Global Courant
The University of Delaware, which closed its campus during the spring semester of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, has agreed to settle a lawsuit for $6.3 million. Thousands of students who were unable to attend face-to-face classes during the spring semester can receive cash reimbursement for the tuition they paid. In the agreement, the university continues to deny any allegation about its decision to discontinue in-person classes.
The University of Delaware has agreed to pay $6.3 million to settle a lawsuit over the 2020 campus closure and the cessation of in-person classes due to the coronavirus pandemic.
According to court documents filed this month and signed by the plaintiffs and university president Dennis Assanis, about 21,000 current and former students could receive cash compensation.
While the university agrees to settle the case, it continues to deny all allegations of wrongdoing.
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Court records show the university reached an agreement in principle in late April, less than a month after a federal judge ruled that the case could proceed as a class action on behalf of thousands of students who enrolled and paid tuition in the spring semester of 2020, when the campus was Closed.
Under the settlement, which awaits final court approval, the university will deposit $6.3 million into an escrow account overseen by a settlement administrator. Of that amount, plaintiffs’ attorneys will receive $2.1 million in fees and up to $250,000 in expenses. The five students named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit are entitled to payments of $5,000 each as class representatives.
University of Delaware President Dennis Assanis speaks at an event on March 13, 2017. The university has agreed to pay $6.3 million to settle a lawsuit over the 2020 campus closure. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The remainder will be divided equally among class members, consisting of undergraduate and graduate students who have paid tuition and fees for the 2020 spring semester and do not opt out of the settlement. Students receive their refunds automatically by check sent to their last known mailing address. They can update their address or choose to receive payments via Venmo or PayPal by filling out an election form on a settlement website that will be set up.
In a ruling in March that declared the lawsuit a class action, Judge Stephanos Bibas rejected the university’s argument that the plaintiffs, who accused the school of breach of contract and unjust enrichment, had no legal standing. The university also unsuccessfully argued that it was impossible to know who actually paid the tuition fees because some students may have used outside sources such as grants.
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“Those students, no less than out-of-pocket students, were party to a contract that U. Delaware allegedly violated,” wrote Bibas, noting that the only students excluded from the class of plaintiffs would be those have received full payment. scholarships.
According to the ruling, more than 17,000 students were enrolled at the University of Delaware in the spring of 2020 and the university received more than $160 million in tuition fees that semester.
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The plaintiffs argued that prior to the pandemic, the school treated in-person and online classes as separate offerings and charged more for some in-person programs than for comparable online classes. They also noted that the university charged them for the gym, student centers and health center, sometimes at higher rates than those paid by online students, and that the school kept those charges while denying them services during the lockdown. pandemic.
Bibas previously ruled that the prosecutors had made it plausible that the school had implicitly promised them personal lessons, activities and services.
