Trump University case reopens in NY amid Super Tuesday

Donald Trump got a Super Tuesday surprise from a NY court that said the lawsuit by the state accusing his Trump University of fraud can go forward.

The New York Attorney general Eric Schneiderman has alleged that Trump University de-frauded students by billing itself as real-estate school and charging students as much as $35,000 without having official accreditation.

A judge in the NY case ruled previous year that Trump is personally liable for illegally operating a university without a proper license. The suit claimed fraud under state law and common law.

The Republican presidential candidate is also facing two class-action lawsuits over Trump University in California filed by former students who allege the school didn’t deliver on promises.

The Appellate Division unanimously rejected Trump’s request to throw out the 2013 suit, dismissing Trump’s lawyers who claimed that the lawsuit, filed in 2013, should be tossed because the statute of limitations on the case had expired. The attorney general said the school used “bait-and-switch” tactics, inducing students to enroll in increasingly expensive seminars.

However it was discovered only one of them ever actually met the Republican Front Runner and he university was said to have hired professors with little to no experience in the real estate field.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

He continued the defence on Twitter the day before the court’s ruling, saying the program had a “98% approval rating”.

Trump University began in 2005, and its name was changed in 2010 to the Trump Entrepreneur Initiative.

Schneiderman heralded the decision as a “clear victory” in his efforts to hold Trump accountable. “We look forward to demonstrating in a court of law that Donald Trump and his sham for-profit college defrauded more than 5,000 consumers out of millions of dollars”, Schneiderman said in a statement.

The Trump Organization’s general counsel, Alan Garten, told Reuters the case was “politically motivated” and the decision would be appealed.