Defendant's Attorney: Thomas L. Shriner, Jr., Aaron Russell Wegrzyn, Anne-Louise T. Mittal, Eric G. Pearson, Michael D. Leffel

Description: Madison, Wisconsin civil litigation lawyers represented Plaintiffs, who sued Defendants on student loan recovery breach of contact theories.


This case was a class action about the proper calculation of student loan interest. The court granted summary judgment to defendants Great Lakes Educational Loan Services, Inc. and Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation (collectively “Great Lakes”) on the claims of all class members except those who had overpaid their loans by less than five dollars. Defendants estimated that there are 1, 626 borrowers in that category (out of approximately 137, 000 class members) and that the total amount of overpayments by those class members is less than $3, 000. In light of the small amount that remained at stake, the court asked the parties for input on how they wished to bring the case to a resolution.

Among other things, Great Lakes contended that the court should enter judgment after excluding from the class borrowers who overpaid their balances by less than five dollars. Great Lakes said that Dawson-the sole class representative-wasn't part of that group, so she wasn't an adequate representative of them. In a two-sentence response, Dawson said only that she wished to preserve all of her previous arguments for appeal. Dkt. 454. She didn't contend that she was an adequate representative of the class members with unresolved claims, she didn't ask

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to name an additional class representative for those class members, and she didn't otherwise provide reasons for rejecting Great Lakes' argument.

The court concluded that Dawson wasn't an adequate representative of the class members who had overpaid their accounts by less than five dollars because she wasn't a member of that group. As a result, the court excluded those borrowers from the class and directed the clerk of court to enter judgment.

On the same day, before judgment was entered, Dawson filed a motion in which she contended that the excluded class members should receive notice and Great Lakes should be required to bear the costs of notice. Dkt. 456. In the same motion, she asked for reconsideration of the decision that she isn't an adequate class representative for the borrowers who made overpayments of less than five dollars. Two days later, she filed a second motion for reconsideration, this time challenging a portion of the summary judgment decision in which the court concluded that she had forfeited an argument. Dkt. 457.

Outcome: The court concludes that it is appropriate to give notice to the excluded class members, but Dawson hasn't provided any relevant authority or a persuasive reason for shifting the cost of notice to Great Lakes. Dawson's motions for reconsideration will be denied.

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Defendant's Experts:

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