MEMORANDUM DECISION and ORDER I. INTRODUCTION On January 18, 2018, plaintiff Jeffrey Chery (“Chery” or “plaintiff”) filed this putative class action against defendants Conduent Education Services, LLC, formerly known as ACS (“ACS”), Access Group, Inc. (“Access Group”), and Access Funding 2015-1, LLC (“Access Funding”), a group of entities that hold or service certain federal student loans. Chery’s amended complaint alleges that ACS, Access Group, and Access Funding (collectively “Conduent” or “defendants”) interfered with his right to pre-pay or consolidate his student loans in accordance with certain guarantees set out in federal law. The operative complaint asserts six claims: (1) a violation of New York General Business Law §349; (2) a breach of contract; (3) a breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing; (4) a request for a declaratory judgment; (5) negligence; and (6) unjust enrichment. Dkt. No. 19. On April 24, 2018, Conduent moved to dismiss Chery’s complaint. Dkt. No. 20. That motion was denied. Chery v. Conduent Educ. Servs., LLC, 2019 WL 1427140 (N.D.N.Y. Mar. 29, 2019). Thereafter, the parties engaged in some contested discovery before the assigned magistrate judge. Dkt. No. 60. On January 15, 2021, Chery moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure (“Rule”) 23 seeking to certify a class of student loan borrowers whose right to prepay their Federal Family Education Loan Program (“FFELP”) student loans was thwarted because Conduent failed to provide a Loan Verification Certificate (“LVC”) within ten days of the borrower’s filing of a Federal Direct Consolidation Loan Application (the “Class”). Dkt. No. 79. The motion has been fully briefed and will be considered on the basis of the submissions without oral argument. II. BACKGROUND Chery is a Virginia resident who took out nine FFELP student loans while he lived in Queens, New York. Am. Compl. 12. ACS, a Delaware company that maintains an office in Utica, New York, initially serviced plaintiff’s loans. Id.
12-13. Access Group, a Delaware corporation registered to do business in New York, owned seven of plaintiff’s loans, and Access Funding, another Delaware company, owned the other two. Id. 14-15. Chery’s FFELP loans were governed by a Master Promissory Note (“MPN”), which included a form disclosure statement (“Disclosure Statement”). As relevant here, the MPN and Disclosure Statement (collectively the “Contract”) together provided that (a) a borrower may prepay all or any part of the unpaid balance on their loans at any time without penalty; (b) the loan is subject to the Higher Education Act of 1965 and applicable U.S. Department of Education regulations; and (c) repayment obligations are interpreted according to applicable federal law and regulations, applicable state law and regulations governing the FFELP program, and the terms of the MPN. See Exs. E and F to Kuehn Decl., Dkt. Nos. 79-8, 79-9. On February 4, 2016, Chery submitted a Federal Direct Consolidation Loan Application to FedLoan Servicing (“FedLoan”), an entity that services federal student loans for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program (“PSLF”). Am. Compl.
