissed plaintiffs’ claims for conversion, and plaintiffs’ abandoned their claim for breach of an express contract.  The issue was whether plaintiffs had a factual basis to support their claims for an implied promise of in-person education with access to campus facilities and unjust enrichment.  The District Court found that plaintiffs’ allegations were sufficient to survive Brandeis’s motion for summary judgment on those claims.  

Plaintiffs are seeking partial recovery of tuition and fees for the Spring 2o20 semester.  Like Northeastern before it, Brandeis sought to rely on its financial responsibility agreement (FRA) entered into with students  and the university’s tuition refund schedule.  Brandeis argued that these were express contracts that set forth the rules for tuition refunds, and that Plaintiffs cannot state a claim for an implied contract when those very matters were covered by an express contract.  The District Court’s response is simple and straightforward.  Neither the FRA nor the schedule say anything about closing campus due to an emergency.  The grounds for Plaintiffs’ complaint are not covered by any express agreement.   

The court then proceeded to consider the merits of Plaintiffs’ breach of an implied contract claim.  The court found that material issues of fact precluded summary judgment.  Plaintiffs had alleged that Brandeis’s promotional materials implied a right to in-person education, and a trier of fact would need to determine whether those allegations were persuasive.   Brandeis claimed that, even if there were an implied contract, it reserved discretion to make changes to the manner in which it delivered its curriculum.  The court reviewed similar cases and found that Brandeis’s reservation of discretion was inadequate.  Like many other institutions, Brandeis’s reservation did not give it the unfettered right to move all classes online due to public emergency without consequence.  Brandeis’s proffered the defense that its performance because impossible once Massachusetts’ governor issued a shutdown order in response to the pandemic.  The validity of that defense, the court concluded, would have to be decided by a jury.  

As to Plaintiffs’ claim for fees, the court dismissed all but one claim, a studio fee that should have been refunded if the in-person course was cancelled due to the pandemic.  As to the other fees, Plaintiffs presented no evidence that those fees were connected with any promise of in-person education.

The court dismissed Plaintiffs’ claim for unjust enrichment.  Their recovery, if any, will be under breach of an implied contract.