Case Explained: TURREY, ET AL. V. VERVENT, INC., ET AL.

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Filed: 2026-08-12 Docket: 3:20-cv-00697- The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s judgment in favor of student borrowers who brought a civil RICO claim against ITT Technical Institute loan servicers Vervent, Inc., Activate Financial, LLC, and their executives. The court held that there was sufficient evidence for the jury to find that the plaintiffs neither knew nor reasonably should have known of their fraud-based injuries more than four years before filing suit in April 2020, meaning the claims were not time-barred by RICO’s four-year statute of limitations. Applying the “injury discovery” rule, the panel determined that the clock began to run only when plaintiffs knew or should have known of the fraudulent nature of their loan payments, which occurred after ITT’s high-profile collapse and bankruptcy in September 2016. The court rejected the defendants’ argument that public regulatory investigations into ITT or irregularities in loan documents placed borrowers on inquiry notice earlier, reasoning that ordinary student borrowers are not held to the same level of financial sophistication as industry insiders or sophisticated investors and could not reasonably be expected to infer hidden fraud from complex regulatory filings or routine payment obligations. Additionally, the court ruled that the defendants failed to preserve their challenge regarding proximate causation for appellate review because the district court’s denial of summary judgment on that issue turned on disputed factual matters, and the defendants did not renew the specific challenge in a post-trial motion for judgment as a matter of law under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50. Consequently, the twelve-million-dollar jury verdict stands, and the case is remanded to enforce the district court’s judgment. Do It For The Case Law is a news reporting service. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.