Solicitors have accused by their opponents in court of being too focused on ‘drumming up’ as many claimants as possible for a group action against a university.

A group litigation order application was made in the High Court, before Master Fontaine, on behalf of 924 University College London students who say they suffered losses as a result of UCL breaching its contract in services provided during strike action and the pandemic. The claims cover academic years from 2017-2018 to 2021-2022.

UCL argued for a stay of eight months to ‘allow time’ for claimants to particularise claims and go through the complaints procedure with UCL and the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education (OIA).

Anna Boase KC, acting for the claimants, said: ‘This claim is brought…by a large group of current and former students. Many are young people when they accepted offers of UCL, most were entering the first significant contract of their life. They chose to enter a campus university in the heart of London.’

She told the court tuition fees ranged from £9,250 for UK-resident undergraduates to ‘vastly more’ for overseas students.

She said: ‘UCL made promises about what it would provide, it promised tuition we say that meant on-campus tuition. It promised libraries and laboratories, we say that meant real libraries and laboratories.

‘UCL did not provide what it promised.’

Boase said students ‘could have gone to the Open University where fees are a third less’ than UCL if they were to just be taught online’.

She told the court requiring students to go through other complaint procedures would cause delays.

She said UCL had ‘spent the last year trying to fob [claimants] off by denying their right to come to court’. She added: ‘My clients have already experience significant delays, pre-action started in April last year. It has been slow-moving already.’

The court heard that although there are 924 claimants, there ‘are a further 2,140 who wish to be added to the claim form’ and a ‘total potential number’ of 40,000 students – the number of students UCL has a year.

Boase said: ‘We anticipate further waves of claimants being added.’

Litigation funding of £4.4m has been obtained by the claimants through, according to court documents, ‘a third-party funding facility’ as well as ATE funding.

The claimants have agreed to contribute up to 35% of any compensation they receive. Claimants ‘will keep 65% of their damages, if they lose they will get nothing’. The funding was ‘irrelevant’ to the GLO application, Boase said.

No figures have yet been determined. Boase said an expert economist would assess the difference in ‘the market value of one year of in-person teaching and the market value of one year of online teaching’.

John Taylor KC, for UCL, said: ‘There is only one group of claimants, those before the court. There are no other proceedings in any other court and no realistic prospect of any other proceedings starting.

‘The claimants have not provided basic information to understand the claim they are bringing and dismissed UCL’s proposal on ADR being utilised. Even now, we do not know which claimants are claiming in respect of strike action or covid.’

He told the court in ‘rush to [issue proceedings]…there are disparities between the number of claimants in the GLO at 3,186 and the number of claimants in the particular of claim which is 924’.

He said: ‘They had insufficient information about their own clients…that is indicative of how this litigation has been pursued which is try and drum up as many people as possible to support the claim without looking if they had a claim, what that claim is, and the particulars as requested.

‘The claimant should not be bringing litigation if they do not know whether or not they have a claim. It is abuse of process to bring a claim when you do not know whether or not you have a claim.’

He told the court a stay was necessary as the proceedings were ‘premature when you have not even told the defendant what you want’.

He added: ‘One does have to ask the question why is it when trying to move things forward, trying to understand what case we have to meet, those still have not been provided now.

‘I am afraid the answer to that is claimant solicitors have been focused on drumming up numbers without taking basic steps to establish what the claimants’ claims are.

Taylor added: ‘Cases [that go through ADR] could well be disposed of without taking up significant court time and costs.'

Judgment was reserved.

 

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