Davis v. Baylor University

• Decision Date: 30 June 1998
• Docket Number: No. WD,WD
• Citation: 976 S.W.2d 5
• Parties: 129 Ed. Law Rep. 864 Tyrone A. DAVIS, Jr., Appellant, v. BAYLOR UNIVERSITY, et al., Respondents. 53919.
• Court: Missouri Court of Appeals

Page 5

976 S.W.2d 5

129 Ed. Law Rep. 864

Tyrone A. DAVIS, Jr., Appellant, v. BAYLOR UNIVERSITY, et al., Respondents.

No. WD 53919.

Missouri Court of Appeals Western District.

June 30, 1998.

As Modified Sept. 22, 1998.

Motion for Rehearing and/or Transfer to

Supreme Court Denied Sept. 22, 1998.

Scott W. Mach, Kansas City, for Appellant.

Joel K. Goldman, Joseph H. Knittig, Teresa A. Reinking, Kansas City, for Respondents.

Before ULRICH, C.J., P.J., and HOWARD and RIEDERER, JJ.

HOWARD, Judge.

Tyrone A. Davis, Jr. appeals from an order of the trial court dismissing his petition for lack of personal jurisdiction. Davis contends that the trial court erred by holding he had failed to demonstrate that the defendants had sufficient minimum contacts with the State of Missouri.

Reversed and remanded.

Davis brought an action against Baylor University, located in Waco, Texas, and against a number of its employees, alleging tortious conduct in connection with their efforts to ensure that he would play for Baylor's basketball team. In 1992, Davis was a student at State Fair Junior College in Sedalia, Missouri, where his performance as a basketball player attracted the attention of Baylor's coaching staff. During the summer of 1992, several members of Baylor's coaching staff began efforts to recruit Davis, and these efforts included written correspondence, dozens of telephone calls, and numerous personal visits with Davis. Defendant Kevin Gray, an assistant coach at Baylor, made as many as seven trips into Missouri to recruit Davis; defendant Darrel Johnson, another assistant coach, made three such trips into the state. In November of 1992, Davis signed a National Letter of Intent to play basketball at Baylor.

When Davis left State Fair Community College in the spring of 1993, he was thirteen credit hours short of the amount he needed to be eligible to play intercollegiate basketball at Baylor. The Baylor coaching staff arranged for Davis to make up this deficiency by taking four hours of correspondence courses from State Fair Community College and nine hours of correspondence courses from the Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God ("SECAG"), which was a school in Florida.

Davis enrolled in and completed the SECAG courses while living and working in Waco, Texas during the summer of 1993. To ensure that Davis passed the final examinations which were part of the SECAG correspondence courses, someone from Baylor altered a number of Davis' written answers and submitted the doctored responses to SECAG. This misconduct, which also occurred in Waco, Texas, came to light as part of a larger pattern of improprieties committed by members of the men's basketball coaching staff. A number of investigations ensued, and Davis was barred from playing the entire 1993-1994 season while the basketball program was scrutinized.

Ultimately, three members of the coaching staff were tried on charges of conspiracy, wire fraud, and mail fraud, and were convicted. Davis himself transferred to Kansas State University, where he completed his senior year as the starting center for the basketball team. After graduating, he went on to play professional basketball in Japan.

Davis brought an action against Baylor and a number of its employees, and his original and amended petitions set out the following causes of action: Count I, tortious interference with his prospective business opportunities in college and professional basketball; Count II, tortious interference with his contractual or business relationship with Baylor University; Count III, outrageous conduct; Count IV, false light defamation; Count V, fraud; Count VI, negligent hiring by Baylor of the various individual defendants; Count VII, negligent supervision by Baylor of the various individual defendants; Count VIII, violation of Missouri's Consumer Protection Act; Count IX, violation of Texas' Consumer Protection Act; Count X, civil conspiracy; and Count XI, breach of contract. Davis alleged that, because of the tortious conduct of the defendants, he was forced to miss a season of intercollegiate competition, and his opportunities for a lucrative career in professional basketball were reduced. He also alleged that the tortious conduct of the defendants caused him to relocate himself and his family, and associated his name with a major scandal, causing him stress and fear of further repercussions.

The defendants filed motions to dismiss Davis' petition for lack of personal jurisdiction pursuant to Rule 55.27(a)(2). The motions were sustained by the trial court, which determined that "although the acts of recruitment of plaintiff by defendant's staff persons and the execution of a national letter of intent to play collegiate basketball may be considered transaction of business within the State of Missouri, the plaintiff has failed to demonstrate that defendants have or had sufficient minimum contacts with Missouri to invoke personal jurisdiction over defendants."

In his sole point on appeal, Davis claims that the trial court erred by sustaining the defendants' motions to dismiss on the ground that Davis had not demonstrated sufficient minimum contacts with Missouri to subject the defendants to personal jurisdiction. We note that, although the trial court did not state that its dismissal was with prejudice, nevertheless the trial court's decision effectively precludes Davis from refiling his claim in Missouri, and therefore it is an appealable judgment. Chromalloy American v. Elyria Found., 955 S.W.2d 1, 3-4 (Mo. banc 1997).

International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316, 66 S.Ct. 154, 158, 90 L.Ed. 95 (1945) establishes that, for personal jurisdiction to exist, due process requires a defendant to have certain minimum contacts with the forum such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice. United Mo. Bank of Kansas City v. Bank of New York, 723 F.Supp. 408, 410 (W.D.Mo.1989). Minimum contacts may give rise to either "general" or "specific" jurisdiction. Id. When a state exercises jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant in a suit "arising out of or related to" the defendant's contacts with the forum, the state is exercising specific jurisdiction over the defendant. Id. When, on the other hand, a state exercises personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant in a suit not arising out of or related to the defendant's contacts with the forum, the state is exercising general jurisdiction over the defendant. General personal jurisdiction requires that a nonresident defendant's contacts with the forum state be "substantial and continuous." Id. Because more substantial contacts must be shown to establish general personal jurisdiction, courts rarely find that an out-of-state defendant's contacts are sufficient to invoke such jurisdiction, so the great majority of cases focus on claims of specific jurisdiction. See generally Note, Specific Personal Jurisdiction and the "Arise from or Relate to" Requirement: What Does It Mean? 50 Wash & Lee L.Rev. 1265, 1269 (1993).

In Missouri, the issue of minimum contacts is incorporated into a two-part test which a plaintiff must satisfy in order to establish personal jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant. First, the cause of action must arise out of acts enumerated in the long-arm statute, § 506.500, RSMo 1994. Second, the defendant must have minimum sufficient contacts with Missouri so that the exercise of personal jurisdiction would not violate due process. In re Estate of Halverson, 840 S.W.2d 280, 282 (Mo.App. W.D.1992). Because of the long-arm statute's requirement that the cause of action must "arise out of" the defendant's contacts with Missouri, federal courts applying § 506.500 have concluded that the statute prohibits the assertion of general jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant. See e.g. United Mo. Bank, 723 F.Supp. at 410-411.

Whether § 506.500 allows for general personal jurisdiction is not relevant in this case, as Davis seeks jurisdiction on the grounds of specific jurisdiction. The parties disagree as to whether Davis' various causes of action "arise from or relate to" Baylor's contacts with the forum state. Davis argues that at the heart of this case is the fact that Baylor came to Missouri to recruit him, and if Baylor had not initiated such contact with him in Missouri, none of the events giving rise to his cause of action would have occurred. Baylor, on the other hand, argues that the heart of this case is the misconduct in Texas involving the SECAG correspondence course, and that this activity is entirely unrelated to the Missouri contacts.

The parties' disagreement in this case reflects the disagreement nationwide over the "arise from or relate to," requirement, which has never been clarified by the U.S. Supreme Court. The interpretation of this phrase has differed from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To date, the courts have applied two general theories of interpretation for the "arise from or relate to" requirement: (1) the "but for" test, and (2) the proximate cause/substantive relevance test. See Note, supra, 50 Wash. & Lee L.Rev. at 1276-77. In our case, Davis advocates the "but for" test, while Baylor has adopted the proximate cause/substantive relevance test.

The "but for" test provides that, in determining whether a forum can exercise personal jurisdiction over a defendant, the contact in question must be a "but for" cause of the plaintiff's injury. Rose, Related Contacts and Personal Jurisdiction: The "But For" Test, 82 Cal. L.Rev. 1545, 1568 (1994). In such a test, personal jurisdiction is proper if the plaintiff can trace the chain of events leading up to the cause of action and find that the defendant's contact is a link in this chain. On the contrary, the proximate cause/substantive relevance test asks whether the facts constituting the defendant's contacts in the forum state are relevant to the proof of the elements of...