Prehired Vocational School and Loan Agreement Washington Class Action

This class action is about vocational schools and income-sharing agreements (ISAs), and the Washington state laws that govern them. It brings suit against a school, Prehired, LLC, its founder and CEO Joshua Jordan, and a company that designed and implemented ISAs, Meratas, Inc. The complaint lays out ways these three violated Washington’s laws on private vocational schools and associated loans. Among other things, the complaint claims that Prehired “is not listed among the private career schools that hold up-to-date licenses” under the Washington Revised Code.

The class for this action is all Washington residents who signed an agreement with Prehired in substantially the form of Exhibit A and paid any money to Prehired, Joshua Jordan, or Meratas at any time from April 15, 2022 on.

The plaintiff in this case, Elaina Reid, graduated from high school in 2018 and was finished up her associate’s degree at a community college when she heard about Prehired’s online training for becoming a software sales representative. Prehired also offered further training, the complaint alleges, “to help students employed as software sales representatives get promotions and move into managerial roles.”

Prehired’s course cost $15,000, which Reid did not have, but the complaint alleges CEO Jordan, acting as an agent for Prehired, “told her she could finance her training by entering into an income share agreement (ISA), which required her to pay 12.5% of any income exceeding $40,000 to Prehired for forty-eight months after she landed a job.”

Meratas’s ISA, the complaint alleges, was deceptive: Two years after Reid signed it, she has paid just under $4,000, “even though her income fell below the ISA’s $40,000 minimum threshold for making payments.” The complaint contends that Washington law says that the ISA is not enforceable unless the school was licensed when she entered into the agreement, and is voidable because it states that the law of another state should apply to it.

Washington law lists the following as an unfair business practice, the complaint claims:

• Failure to company with the terms of a student enrollment contract or agreement.
• Misleading prospective students about their “probable earnings” after the course or the cost of the course.
• Making statements about the education offered that the school knew or should have known was inaccurate, misleading, or false.

The complaint further claims that the three defendants did not meet the conditions under which they could induce Reid to enter into the ISA. It also claims that they gave Reid “misleading and deceptive testimonials, endorsements and other information about Prehired’s program, the earnings students would obtain following graduation from the program, and the total cost to complete the training program.”

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Deceptive Advertising, Education, False or Misleading Information, Loan-Related Unfair Practices