Goodman v. Bowdoin College

• Decision Date: 17 August 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-2338.,No. 02-2437.,02-2437.,03-2338.
• Citation: 380 F.3d 33
• Parties: George C.W. GOODMAN, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. BOWDOIN COLLEGE, et al., Defendants, Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

380 F.3d 33

George C.W. GOODMAN, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. BOWDOIN COLLEGE, et al., Defendants, Appellees.

No. 02-2437.

No. 03-2338.

United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.

Heard March 3, 2004.

Decided August 17, 2004.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maine, Gene Carter, J John J.E. Markham, III, with whom Markham & Read, Collette C. Goodman and Shea & Gardner, were on brief, for appellant.

James T. Kilbreth, with whom Jacqueline W. Rider and Verrill & Dana, LLP were on brief, for appellees.

Before HOWARD, Circuit Judge, CYR and STAHL, Senior Circuit Judges.

HOWARD, Circuit Judge.

In a case that began with a snowball and culminated in a seven-day jury trial, plaintiff George Goodman challenges the district court's rulings on two motions for judgment as a matter of law and contends that the jury instructions on his breach of contract claim were erroneous. He also appeals the district court's denial of his motion for relief from judgment pursuant to Fed.R.Civ.P. 60(b) on the basis of discovery misconduct. We affirm.

I. Factual and Procedural Background The March 19, 1999 Incident

Just after midnight on March 19, 1999, George Goodman, a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, threw a snowball at a passing student shuttle van on his way home from a party. The prank escalated into a verbal and physical confrontation with the driver of the van, a fellow Bowdoin student named Namsoo Lee. The specifics of the encounter were hotly disputed in the student disciplinary proceedings that followed, and remain in dispute today. It was uncontested, however, that Lee followed a retreating Goodman and put his hand on Goodman's shoulder to confront him. It was also established that Goodman struck Lee in the face several times, breaking his nose and causing extensive bleeding and bruising. Ultimately Goodman was dismissed from the school.

Goodman subsequently brought suit in federal court alleging, inter alia, that the school and some of its administrators had discriminated against him on the basis of his race and had breached an agreement to (1) provide a fundamentally fair disciplinary process, and (2) comply with their own established procedures. The discrimination claims never reached the jury — the district court entered judgment as a matter of law in favor of Bowdoin at the close of Goodman's evidence. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 50(a). We therefore summarize the facts relevant to those claims in the light most favorable to Goodman as the nonmovant. Mangla v. Brown Univ., 135 F.3d 80, 82 (1st Cir.1998).

As Goodman described it, while walking home with a friend, Jason Olbres, he threw a snowball at a student shuttle van. The driver, Lee, reacted angrily after Goodman threw a second snowball, threatening to run Goodman over with the van and backing the van onto the sidewalk toward him. Goodman began to walk away and told Lee to leave him alone, but Lee followed him on foot, turning him around and punching him in the face. Goodman responded by punching Lee in the face several times, at one point stopping to take off his new watch and throw it to Olbres so that Goodman would not break it or hit Lee with it. Goodman's fleece jacket was torn down the front during the scuffle. Lee returned to the shuttle van to call for help and Goodman returned to his fraternity house, where he later called campus security to report that he had been assaulted by the shuttle driver. A campus security officer, Kevin Conner, took Goodman's written statement that night and told Goodman that his version of the story was consistent with what Lee had told two Brunswick police officers who had interviewed him at the hospital.

The next morning, Goodman contacted Sharon Turner, his advisor in the dean's office. Turner told Goodman that his statement and Lee's were at odds. This worried Goodman, who feared that the college might favor Lee because he was an employee and because Lee, a Korean national, was a student of color. Goodman believed — based on articles published in official school publications and announcements about events soliciting input on how to recruit more minority students — that the college was having problems attracting students of color. Goodman knew that a big recruiting weekend for minority students was coming up in a few weeks and feared that the college would not want to "get rid of" Lee with such an important event approaching.

The week following the incident was spring break for Bowdoin students. Lee, who had been treated at a local hospital immediately after the altercation, returned to Korea to receive further treatment for a nasal fracture. Goodman went home to suburban Washington, D.C., and was treated for injuries to his hand, including a torn ligament. Goodman and his mother, an attorney, called Mya Mangawang, an assistant dean of student affairs who was the advisor to the student judicial board (the "J-Board") that heard disciplinary cases. They told Mangawang that the case should not be treated as a routine student disciplinary proceeding because it involved a student employee. As Goodman testified at trial, he and his parents were concerned that the college would use the disciplinary proceedings to blame him and thus avoid liability for Lee's actions while acting as an employee of the college. Goodman hired counsel in Maine.

The Initiation of Disciplinary Proceedings

After spring break, Goodman and Lee were each charged with violations of the school's social code for conduct unbecoming of a Bowdoin student and behavior endangering the health and safety of others. Goodman met with Mangawang to review the charges. Mangawang discussed the students who would be available to serve on the five-person panel and told Goodman that he could remove one member. One potential panel member was Elizabeth Hustedt, a student who two years earlier had participated in a disciplinary hearing at which Goodman had been a witness. Mangawang reviewed with Goodman a letter that Hustedt and other members of the J-Board had written to Goodman soon after his testimony in the 1997 proceeding. The letter stated that the panel had concluded that Goodman, who had not been charged in that case, might have misrepresented the events that were the subject of the charges. The letter also stated that "the Judicial Board reserves the right to take this concern into consideration" if Goodman ever appeared before the J-Board again. Mangawang told Goodman that she had discussed the 1997 letter with Hustedt, who reported that she could still serve in connection with the Goodman hearing.¹ Goodman did not ask for Hustedt to be removed, opting instead to remove a student who, he said, had tried to start a fight earlier in the year with one of his close friends. A third J-Board member, Howard Spector, did not sit on the panel that heard Goodman's case. Goodman testified that Spector, who was an acquaintance of Goodman's and the roommate of Olbres (the eyewitness to the incident), told him that Mangawang had removed him from the panel.

In the week leading up to the J-Board hearing, Goodman visited Mangawang's office several times to review the evidence that would be considered at the hearing. Goodman did not see any reports from the Brunswick police in the file. This concerned him because, as far as he knew from Conner (the security officer who had taken his statement) Lee had told the police that the fight was his fault and that he did not want to press charges. Goodman, through his attorney, requested that the responding police officers prepare a report regarding the incident. On the morning of the hearing, Goodman brought the report to Mangawang to be included in his file. Mangawang accepted the statement but referred to it as something Goodman had "crafted."²

Goodman saw something else in his file that worried him. Conner's report described the shuttle van as having one of its front wheels on the curb on the night of the incident, not backed up over the sidewalk. Goodman asked Conner to discuss the incident report with him and Conner agreed to meet the next day as long as a dean or the head of security was present. The next morning, Goodman asked Mangawang if he could meet Conner in her office and Mangawang said no.

During this period, Goodman's parents called the college to express their concern over the use of student disciplinary proceedings to adjudicate a matter involving an employee of the college. Goodman's counsel also wrote to counsel for the college, asserting that Bowdoin was responsible for Goodman's medical bills for treatment of his injured hand and giving notice that Goodman intended to seek damages if the college conducted any proceedings that had an adverse effect on Goodman's tenure as a student. At trial, Goodman acknowledged that these communications were part of an effort to prevent the disciplinary proceedings from going forward. Goodman's father also testified that he believed the college was so concerned about liability for Goodman's injuries that it would have created a proceeding to frame his son.

Testimony at the J-Board Hearings

The J-Board heard the cases against Goodman and Lee on the evening of April 13, 1999. Each student was permitted to have a dean or faculty member present for support. Goodman had selected Turner, who was already assigned to him as an advisor.³ The board heard Goodman's case first, with witnesses appearing and testifying over a period of six or seven hours. Robert Graves, the director of residential life, was assigned to act as a "complainant" on Lee's behalf, and questioned Goodman in a hostile manner. At the close of Goodman's hearing, Graves made a closing argument in favor of finding Goodman responsible.

Goodman's hearing concluded just after midnight and Lee's began immediately thereafter. Karen Tilbor, an assistant dean of student affairs, was the complainant against Lee. Tilbor arrived at the beginning of Lee's hearing and, because most of the...