Court: No trial for Trump over university
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal appeals court refused Tuesday to derail a $25 million Trump University settlement to allow a former student to take the president to trial.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided unanimously that a district judge acted appropriately when he approved the settlement, reached days after Donald Trump was elected president.
Sherri B. Simpson, a Florida lawyer and former Trump University attendee, wanted to drop out of the class action and pursue the president in another lawsuit,
But the 9th Circuit said she had missed a deadline for exiting the class.
The court said former students would have faced “significant hurdles had they proceeded to trial,” including the difficulty of prevailing before a jury in a case against the president.
The settlement stemmed from lawsuits charging the now-defunct real estate school with fraud. The 9th Circuit called the settlement “highly favorable” to former students.
The suits accused Trump University of falsely advertising that it would teach students Trump’s “secrets of success.”
Instead, the attendees said, they received threeday seminars in which they were aggressively urged to invest tens of thousands of dollars more for a mentorship program.