A settlement has been reached in a class action that claims law school students paid too much for bar review prep course materials for BAR/BRI after it was discovered that West Publishing Corp. and Kaplan Inc. conspired to monopolize the market, according to The National Law Journal.
The settlement will pay $9.5 million in cash. U.S. District Judge Manual Real was told by lawyers that documents would be filed by March 18 seeking preliminary approval of the settlement. A hearing was scheduled by Judge Real for April 15.
The lawsuit was filed on February 6, 2008 and is separate from a case against Kaplan and West approved by Real in 2007 for $49 million. That case was filed by a class of 300,000 students who claim they were overcharged by $1,000 for prep courses for the Law School Aptitude Test. The case was filed in response to the two companies conspiring to monopolize the market, which is a violation of the Sherman Act.
Eliot Disner filed both of the cases and was removed from his former firm, McGuireWoods, when he objected to the original settlement. Disner passed away in 2009.
Lawyers working on the case told the Ninth Circuit on January 14 that they reached a new settlement. They then outlined the settlement in court documents filed on March 7 of this year.