What kind of lawyer will help me sue my school?

[mede]

Washington State.

I would like to speak to a lawyer about possibly suing my college for lost wages and other damages after I was dismissed inappropriately. What kind of lawyer should I call?

 

[Just Blue]

Washington State.

I would like to speak to a lawyer about possibly suing my college for lost wages and other damages after I was dismissed inappropriately. What kind of lawyer should I call?

Depends...Were you a student and anemployee?

 

[mede]

Thanks for the reply. I am a student. It's a public school too, if that matters.

 

[I'mTheFather]

Contact an administrative law or education law attorney to see if you have a case worth pursuing.

 

[Zigner]

Why do you want to sue your school?

 

[mede]

Thanks, is there a good place to look up local lawyers, like a website or something you'd recommend?

As for my case, to make a long story short, an instructor failed me very clearly out of spite. I think I can prove malicious intent, I can prove that she lied on a few points, and I can prove that she treated me differently than any of my other classmates. There may also be a discrimination aspect worth pursing, but I don't know about that. So I was dismissed from the program purely based on her arbitrary, malicious decision, and it forced me to get my higher-paying license in my field one year later. So for damages, I would mainly be seeking lost wages equal to the average wages of someone working under the license I was seeking minus the wages I actually earned during the past year.

I'm not sure if I should be looking at suing the instructor, the school, or both, or if the case is even worth pursuing. Part of me thinks you shouldn't be able to lose when you can prove some of the stated reasons for the failure were lies. After all, only someone motivated by malicious intent would lie in order to fail someone. And the way that the actions of the instructor led to my damages seems very straight forward to me. On the other hand, I anticipate there is great bias in favor of the defendant in cases like this, my instructor might be able to construct a good defense by telling further lies, and there are other details I don't know that could make it not worth it. I don't know if there's some kind of statute of limitations, I don't know if I am allowed to seek legal expenses as compensation, and I don't know if I want to have to shred the good letter of recommendation I got from the instructor I had a few weeks ago when I came back and finished the program a year later.

Thanks for the replies, everyone.

 

[mede]

Sorry for double post, but if the discrimination aspect is worth pursuing, are there lawyers that specialize in discrimination I should look into? The case for discrimination is not the strongest part of my case. I'm not 100% sure if discrimination is even a factor in my case. I don't really care as I'm more concerned about what was done to me rather than the motivation behind it.

I'm a nurse and the program in question was a program to get a better, higher-paying license working in the same field. The main reason I wonder if discrimination is a factor is because, based on my observations, males (I'm a male) make up about 15-20% of a typical class in the first year of this nursing school, and make up over 90% of people failed. Of course those are not statistics, but if you were able to gather the appropriate statistics, I am pretty sure that would demonstrate that males are failed disproportionately compared to females. Also, the program selects based purely on academic standards so the inequality cannot be explained away by saying that women are stronger academically than men.

In my situation, I was the only man in my class, and I was treated very differently and with open hostility literally from the first minute of the class. Also, at one point I was in a patient's room with a female nurse to do a procedure and the patient said she preferred a female to do the procedure so I let the other nurse do it, and that was one of the stated reasons I was failed (although the gender aspect was left out of the instructor's version.)

So I don't know, I'm not too keen on complaining about discrimination, but maybe it would be wise to make that part of my case.

 

[quincy]

... is there a good place to look up local lawyers, like a website or something you'd recommend? ...

Here is a link to the Washington State Bar Association, where you can locate attorneys in your area: http://www.wsba.org/

If you are near a Washington law school, you might also want to check out resources there.

A personal review of your situation by an attorney in your area can, perhaps, help you decide what your best course of action is.

 

[mede]

Thanks for the link.

 

[quincy]

You're welcome.