A U.S. District Court in New York yesterday ordered The Princeton Review to paste stickers over misleading statements on the covers of thousands of the test preparation books the company sells to high school and college students.
In settling the lawsuit brought by its leading competitor -- the Kaplan Education Centers -- The Princeton Review agreed to send stickers to bookstores and software distributors to cover up false claims on the 1998 edition of the book Cracking the GMAT CAT and the computer software Inside the SAT and ACT Deluxe.
Kaplan also asked for the recall of the two products as well as compensation from The Princeton Review in monetary damages -- the court granted neither concession.
The court also found no fault or liability by The Princeton Review.
The Princeton Review said the misleading statements are accidental, and the lawsuit is an attempt by Kaplan to damage the company's image.
"This is one of the goofiest lawsuits," said Princeton Review spokesman Paul Cohen. "We outsell Kaplan significantly, and what better way to stop us than to make us sound deceitful?"
The cover of The Princeton Review's book Cracking the GMAT CAT claims the enclosed CD-ROM includes four complete computer adaptive tests when, in reality, the book contains only one.
The box of the computer program Inside the SAT and ACT Deluxe claims two new special features -- video feedback that tracks the test taker's progress and the ability to print a list of the 300 most commonly used words on the SATs. Neither feature is included.
"It was an oversight with the copy-editing," Cohen said. "There really was no intent to deceive."
But Kaplan maintains that the statements are intentionally misleading.
"These were clearly not innocent mistakes," Kaplan's Chief Operating Officer Andy Rosen said in a statement.
"Although Princeton Review says they noticed the misstatements long before we contacted them, they continued to ship products with the false information," Rosen said.
President and founder of The Princeton Review John Katzman said in a statement, "Having spent tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, Kaplan won nothing but my complete disdain, which it had earned long ago."
