United States Court of Appeals For the First Circuit No 03 2502 JOSEPH RODI Plaintiff Appellant v SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL OF LAW ET AL Defendants Appellees APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF MASSACHUSETTS Hon Nancy Gertner U S District Judge Before Torruella Selya and Howard Circuit Judges Fredric J Gross and Fredric J Gross Law Firm on brief for appellant Allen N David Elizabeth A Houlding and Peabody Arnold LLP on brief for appellees November 10 2004 SELYA Circuit Judge This is an appeal from a terse and uninformative order dismissing a nine count civil complaint for failure to state a claim upon which relief might be granted Because it is impossible to tell what arguments the district court found persuasive we have canvassed the field We conclude that the complaint states one potentially actionable claim and another that is not beyond hope of repair Consequently we reverse the order of dismissal in part and remand for further proceedings I BACKGROUND Because this is an appeal from an order under Fed R Civ P 12 b 6 we take the facts as they are alleged in the plaintiff s complaint 1 SEC v SG Ltd 265 F 3d 42 44 1st Cir 2001 LaChapelle v Berkshire Life Ins Co 142 F 3d 507 508 1st Cir 1998 We ignore however bald assertions periphrastic circumlocutions unsubstantiated conclusions and outright vituperation Correa Martinez v Arrillaga Belendez 903 F 2d 49 52 1st Cir 1990 Once the scene is set we recount the travel of the case A The Facts In July of 1997 plaintiff appellant Joseph Rodi a would be law student who resided 1 in New Jersey received a Although the parties submitted affidavits in the district court we eschew any reliance on the factual averments contained therein with a few exceptions that we elucidate below We explain why in Part II A infra 2 recruitment letter from Francis J Larkin dean of Southern New England School of Law SNESL The letter stated in pertinent part that the accreditation committee of the American Bar Association ABA had voted to recommend SNESL for provisional accreditation a status that would be granted upon recommendation by two other ABA bodies that SNESL was highly confident ratification of the The letter also stated of receiving the needed ratifications and that the future of the school has never been brighter Because the plaintiff intended to take the New Jersey bar examination the prospect of accreditation was critically important to him New Jersey requires bar applicants to hold law degrees from ABA accredited institutions Larkin s letter ended with a pitch for enrollment The solicitation bore fruit the plaintiff enrolled at SNESL that month He received a catalogue from SNESL containing inter alia a statement in the same type size and font as the surrounding text to the effect that The Law School makes no representation to any applicant or student that it will be approved by the American Bar Association matriculating student prior to the graduation of any The complaint alleges that despite the cheery optimism of Larkin s letter the dean knew full well that SNESL had identifiable deficiencies that would almost certainly preclude ABA accreditation 3 The ABA denied SNESL s application for accreditation in September of 1997 As a result the plaintiff considered transferring to an accredited law school for his second year of study Word of his ambivalence reached the dean s office David M Prentiss who was then the acting dean wrote to the plaintiff in order to make sure that he was fully informed of the school s current status regarding ABA accreditation That communique stated in substance that the school had improved the four areas found deficient by the ABA and that there should be no cause for pessimism about the school achieving accreditation before the plaintiff s forecasted graduation date In reliance on these and other representations all of which the complaint says were knowingly false the plaintiff remained at SNESL He came to regret the choice according to the complaint SNESL knew but elected not to disclose that the ABA was highly critical of SNESL that any faint hope of attaining accreditation depended upon a complete overhaul of the faculty administration curriculum and student body and that the level of non compliance made the prospect of SNESL s near term accreditation remote To compound students attempts to this learn mendacity about the the school true frustrated status of the accreditation pavane In November of 1999 during the plaintiff s third year of legal studies the ABA denied SNESL s renewed application for 4 accreditation SNESL failed to appeal to the ABA s House of Delegates as it previously had promised Instead the school cashiered half of its full time faculty thereby straying even further from ABA mandated standards The plaintiff completed his studies in June of 2000 SNESL remained unaccredited Notwithstanding his diploma the plaintiff to has not been able sit for the New Jersey bar examination B Travel of the Case On July 18 2002 the plaintiff sued SNESL Larkin and Prentiss in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey The district court dismissed that action for want of in personam jurisdiction on April 10 2003 Rodi v S New Engl Sch of Law 255 F Supp 2d 346 351 D N J 2003 On June 9 2003 the plaintiff acting pro se sued the same defendants in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts Grounding jurisdiction in diversity of citizenship and the existence of a controversy in the requisite amount 28 U S C 1332 a his complaint incorporated copies of the Larkin and Prentiss letters and limned nine statements of claim We confine our discussion to the two claims that the plaintiff presses on appeal i that the defendants statements constituted actionable fraud or misrepresentation and ii that SNESL s actions violated a consumer protection statute Mass Gen 5 Laws ch 93A 1 11 The defendants filed a timely motion to dismiss positing that the complaint for a variety of reasons failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted As to the fraudulent misrepresentation count the defendants asseverated that the misrepresentations were non actionable statements of opinion that the supposed fraud had not been alleged with the requisite particularity that in all events the plaintiff s professed reliance on those statements was unreasonable and that the statute of limitations had run With respect to the Chapter 93A count the defendants averred that the
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