In a Nov. 3 request, former students of Stone Academy who are suing the closed Connecticut nursing school asked the Waterbury Connecticut Superior Court judge to consider a prejudgment remedy amount of $20 million.
The prejudgment remedy application bases the $20 million request on five key areas it alleges Stone Academy violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act :
- Multiple deficiencies that were previously identified in its nursing program, including poor NCLEX pass rates, unqualified faculty and more.
- Misrepresenting the program's quality and failing to deliver on services promised to its students.
- Stone Academy owners' "placing their personal financial interests ahead of [the students'] interests, the most remarkable of which was taking more than $1 million from the business in the month prior to closure," the document states.
- Stone Academy owners' personal involvement in financial decisions including issuing blank checks to co-owner and defendant Mark Scheinberg who then allegedly transferred funds out of the school.
- The students' "ascertainable loss and substantial damage[s]|" suffered due to the above.
The document states that seeking a $20 million prejudgement remedy amount for a class of 1,000 students who were affected negatively by the school's sudden closure, would equate to about $20,000 per student, which the document claims "will hardly address the significant hardship [the students] have endured and continue to endure because of [Stone Academy's] utter incompetence and lack of concern for their welfare."
A remote status hearing of the ongoing case is scheduled for Nov. 8, at which time the judge may grant or deny the prejudgement remedy request.
Stone Academy is also being separately sued by the state's Attorney General in ongoing proceedings.