Cooley Law School is vowing to appeal dismissal of a defamation lawsuit the school filed in 2011 against a New York law firm that accused Cooley of fraudulently misrepresenting its post-graduate employment statistics.
In dismissing Cooley’s defamation case Sept 30, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Jonker did not address the nature of Kurzon Strauss’s accusations against Cooley, but instead ruled Cooley could not prove that the law firm’s lawyers defamed Cooley with “actual malice.”
The case centered on statements written by the defendants 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.”
Cooley recently prevailed at U.S. Sixth Circuit Court when the court affirmed dismissal of a separate lawsuit Kurzon Strauss had filed against Cooley over the supposed misrepresentations.
The panel determined that Cooley had not fraudulently reported its employment data.
Jim Thelen, associate dean for legal affairs and general counsel at the Lansing-based law school, said in a press release that it was “hard to reconcile Judge Jonker’s ruling that Kurzon Strauss’s unfounded accusations can’t be pursued as defamation.”
“We will pursue the case in the appeals court now, where we’ll have a new hearing on these issues,” he said.
Cooley said the Kurzon Strauss firm had solicited Cooley graduates over the Internet to file claims that Cooley fraudulently misrepresented its graduates’ employment status in order to dupe them into attending law school.
Judge Gordon Quist of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan dismissed that case in July 2012.
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