A court hearing is scheduled Monday
afternoon in Beckley where a proposed settlement
involving former students at Mountain
State University
The proposal was first announced by
plaintiffs’ attorneys and the University
of Charleston
More than 400 individual suits were
filed along with at least two class action suits in state court and two in
federal court after the school lost its accreditation in 2012. The largest
group was about 600 nursing students who suffered the most harm when their
program was stripped of accreditation a year before the entire school was
discredited.
“The students were seeking damages
from the closure of MSU and loss of accreditation,” plaintiffs’ attorney
Anthony Majestro said when the proposed settlement was announced Aug. 13. “That
took the form of delayed educational opportunities, delayed entry into the
workforce, student loans, expenses, it runs the whole gamut.”
The plaintiffs will ask the
three-judge mass litigation panel to approve the details of the settlement that
include setting up a pool of money former MSU students would share through a
formula based on where the students were in their education careers at Mountain
State. The money would come from three different sources including MSU’s
insurance company, the U.S. Department of Education and the liquidation of
property in Beckley
The University of Charleston Mountain State
Monday’s hearing is scheduled for 3 p.m. in the ceremonial
courtroom at the Raleigh County Courthouse. The judges will also hear any
objections to the proposed settlement.
