It’s not often you hear schools and racketeering uttered in the same breath. According to a lawsuit filed recently in Middle Tennessee District Court, however, it’s not impossible.
Plaintiffs Brian Haley and Margaret Hudson were employed as recruiters by both the Commercial Driver and the Truck Driver Institutes, which jointly operate a driving school in Rutherford County.
The two plaintiffs claim that the companies, along with Standard Financial Services, an entity which helped students finance their tuition to the school, were guilty of a number of improprieties allegedly committed in the name of greater profits.
The complaint claims that the company’s supervisors, who are also named in the filing, “encouraged and directed Plaintiffs and the other recruiters to falsify information taken from potential students to enable unqualified students to qualify for tuition financing.”
To this end, the filing also claims, they “were encouraged and directed to state falsely that employers were lined up waiting to hire prospective students, that employers would pay the tuition of prospective students, that co-signers would have no financial impact as long as the student was working.”
Both plaintiffs allege that when they separately went to the company’s general counsel to complain about the practices, they were told to keep the conversations quiet while the claims were investigated.
Soon after, both were fired.
The complaint claims injuries under among other things, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Filing the case on behalf of Haley and Hudson is Murfreesboro attorney Jerry E. Farmer.
NashvillePost.com has left a message with an official with the Truck Driver Institute. We will update this story with any comment or further details as they become available.
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