The Commonwealth School, founded in 1957, is a tony private institution in Boston. With a yearly tuition of $40,000, it typically sends students off to MIT and Ivy League universities.
The Commonwealth Academy, founded in 2011, is a small private school 90-miles away in Springfield, MA. With a yearly tuition of under $1,200, it typically does not see students attend the elite educational colleges of America.
This hasn't stopped the School from filing a $2 million lawsuit against the Academy claiming "irreparable harm" and financial loss that is "presently incalculable" has occurred. Why? Because both facilities use the word "Commonwealth" in their name.
While the School claims they didn't even know the Academy existed until 2015, School headmaster William Wharton tells the Boston Globe that the word is "a part of our identity, and it’s something that we ultimately have to protect." Nothing like stopping confusion among things by creating confusion in the first place.
One major sticking point is that Massachusetts officially goes by the title of Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (As do Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.) With both institutions located in the same state, and thousands of different locations and buildings in the state all labeled with the word, it's a tricky argument by the School.
Then there's one other minor issue, if this isn't already too much commonwealth for you to handle in one sitting: There's already a separate Commonwealth Academy, located in Virginia, who says they're perfectly content with the similarly named school in Massachusetts.
A hearing on the matter is expected to be held on July 12th.
In the meantime, no common sense or common good can apparently come from "Commonwealth."
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