From today’s decision by Judge Sarah Russell (D. Conn.) in Rignol v. Yale Univ. (a case I first wrote about when Rignol’s attempt to sue pseudonymously was rejected):
Plaintiff Thierry Rignol is an entrepreneur and investor who enrolled as a part-time graduate student at the Yale School of Management (“SOM”) in 2023 as a member of the class of 2025. After a teaching assistant flagged one of his exams in the spring of 2024, SOM administrators conducted an investigation to determine whether Rignol violated examination rules by using generative artificial intelligence (“AI”). In the course of its investigation, SOM determined that Rignol was not forthcoming during the investigation and did use AI; SOM penalized Rignol by issuing him an F in the course and suspending him from classes for one year.
Rignol subsequently sought a preliminary injunction that would reinstate him as a student in good standing at SOM such that he could graduate with his classmates in the class of 2025 this spring. Because I conclude that Rignol has failed to make the threshold showing of irreparable harm, I deny Rignol’s motion for a preliminary injunction…
Here is an excerpt from the court’s long and detailed account of the factual allegations:
Thierry Rignol is an entrepreneur and investor. In his LinkedIn profile, which Defendants attach to their memorandum, Rignol describes himself as the founder of a “technology driven real estate and hospitality company” headquartered in Mexico and operating throughout the Americas. Rignol’s profile says his firm had 28 full-time workers as of the end of 2020. In addition to managing his own firm, Rignol serves as a director on the boards of several private enterprises. Rignol is a French national authorized to live and work in the United States on an investor visa.
Rignol, by the way, had also run for the French Parliament in 2017, and continues to have “political aspirations.”
Rignol’s exam was flagged by a teaching assistant on June 10, 2024. The teaching assistant noted that Rignol’s exam, “one of the highest scoring,” had “clocked in at 30 pages whereas almost all others were under 20.” While conceding it was theoretically possible to produce such an exam under timed conditions, the teaching assistant said that Rignol’s exam “length stood out relative to the others.” J. Rouwenhorst investigated further and shared his initial findings with Wendy Tsung, an SOM administrator responsible for overseeing the EMBA program. In his email to Tsung on June 11, 2024, Rouwenhorst said he had “serious concerns about violation of the exam rules, such as improper use of AI.” He noted that certain “answers to essay type questions on the exam score high on the likelihood of being AI generated using ChatGPTzero as a detection tool” and “[a]t least one answer shows substantial overlap with answers to simple prompts on ChatGPT.” Rouwenhorst asked that Tsung “refer this to the Honor Committee for further investigation.” …
Professor Choi was chair of the Honor Committee in the summer and fall of 2024. After Tsung shared Rouwenhorst’s email describing Rignol’s potential academic misconduct with him, Choi undertook an initial investigation to decide whether Rignol’s conduct was sufficiently serious to merit referral to the full Honor Committee. As part of that initial review, Choi sought to examine the native file of the document Rignol used to turn in the PDF containing his exam answers….
Tsung wrote to Rignol on July 30, 2024, noting that Choi was “requesting that you submit to us the word version of your submission version of the Sourcing and Managing Funds exam.” Rignol did not respond [and failed to respond to follow-up requests]…. Choi says that Rignol was the first student to decline to produce documents in his ten years serving on the Honor Committee. After this initial investigation, Choi referred Rignol to the full Honor Committee. Choi relied in part on the many similarities between Rignol’s answers to exam questions and those produced when Choi submitted exam questions to ChatGPT. Choi felt that Rignol’s refusal to provide requested documents provided further grounds to suspect Rignol cheated on the exams….
At the hearing, Rignol continued to deny that he had used AI on his exam. Rignol told Committee members that he had ignored Choi’s emails requesting Microsoft Word copies of his exams because he had written the exam in Apple Pages, not Word. Rignol says that he left the meeting in a state of considerable distress. Following the meeting, Tsung contacted Rignol to ask that he send the Pages document that he said at the hearing he used to produce the PDF. Rignol produced this document while the Committee was still meeting….
After Rignol left the hearing, the Honor Committee began deliberating. Choi says that he and other Honor Committee members found Rignol’s responses to their questions at the hearing “incredible.” In particular, Choi says: “The Honor Committee was stunned by [Rignol’s] disruptive action of ignoring the request to submit any documents he wished us to consider at least twenty-four hours before the meeting, his prior failure to produce the electronic files requested, and his incredible explanation for why he had not done so. It concluded that [Rignol’s] actions were unprecedented.”
As the Committee deliberated, Choi reviewed the Pages file that Rignol had shared and researched whether the file contained its editing history. Choi determined that Pages does not transmit the editing history of a file when the file is shared via email, but that the editing history would be available on the hard drive of the computer used to write the exam. In light of this, approximately 90 minutes after Rignol had left the hearing, Tsung called Rignol to ask that he return with his laptop. Rignol responded that he was unavailable to return to campus for a meeting, but suggested he could be available the following week. Choi then called Rignol multiple times to ask him to return but Rignol did not answer his phone. Choi said that the Committee “concluded that [Rignol’s] refusal to return was another delay tactic.”
After some more back and forth,
[T]he Honor Committee determined that Rignol had violated examination rules by using AI. Choi says the Honor Committee relied on Rignol’s decision not to be forthcoming in reaching its decision that he used AI. In particular, “[t]he Honor Committee felt that [Rignol’s] refusal to provide the documents could only be explained by [Rignol] attempting to hide misconduct in light of the fact that the only alternative explanation [Rignol] had offered (regarding his use of Pages instead of Microsoft Word) was incredible.”
In addition, in concluding that Rignol used AI, the Honor Committee relied on the “strong similarities between [Rignol]’s response and the ChatGPT response to one of the Sourcing and Managing Funds exam questions.” Choi says that the Honor Committee did not rely on the ChatGPTZero scans produced by Rouwenhorst….
Thierry argued that Yale’s process was flawed in various ways, but the judge concluded that he couldn’t show irreparable harm, which the judge said was “the single most important prerequisite for the issuance of a preliminary injunction”:
A movant is entitled to a preliminary injunction only if they make a clear showing that they “will suffer an injury that is neither remote nor speculative, but actual and imminent, and one that cannot be remedied if a court waits until the end of trial to resolve the harm.” …
Rignol says that missing graduation and delaying his studies will lead him to forego the one-time opportunity to be recognized as class marshal, an honor afforded to the EMBA student with the highest grades in the first year core curriculum. He further asserts that the suspension will cause continuing harm for the rest of his career because he will forever be forced to explain why it took him three years instead of two to complete his EMBA. Rignol also fears that the disclosure of SOM’s disciplinary proceedings will damage his standing in the eyes of potential investors and among his peers at SOM. Additionally, Rignol submits that he will be prevented from pursuing any postgraduate studies at another institution for the duration of this litigation because no university will accept him based on his current academic record at SOM. Finally, Rignol says that the suspension could imperil his ability to remain in the United States on an investor visa….
Rignol has not carried his burden of establishing that a break in studies until the start of the next academic year (in fall 2025) and continuing to have an F on his transcript will cause him irreparable harm. At the outset, I note that the Second Circuit has held that a delayed graduation alone does not constitute irreparable harm.
And although courts sometimes find that a break in studies contributing to a delay in graduation constitutes irreparable harm, they have done so based on extenuating circumstances not present here. For example, in Doe v. Middlebury College, the district court found that a one-year suspension constituted irreparable harm because it would result in the plaintiff losing a specific job he had been offered.
Similarly, in Doe v. University of Connecticut, the Court found that a two-year suspension would freeze the undergraduate plaintiff’s career in its most nascent stage and, by leaving a prominent gap on his CV, require the plaintiff to explain that he was prohibited from studying or working for an extended period because he had been found responsible for a sexual assault. The Court determined that such a suspension would “forever change the trajectory of [plaintiff’s] education and career.” In contrast, courts have not found irreparable harm when a suspended student is unable to identify specific career prospects or educational plans that would be forfeited by serving a suspension.
Rignol has not demonstrated that his career will be irreparably marked by continuing to serve the suspension. Rignol’s attorneys describe him as “a successful businessman.” Unlike the suspended undergraduate students in Doe v. Middlebury and Doe v. UConn, Rignol is vastly more established in his career and can continue working in his field of choice without interruption while suspended. Indeed, Rignol failed to identify a single concrete opportunity that he would forfeit absent preliminary injunctive relief.
I am also not convinced that any gap in studies that Rignol chooses to disclose on his resume will cause irreparable harm. Continuing to serve the suspension does not prevent Rignol from listing merely his year of graduation rather than the number of years he took to earn a degree. And to the extent the suspension diminishes Rignol’s earnings, those lost earnings can be quantified and remedied with money damages after a final determination of the merits of the case.
Furthermore, I reject Rignol’s assertion that a preliminary injunction is necessary to prevent the damage to his professional reputation he says would occur if investors, business associates, or classmates realized that SOM determined he violated examination rules. A preliminary injunction is not an exoneration, and it would not remedy the fact that this lawsuit describing Rignol’s disciplinary record is public record….
Rignol says his aspirations to pursue graduate studies at another institution will be frustrated during the pendency of this litigation because no institution will accept an applicant whose transcript discloses academic misconduct. Here again Rignol errs in assuming that if he were granted a preliminary injunction it necessarily follows that graduate schools would not learn of the disciplinary proceedings described in these public filings. Nor has Rignol articulated any concrete or immediate plan to pursue graduate studies. Thus, the harms to his aspirations of postgraduate studies are too speculative to entitle Rignol to a preliminary injunction.
Similarly, while Rignol asserts that the suspension will undermine valuable relationships he has cultivated with his classmates in the EMBA class of 2025 and cause him to forfeit the one-time honor of serving as class marshal at graduation, I find that those harms—which broadly assert that SOM has diminished the value of Rignol’s degree—are compensable with money damages.
Finally, Rignol asserts that, “with immigration policies constantly shifting,” the investor visa that entitles him to live and work in the United States could be revoked if immigration officials learned that Rignol took three years to complete a two-year course of study because of a finding of academic misconduct. I agree with Defendants that any immigration consequences of Rignol’s suspension are too speculative to entitle him to a preliminary injunction.
The lawsuit has publicly disclosed Rignol’s disciplinary record. A preliminary injunction requiring Defendants to accommodate Rignol’s graduation this spring would not exonerate Rignol nor prevent public disclosure of his discipline.
{At oral argument, Defendants further asserted that, should Rignol return to SOM following his suspension, he is eligible to compete with members of the class of 2026 for the honor of being class marshal. This further supports my finding that forfeiting the honor of being class marshal at graduation in spring 2025 is not an irreparable harm. Moreover, Rignol’s claim that he would be class marshal if I were to order Defendants to reinstate him and remove the F grade for the Sourcing and Managing Funds course is speculative. The class marshal honor is awarded based on grades received for certain first year classes, including Sourcing and Managing Funds. I do not know what grade Rignol would receive in the course were his exam to be graded by his professors, and thus do not know whether Rignol would indeed be entitled to the class marshal honor should he otherwise manage to satisfy the requirements for graduation.} …
{As I conclude … that Rignol has not carried his burden with respect to the irreparable harm requirement, I do not consider the merits of Rignol’s claims ….}
Brendan Gooley and James M. Sconzo represent the Yale defendants.
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