Late last month, the presiding San Francisco Superior Court judge extended an order that blocks approximately $3.5 million in new fees for some students enrolled in the University of California’s professional schools, protracting a nearly three-year-long legal saga.

If the legal proceedings continue next year, the legal injunction that was first instituted last August will have cost the university more than $22 million in lost revenue.

The extended injunction covers approximately 3,100 current students attending a UC professional school, like those that award law and medical degrees, according to UC Office of the President spokeswoman Ravi Poorsina. At UCSD, it will affect approximately 120 medical and pharmacy seniors who were enrolled in the university in December 2002, when the class action lawsuit was first filed.

“Their professional degree fees cannot be raised above the amount that they were charged in [2003-04],” said Andrew Freeman, a partner at the Baltimore-based law firm representing the students. “The larger piece of the case is that the university promised professional degree students that their fee would remain the same through their years [of instruction]. It’s a promise that they had made for years and continued to make.”

In their 2002 filing, the students pointed to the university’s promotional material that suggested that their fees would stay flat during their entire period of study, a statement they claim constituted a binding contract. However, the university has maintained that the notices in the catalog were old and that updated statements on the UC Web site at the time waived the fee guarantees.

Last summer, San Francisco Superior Court Judge James L. Warren ruled that the students “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success” in the case and issued an order that prevented the university from instituting increases of about $5,000 for each of the professional students included in the class action. Though both parties at the time predicted that the case would be adjudicated by the spring, disagreement over technicalities have pushed the expected ruling date to late summer.

If the case drags on past then, the April extension will ensure that the affected students will not face fee increases already approved and those currently under consideration by the UC Board of Regents for next year.

“You can never tell with the courts how long these things are going to take,” said Mo Kashmiri, a former student at UC Berkeley’s Boalt School of Law who was the first plaintiff to sign on to the suit. “We’re not really in a hurry because we have an injunction.”

Kashmiri now works as an organizer for the UC Student Association.

However, for students who continue their studies next year, the most recent legal action may not necessarily offer them protection from higher fees.

In response to the case, university administrators have asked the regents to sidestep the court’s order by approving new fees at their meeting later this month. Though the injunction covers “professional fees” — a surcharge that applies to UC graduate schools focusing on career specialties — the university has proposed raising the general tuition, or “education fee,” which is not covered by the order.

The $1,050 increase would apply to all students at the university’s professional schools — even those not covered by the injunction — and recoup most of the lost revenue over the next two years. University administrators have urged the regents to approve the new fees regardless of the ruling in the case.

“Even if the university ultimately prevails in the litigation … at the end of this current term, the majority of the students who have benefited from the injunction prohibiting collection of fee increases for 2004-05 and 2005-06 will have graduated, and it will be very difficult to collect the revenue at a later date,” the Office of the President stated in documents prepared for the May Board of Regents meeting. “Therefore, it is prudent to consider an action at this time that will address the estimated shortfall of $22.5 million in professional school fee revenue related to the injunction.”

Combined with recent state cuts, the lost revenue has caused faculty salaries at the professional schools to fall 10 percent behind those at similar institutions, and the university has been unable to provide adequate financial aid to the neediest students, the documents stated.

“This revenue is essential to maintaining the quality of the academic programs and student services, and to sustaining enrollment because professional school fee revenue … provides significant support to the base operating budgets of the professional schools,” the regents’ brief stated.

The university’s precarious financial position, which precipitated the original fee hikes at the heart of the case, has been caused by broader state reductions in higher education funding, according to David N. Bailey, the deputy dean of UCSD School of Medicine.

“Remember why we’re in a financial bind: In the governor’s budget that was approved, there was a 25-percent cut in funding for the professional schools,” Bailey said. “Basically, we’re running without state money.”

Should the students prevail, the university would have to repay more than $30 million in back fees for hikes instituted after fall 2002 but before the injunction came into effect last year.