Thomas M. Cooley Law School filed separate lawsuits on Thursday against a pair of lawyers and a group of anonymous bloggers who it says defamed the school through disparaging comments they made online and on social-media sites about the school’s job-placement and student-loan default rates.
One of the suits, filed in Ingham County Circuit Court in Michigan, singled out the New York law firm of Kurzon Strauss and two of its lawyers, David Anziska and Jesse Strauss. The school’s complaint says the lawyers falsely stated that Cooley was defrauding students by misrepresenting its job-placement rates, average starting salaries, and student-loan default rates. Cooley officials say those numbers, including the school’s current job-placement rate (nine months after graduation) of 76 percent, have been reported “consistently and truthfully.”
In the other suit, the law school accuses four anonymous Internet bloggers of defaming the school in a series of statements on various Web sites in the last few months. One of the bloggers posted comments on The Huffington Post, according to school officials, who are seeking information from the sites on the bloggers’ identities.
“Everyone has the right to state an opinion about Cooley, online or elsewhere,” James B. Thelen, the law school’s associate dean for legal affairs and general counsel, said in a prepared statement. “But our lawsuits contend that these defendants have crossed the line both legally and ethically, smearing our reputation with blatantly false and often vulgar statements that they attempt to spread as broadly as possible.”
Mr. Anziska declined to comment on the specific claims in the lawsuit, but issued a statement calling the school’s action “one of the most ridiculous, absurd lawsuits filed in recent memory.”
“Suffice to say, not only will we defend ourselves vigorously, but we fully intend to countersue Thomas Cooley and their lawyers at Miller Canfield for abusing the legal system with this blatantly idiotic lawsuit,” he said.
This isn’t the first lawsuit filed by the law school, which is based in Lansing, Mich. In 2004, it sued the American Bar Association for purportedly improperly delaying approval of two satellite campuses. That lawsuit was rejected, and in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the law school.
Cooley officials say that on the most recent Michigan bar examination, their graduates had the second-highest pass rate among graduates of the five Michigan law schools, just behind the University of Michigan’s. The ABA-accredited school, which has four campuses in Michigan, is described as the nation’s largest.
