Ivy Price-Fixing Suit Dismissed

A federal district court dismissed a lawsuit last week brought on behalf of college students seeking to recoup money lost from alleged tuition price-fixing.

Roger Kingsepp, a recent Wesleyan University graduate, was attempting to gain class-action status for his suit against Wesleyan, Harvard, Amherst, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, Williams and Yale.

But a federal district court in New York found in Kingsepp v. Wesleyan that Kingsepp's attorney, Steven M. Kramer, was unqualified to represent thousands of students.

Southern District Judge David N. Edelstein ruled that "Mr. Kramer's closet has a number of skeletons."

Kramer said yesterday the ruling was based on inaccurate readings of prior cases.

Appeal Filed

He said he filed a notice of appeal Thursday in the Federal Appeals Court for the Second Circuit, and expects the appeal to be heard sometime this winter.

"If and when a notice of appeal is served on us, the University will respond in the appropriate legal manner," University Attorney Robert B. Donin said yesterday.

In a separate case, a federal judge ruled in late August that MIT had violated federal anti-trust laws in meeting with Ivy League schools to discuss the financial aid awards of students admitted to more than one of the schools. MIT is appealing the decision.

The MIT decision included no fine or penalty against MIT. The Kingsepp case, on the other hand, is a civil action to allow students who were allegedly victimized by the overlap process to collect up to triple damages.

Because Kramer was found unqualified as a class-action attorney, the decision did not include a ruling on the merits of the case itself.