GRAND RAPIDS, MI - A U.S. District Court judge today dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Thomas M. Cooley Law School against a New York law firm that allegedly fraudulently misrepresented Cooley’s post-graduate employment statistics.
Judge Robert Jonker said Cooley failed to prove that lawyer David Anziska and others with the Kurzon Strauss law firm – which brought a lawsuit against Cooley on behalf of former students – defamed the Lansing-based law school with “actual malice,” according to an order filed Monday, Sept. 30.
At issue were statements written by the defendants stating that Cooley “grossly inflates its post-graduate employment and salary information” and “schools like Thomas Cooley will continue to defraud unwitting students unless held civically accountable.”
“There is no record evidence that Mr. Anziska or other defendants had any subjective awareness – let alone a ‘high degree’ of awareness – of the probable falsity of any of the statements,” Jonker wrote in the order.
Related: Court drops lawsuit claiming Cooley Law School 'misrepresented' salary, job placement figures
In a news release, Cooley said it would appeal the ruling, arguing that the court “chose not to address the defamatory nature of Kurzon Strauss’s false accusations.”
“After a federal trial court and a federal appeals court both found the Kurzon Strauss misrepresentation case against Cooley to be without merit, it’s hard to reconcile Judge Jonker’s ruling that Kurzon Strauss’s unfounded accusations can’t be pursued as defamation” Jim Thelen, Cooley’s Associate Dean for Legal Affairs and General Counsel, said in a statement.
One of the defendants in the lawsuit brought by Cooley, Jesse Strauss, represented graduates of Cooley in another lawsuit claiming the Lansing-based law school misled prospective students with deceptive post-graduate employment statistics.
That lawsuit was dismissed in July 2012 by U.S. District Judge Gordon Quist, who said that while Cooley's employment and salary figures were "vague and incomplete," the students should have relied on more than statistics when making their decision to enroll.
In July, an appeal’s court upheld the 2012 ruling, saying the Michigan Consumer Protection Act “does not apply to this case’s facts,” and the former students’ “reliance on the statistics was unreasonable.”
According to the order filed Monday, Anziska posted a statement on the website “JD Underground” in June 2011 saying Cooley and other law schools are “preying on the blithe ignorance of naïve, clueless 22-year-olds who have absolutely no idea what a terrible investment obtaining a JD Degree is.”
Cooley then contacted Anziska asking that he “remove the posting from the Internet, issue a retraction, and cease and desist from posting or communicating any defamatory statements regarding Thomas M. Cooley Law School.”
The defendants published a retraction, but later repeated the defamatory statements in a “proposed draft class action complaint,” according to court records.
In Monday’s order dismissing Cooley’s claim of defamation, Jonker said the defendants weren’t aware that the facts citied in their criticism of Cooley were incorrect and conducted their research in good faith.
“The unrebutted record reflects that Mr. Anziska read a variety of articles, including articles by law professors; spoke and corresponded with law professors; reviewed published reports; and visited legal and other blogs before posting the statements at issue,” Jonker wrote.
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