Florida country club members sue WPI, want $900,000 back

Source: Telegram & Gazette

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A class action lawsuit filed in federal court alleges a donor to Worcester Polytechnic Institute arranged for a Florida country club to pay the university $300,000 a year without the members’ knowledge.

The complaint, brought by members of the Legacy Golf and Tennis Club in Port St. Lucie, Florida, argues that WPI should have to pay back the $900,000 it has allegedly received since 2016 as a result of that arrangement, which the plaintiffs say violates the club’s original articles of incorporation.

The lawsuit is the second federal case filed in three years against WPI involving Robert Foisie, a wealthy alumnus of the university and its most generous individual donor. In 2017, Foisie’s ex-wife, Janet Foisie, claimed he had concealed $4.5 million from her during their divorce that he later gifted to WPI.

Janet Foisie, who is seeking the return of that money from WPI, is pursuing her claims in federal appeals court, after the U.S. District Court in Worcester dismissed her complaint in September; oral arguments in the case were held last week.

In the newest complaint, filed in Florida Southern District Court on Wednesday, the Legacy Club members say Foisie, who passed away in 2018, was the majority shareholder of the private corporation that owned the club. They allege Foisie began having the club pay the $300,000 per year to WPI starting in 2016, but he didn’t inform members of the agreement until a year later, in 2017.

He eventually transferred full ownership of the club to WPI as well, the complaint says.

The suit also accuses of Foisie of stopping new tennis memberships at the club, thereby making it “impossible” for the members to fulfill a turnover provision allowing them to acquire the organization upon selling enough memberships. WPI has also tried to sell the club without regard for that provision, the complaint says.

“This is really, at the most elementary level, a contractual dispute,” said Elaine Johnson James, the attorney representing the plaintiffs. In addition to seeking to get back the money the club has already paid to WPI, she said, the suit is also attempting to give the members their right to buy back the club.

She said the agreement requiring the organization to pay WPI, and receive essentially nothing in return, is unheard of. “I’ve never seen a country club with an obligation to give hundreds of thousands of dollars to an educational institution,” she said.

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According to the complaint, the arrangement has “severely depleted the sums available to operate and make capital improvements to the Legacy Club.”

The lawsuit is representing around 350 club members.

A representative for WPI on Monday said the university had no comment on the lawsuit because it is pending litigation.

Foisie, who graduated from WPI in 1956 with a degree in mechanical engineering before building a career as a successful entrepreneur, pledged $40 million to the school in 2014, the largest single gift in the university’s history. WPI later named its newest dorm and academic building, completed in 2018, the Foisie Innovation Studio and Messenger Hall in his honor.

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Republished by the Law Office of Scott A. Ferris, P.A.