Eddlemon v. Bradley University

Plaintiff-student filed action against defendant-University, alleging that defendant’s closure of campus, cancelation of one-week’s classes and migration of its classes to virtual/remote classes as consequences of COVID-19 pandemic resulted in breach of contract and/or unjust enrichment, where defendant refused to provide partial refunds for in-person tuition and activity fees to account for closure of campus/in-person classes and failure to reschedule canceled classes. Dist. Ct. granted plaintiff’s motion to certify for class action treatment two classes of all students who paid in-person tuition and activity fees. Ct. of Appeals, though, held that Dist. Ct. erred in certifying both classes, after noting that predominance requirement for certification under Rule 23 is only met when common questions represent significant aspect of case, and Dist. Ct. erred by listing one common question for each claim without explaining that question’s relative importance to each claim, whether any individual questions exist or how common questions predominated over individual ones. Ct of Appeals further observed that Dist. Ct. in general failed to apply required rigorous analysis to plaintiff’s claims so as to understand relationship between each claim’s common and individual questions and to determine which issues were common or individual issues and which issues were predominate.