P'ninat Mishpat: Tuition Payment after Withdrawing Student

Beit Midrash

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Chemdat Yamim
P'ninat Mishpat

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Case: The plaintiff, an organization led and funded by pl, which operated a school, seeks payment from def of remaining tuition (11,500 NIS). Def’s son, a student at the school, was involved in roughhousing with pl’s grandson and caused the latter to break his hand. Pl’s family notified def that their son was suspended for three days. In response, def removed him from the school and stopped payments. Pl claims that all parents at the school, which had to close some classes due to small class size, signed a contract obligating them to pay full-year tuition regardless of early withdrawal. Def counter that they never signed the contract, that the principal (=prn) absolved them of further payment during a phone call with def, and that the school created a hostile environment through a hasty suspension and public badmouthing of def’s son, which made continued enrollment untenable. Def also seek reimbursement of tuition paid, compensation for emotional distress, and legal costs, totaling 7,990 NIS.

Ruling: While def never signed the contract obligating themselves to pay even if they take their son out, prn sent the mother a WhatsApp asking if they were sending their son and had just not gotten around to signing the contract, and she responded positively. Whether they saw the contract, as prn claims, or were just aware there was one (see Aruch Hashulchan, Choshen Mishpat 45:5), their agreeing to send their son is an acceptance of the established terms. Normally, one needs to pay his son’s educator until year’s end. Although def claim the minhag is that if the child stops going to the educator/school, the parents can stop paying, the fact that pl demonstrated that the situation in this small school is different would make such a minhag, if it exists, irrelevant to this case.
Beit din rejects the claim of mechila by prn. Beit din accepts prn’s testimony that his authority is only in the educational realm, not the financial. Therefore, he could do no more than recommend to pl to relieve def of payment. (Def admitted to not knowing if prn had authority.)
The main question is whether def had grounds to decide that their son could not continue at the school. While beit din understands that pl and/or the school made mistakes in dealing with the disciplinary matter, there was no proof or strong claim of grievous actions. Prn spoke to classmates about the violence that occurred, but most of the students witnessed the event, and even according to def’s description, prn was correct to urge avoiding violence. In addition, there is no evidence that def’s son would have found a hostile environment at the school. Since def also made mistakes in dealing with the situation and did not return their son on a trial basis, they did not demonstrate that their dissatisfaction with the school reached the level that the school broke its contractual obligation.
Therefore, def must pay the remaining tuition. However, since the sides agreed to not exhaust the testimonies, def can reduce payment by 500 NIS as a compromise to reflect the small chance further testimony would have vindicated them. Because pl essentially was correct in its claim, def’s counterclaims are not feasible.