Case update: On January 23, 2024, the Court granted final approval to a class action settlement with Loyola University Chicago for $1.375 million to settle the lawsuit filed by FeganScott on behalf of students who were unfairly charged in-person tuition and fees during the spring semester of 2020 – despite the university’s COVID-related campus closures. The settlement seeks to provide refunds to students for certain fees paid while the campus was shut down.

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As local counsel, FeganScott filed a proposed national class-action lawsuit on behalf of a class persons seeking to recoup tuition and fees students were charged during the spring semester at Loyola University Chicago amid coronavirus-related school closures. The suit claimed that the university withheld refunds despite allegedly receiving more than $10 million in government aid.

According to the suit, the university hadn’t held any in-person classes since March 12, and students had been forced into online classes were merely a “shadow” of the in-person instruction students and families paid for. Although Loyola offered some partial refunds for room and board charges, it refused to issue refunds for tuition and most other fees.

The suit also noted that class members paid to access buildings, facilities and technology, all of which they could not utilize in the abrupt shift to online learning.

The lawsuit sought to represent all persons who paid tuition and mandatory fees and other costs to Loyola for an in-person class or classes to be conducted during the spring 2020 semester and who didn’t receive the “in-person education for which they paid.”