On Wednesday, a New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed a proposed class action by nine alumni against New York Law School, one of a nationwide series of lawsuits in which alumni sought to hold their the school liable for distributing fraudulent and misleading data regarding the employment of its graduates. The judge presiding over the case, Justice Marvin Schweitzer, found that the alumni, who were effectively “turn[ing] their disappointment and angst on their law school for not adequately anticipating the possibility of the [economic collapse],” did not sufficiently state a claim, as the data was not “misleading in a material way for a reasonable consumer acting reasonably.”

The complaint, originally filed in August 2011, alleged that the law school’s data regarding post-graduation employment rates—which reported that approximately 90-92% of New York Law School graduates secured employment within nine months of graduating—led the alumni to apply to the school and anticipate a certain type of employment upon graduation. Accordingly, the complaint sought $225 million in damages, for the difference “between the alleged inflated tuition [plaintiffs] paid because of the allegedly misleading statements and what [plaintiffs] characterize as the ‘true value’ of a NYLS degree.”

The problem with the employment rates utilized by New York Law School, as plaintiffs point out, is that those numbers included graduates who were only working in part-time jobs within nine months, as well as graduates who were employed in jobs that didn’t even require a legal degree, and that the rates were distorted by a small sample size of graduates. Yet the school’s marketing material itself noted that such statistics were not representative of the entire class, and that the highest salary reported was not typical of all graduates. Taking these factors into account, Schweitzer reasoned that the students were capable of making an informed decision; as he put it, college graduates, “are a sophisticated subset of education consumers, capable of sifting through data and weighing alternatives before making a decision regarding their post-college options.”

Plaintiffs’ counsel, David Anziska, nevertheless remained committed to proceeding with the case, promising to “immediately appeal.” That sentiment appears to be shared by plaintiffs’ attorneys in the similar cases across the nation, who recently announced that they plan to sue 20 more schools in ten different states by Memorial Day—all this in addition to the 13 other suits currently pending.