Student Wins First Settlement in Le Cordon Bleu Mass Lawsuit

Top Class Actions’s website and social media posts use affiliate links. If you make a purchase using such links, we may receive a commission, but it will not result in any additional charges to you. Please review our Affiliate Link Disclosure for more information.

Student Wins First Settlement in Le Cordon Bleu Mass Lawsuit

By Anne Bucher

A student who alleged that Le Cordon Bleu fraudulently promised lucrative job opportunities upon completing their culinary program was awarded $217,000 in the first settlement agreement reached in over 1,000 lawsuits filed against the cooking school in 2008.

Anna Berkowitz and her father Martin Berkowitz had been led to believe that Anna would earn at least $75,000 upon completing the culinary program, allowing her to pay off the extensive loans she was encouraged to take out.

According to data presented in the mass lawsuit — being identified in some media outlets as a class action lawsuit even though the cases are being settled individually either out of court or through arbitration — the average salary of a restaurant chef-owner was $79,222 whereas a pastry chef received an average of $47,024. While these averages are inflated by hotels, the pay for independent restaurant chefs was significantly lower. A pastry chef with one year of experience earned an average salary of $28,333.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuits alleged that Le Cordon Bleu’s marketing strategy draws in students with its “become a chef” advertising and promising a high rate of placement for graduates of the program. The plaintiffs accuse the company of false advertising, claiming that the culinary school includes in these statistics graduates who attain jobs as line cooks and other positions that do not require a culinary degree.

Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit include current or former students of Le Cordon Bleu, which is also known as the California School of Culinary Arts. They accuse the company of marketing Le Cordon Bleu to prospective students with “misleading statements, significant omissions, assertions of fact that the Defendants had no reasonable ground for believing to be true, and outright lies” to convince them that they would be better off financially and professionally by attending Le Cordon Bleu. The plaintiffs allege that they are now burdened by non-dischargeable student loans that they cannot afford to pay.

According to the class action lawsuit, Le Cordon Bleu’s marketing materials suggested that students of the culinary program could forge ahead in their careers without spending years working up the culinary ladder. The advertisements suggested that graduates of the programs would be qualified to work as well-respected chefs. Prospective students were provided with placement statistics that indicated that as many as 96 percent of graduates were placed. Because all of the marketing materials implied that graduates moved on to become chefs, the plaintiffs interpreted this data to mean that the vast majority of graduates were employed as chefs or equivalent positions. As a result, they took out loans to help them afford the $22,000 to $50,000 required to enroll in the culinary program.

The plaintiffs filed their lawsuits after learning that graduates of the program are very rarely hired as chefs. The majority of graduates find work in entry level positions, earning between $8 and $12 per hour, an insufficient amount to help them pay back their loans in a timely manner.

Updated July 3rd, 2013

All class action and lawsuit news updates are listed in the Lawsuit News section of Top Class Actions