IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS @, COUNTY DEPARTMENT, CHANCERY DIVISION . ‘ RACHELLE EVANS, et al., ) e Plaintiffs, ) Ng v. ) Case No. 12 CH 03522 “2 ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, et al, ) Os Defendants. ) MEMORANDUM OF LAW IN SUPPORT OF MOTION TO DISMISS PLAINTIFFS’ FIRST AMENDED COMPLAINT Illinois Institute of Technology, on behalf of its academic unit Chicago-Kent College of Law (“Kent”), by its counsel, Amstein & Lehr LLP, submits this Memorandum of Law in support of its Motion to Dismiss, with prejudice, Plaintiffs’ First Amended Complaint. Preliminary Statement and Summary of Argument Plaintiffs, eight Kent graduates, have sued the law school out of apparent frustration over limited job prospects and salaries after graduation. Ignoring the significant, intrinsic value of a graduate legal education, Plaintiffs assert they have yet to derive the economic benefit that they had assumed would follow from their legal educations. Their argument rests on the belief that Kent's compilation and publication of prior employment statistics in the format prescribed by its accrediting body, the American Bar Association (“ABA”), and in accordance with then-existing practices of ABA-accredited law schools, misrepresented law school graduates” past successes in attaining what, in the apparent view of Plaintiffs, is lucrative employment, which, also in the apparent view of Plaintiffs, is the reason they went to law school in the first place. The Amended Complaint parallels fourteen lawsuits containing similar claims against other law schools filed by the same two attomeys from New York City with the assistance of various local counsels,Although each of these lawsuits is currently subject to significant legal challenge, one Court that has reached the merits of these claims concluded that they cannot proceed as a matter of law. Gomez-Jimenez, et al. v. New York Law School, 943 N.Y.$.2d 834, Case No. 652226/11 (Supreme Court ofthe State of New York, County of New York, Mar. 21, 2012). In dismissing the complaint against New York Law School (“NYLS”) with prejudice (the Order of Dismissal is attached as Exhibit A), that court, using language applicable to this matter, stated: AJs law graduates who made their decisions to go to law school before the full effects of the maelstrom [the 2008 recession] hit, they now have turned their disappointment and angst on their law school for not adequately anticipating the possibility of the supervening storm and presenting the most complete job-related data that could possibly have been compiled. They challenge the statistics NYLS assembled each year to meet the standards required by the American Bar Association, the official accrediting association designed by the U.S. Department of Education to Provide students with the data they need to make informed decisions before deciding to embark on the pursuit of a legal education, And they allege that these allegedly misleading statistics have adversely affected their ability to enter the practice of law as full-time members of our profession. For the reasons set forth in the court’s decision and briefly summarized below, the court does not believe the grievances articulated by these plaintiffs in their complaint state a cause of action for which legal redress may be had, (Ex. A, p. 31-32.) Furthermore, as the NYLS Court aptly observed, Plaintiffs cannot demonstrate, as a ‘matter of law, reasonable reliance on the federally mandated disclosures, Rather, [Reasonable consumers would have considered and compared the NYLS statements on employment and compensation along with other ‘decision factors’ such as other sources of data cited in the complaint, career preference cited in the complaint, i. obtaining a law degree for purposes other than practice of law, available financial resources, and economic circumstances in the law business cited in the complaint, all of which would have had to play an important part in reasonable consumers’ investigationwhen deciding whether to commit to attend NYLS and to complete their education there, (Ex. A, p.17,) Not only can Plaintiffs not demonstrate reasonable reliance as a matter of law, but also Plaintiffs’ claims are not actionable under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act (“ICFA"), common-law fraud or negligent misrepresentation because, as was found to be similarly lacking in the NYLS case, Plaintiffs" allegations do not establish that Kent's employment statistics were actually false, misleading, or deceptive. Additionally, there is no legal causation and no legally recoverable damages for Plaintiffs’ claims. Moreover, Plaintiffs concede that Kent’s statistics actually complied with the federal reporting standards. (Am, Compl. $¥ 29-30, 32-33, 38, 44, and Exs. 1-5.) Illinois ease law interpreting and applying the doctrine of preemption makes clear that compliance with such federal standards bars this action in its entirety. Accordingly, for these reasons, Counts I, Il, III, IV, and V should be dismissed with prejudice. Count I should also be dismissed with prejudice because the ICFA is inapplicable to Plaintiffs’ claims. Under the ICFA, Plaintiffs are not consumers, as they concede in their Amended Complaint that they attended Kent for commercial purposes. Moreover, the ICFA is inapplicable because section 10b(1}) of the ICFA (also known as the “safe harbor” provision) bars Plaintiffs’ claim, as Kent’s compilation of the statistics was authorized by a federal regulatory body. Furthermore, Counts IV and V should be dismissed with prejudice because they are void ab initio under Ilinois law, as they are against fictitious parties and are baseless. Finally, though not at issue in this Motion, it is worth noting that class claims cannot lie, as individuals choose to attend a specific law school for a variety of individual reasons unrelated ‘o published statistics, including differing backgrounds, differing academic records, and differing