Trump University Sued Disgruntled Former Students For Leaving Negative Consumer Reviews, And Lost
photographyisnotacrime.com
Donald Trump loves to brag about the number of people he has sued over the years, but he doesn’t say much about his losing legal battle with disgruntled former students of Trump University. The former students sued for refunds under California’s consumer protection laws, but Trump retaliated by filing a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) claim, a countersuit “intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their criticism or opposition.”
But he still ended up losing on appeal and remand.
However, the republican presidential candidate had managed to keep that defeat from becoming a campaign issue until one of his opponents, Marco Rubio, brought it up in a debate last week.
“There are people who borrowed $36,000 to go to Trump University, and they’re suing now,” Rubio said. “And you know what they got? They got to take a picture with a cardboard cutout of Donald Trump.”
Trump’s namesake university operated without licensing, and collapsed under a mountain of state investigations, class action lawsuits and “cease & desist” orders in his home state of New York amongst many complaints.
Tara Marakieff filed a 34-page class action lawsuit in 2010 at California’s southern district federal court, accusing Trump University of numerous violations under her state’s consumer protection laws.
But before Marakieff filed her complaints, she first wrote to the Better Business Bureau and to her bank about the high pressure, low delivery tactics employed by Trump’s “instructors” to extract cash from “students”, often by coaching them to increase their credit card limits during session breaks.
She continued to speak out to the the Fair Trade Commission, and other consumer review websites with statements like this:
I am contacting the Better Business Bureau (BBB), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Bureau of Consumer Protection and the FDIC as well as posting the facts of my highly negative experience on a wide variety of Internet sites to ensure that this organization at some point is stopped from defrauding others with its predatory behavior. I am also contacting the media to give them a statement of facts so that they can expose this scam and am willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to obtain my money back including taking legal action at the state and federal levels for this crime that has been committed to [sic] thousands of students nationwide who have been preyed on and victimized as I know I am one of many.
Trump’s lawyers pounced on her warnings to other potential victims, and claimed defamation.
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