Maryland Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
On October 1, 2024, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C. District Court) entered a final judgment and order in the matter of Adavenaixx v. Howard University, approving a class action settlement and release that the parties had executed on May 6, 2024 (which the court had preliminarily approved on June 18, 2024). That judgment came after the court held a final approval hearing the same day at which it granted plaintiff’s motions for final approval of class action settlement and for attorneys’ fees, expenses, and service award. The court approved over two million dollars to be distributed to a class of Howard University students who were unable to attend in-person classes at the university during the height of COVID-19.
The suit originally began as Payne v. Howard University in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, but on motion was transferred to the D.C. District Court. Mr. Payne had been a student at Howard University during the 2019–2020 academic school year. In March 2020, Howard (like almost every school in the country) suspended in-person classes as a result of the epidemic.
Thereafter, suits were filed across the country (including the Payne suit) against various universities and colleges on the basis that they breached a contract with their students to provide in-person classes. Howard (like all other defendants) moved to dismiss the suit, but unlike many courts across the country, the D.C. District Court denied that motion. The case was voluntarily stayed for a short time while appeals were taken of dismissals granted in favor of George Washington University and American University; the D.C. Circuit reversed both, after which discovery began in the Payne matter.
Ultimately, the Payne suit was voluntarily dismissed after it was learned that the lead plaintiff had obtained a bankruptcy discharge during the pendency of that proceeding. But Ms. Adavenaixx had filed suit in the interim and Howard agreed, to avoid duplication, to allow certain of the discovery that had already taken place to be used in that matter.
In September 2023, the matter was referred to mediation, which took place in November 2023 before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey. At the conclusion of that session, the parties agreed in principle to the settlement that the D.C. District Court ultimately approved.
The final definition of the class was as follows:
All Howard students enrolled in the Spring 2020 Semester who did not withdraw by March 16, 2020 for whom any amount of tuition and/or fees was paid to Howard from any source other than a scholarship, grant, or tuition remission from Howard, or any other source that did not require repayment, and whose tuition and/or fees have not been fully refunded.
In the last decade, Silverman Thompson has taken an increasing role as local counsel for both plaintiffs and defendants in class actions and other complex civil matters in the state and federal courts of Maryland and the District of Columbia. To learn more about us or our practice, please contact Bill Sinclair, who served as local counsel for plaintiff in the Adaavennaixx matter, at 410-385-2225.