A lawsuit against Florida Coastal School of Law has been moved from a Florida state court to a federal court. The lawsuit claims that the school lied about prospects for graduates when it comes to jobs.
The lawsuit was filed by six alums of the school on February 1 and it was filed originally in the state court at Miami-Dade County. The school is located in Jacksonville and it filed a notice to have the lawsuit removed so the venue could be changed to a federal court. Judge Marcia Cooke was assigned the case in U.S. District Court in the city of Miami on Monday.
The lawsuit against Florida Coastal is one of just 15 lawsuits against law schools in the United States filed by law school graduates who claim law schools lied about job prospects upon graduating. Thirteen of the fifteen lawsuits filed were filed in state courts. Florida Coastal is the first school to ask to have the case moved to a federal court.
The school argued in its court filing that the case meets the requirements of the 2005 Class Action Fairness Act. The act gave the federal government more jurisdiction when working on class-action lawsuits. The lawsuit against the school is a civil action and the amount being requested by the plaintiffs is more than $5 million. Florida Coastal also argued that the lawsuit was filed for people who live in different states.
One of the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case, Manuel Rodriguez, from Concepcion Martinez & Bellido, said that he is going to argue the decision to move the case by filing a motion to move the case back to the state court level.
“Once you federalize the case, you have distant courts deciding local issues,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think that (Florida Coastal) is legally correct in its argument. It’s a matter of interpretation, and obviously up to judge to decide.”
It is a common belief that federal courts are not as hospitable to plaintiffs as state courts usually are. No comments or statements were released by Florida Coastal or its attorneys. The suit against Florida Coastal alleges that the school provided prospective students with misleading statistics and statements to help enrollment.
It was reported by Florida Coastal that anywhere from 80 to 95 percent of its alums were able to acquire employment only nine months after graduating from the school. These numbers are incredibly misleading for prospective students because they include any type of job, even ones not within the legal sector.