Neiman v. Yale University

• Decision Date: 20 July 2004
• Docket Number: (SC 16961).
• Citation: 851 A.2d 1165,270 Conn. 244
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: SUSAN NEIMAN, v. YALE UNIVERSITY.

270 Conn. 244

851 A.2d 1165

SUSAN NEIMAN, v. YALE UNIVERSITY.

(SC 16961).

Supreme Court of Connecticut.

Argued April 14, 2004.

Officially released July 20, 2004.

Sullivan, C. J., and Borden, Katz, Vertefeuille and Zarella, Js.

Jacques J. Parenteau, for the appellant (plaintiff).

Aaron S. Bayer, with whom was Kim E. Rinehart, for the appellee (defendant).

Jonathan L. Gould and Gary E. Phelan filed a brief for the Connecticut Employment Lawyers Association as amicus curiae.

Felix J. Springer and Jennifer L. Sachs filed a brief for the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges as amicus curiae.

Opinion

SULLIVAN, C. J.

The plaintiff, Susan Neiman, brought this action against her former employer, the defendant, Yale University (Yale), alleging breach of contract, breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing and negligent misrepresentation arising out of Yale's failure to offer her a tenured appointment to its faculty. The trial court granted Yale's motion to dismiss the plaintiff's claims because the plaintiff had not exhausted Yale's internal grievance procedures before filing her action. The plaintiff appealed to the Appellate Court from the judgment of dismissal, and we transferred the appeal to this court pursuant to General Statutes § 51-199 (c) and Practice Book § 65-1. We affirm the judgment of the trial court.

The plaintiff alleges the following facts that are relevant to our resolution of her claims. In the spring of 1988, Yale offered the plaintiff a position as an assistant professor in its philosophy department. At that time, she received a copy of the 1986 edition of Yale's faculty handbook. Her initial appointment as an assistant professor commenced January 1, 1989, and ended June 30, 1992. During 1990, Yale placed its philosophy department into academic receivership, which led to increased external supervision of the employment decisions in that department. In 1992, the plaintiff accepted a renewal of her appointment as an assistant professor for an additional five year term. In 1993, Robert Adams was appointed chairman of the philosophy department and the plaintiff was promoted to associate professor, without tenure. In addition, Yale issued a new 1993 edition of the faculty handbook.

In 1994, Adams instituted a policy in which advanced junior faculty members could ask to be considered for tenure within two years. Pursuant to the new policy, the plaintiff requested that Yale consider her for a tenured position in the department. Under the terms of the receivership, an advisory committee was charged with making appointments to the philosophy department faculty under the aegis of the provost of the university, Alison Richard. The advisory committee consisted of Adams and other faculty members from the school of arts and sciences, who were not in the philosophy department. The advisory committee rejected the plaintiff's request to be considered for tenure.

In April, 1995, the plaintiff received an offer from the University of Potsdam in Germany for a tenured position as a full professor in her area of specialty, the study of Immanuel Kant. The plaintiff told Adams of the offer and again requested that she be considered for a tenured position at Yale. Adams indicated that he was opposed to her being considered for tenure, but agreed to inform the advisory committee of her request.

After some time had passed and the plaintiff had not received a response to her renewed request to be considered for tenure, she learned that Adams had not told the advisory committee of her offer at the University of Potsdam nor of her request to be considered for tenure. At that point, she went to both the vice-provost and to Richard and voiced her concerns that the process had been unfair and that Adams was biased against her.

Richard convened a meeting of the advisory committee and initiated the procedures for considering an applicant for a tenured position. In accordance with handbook procedures, the committee conducted a nationwide search to find the best candidate for the area of philosophy in which the plaintiff specialized. A "short list" of five candidates was developed. Each was asked to come and lecture at Yale. After viewing the lectures, four members of the philosophy department, including Adams, met and expressed their preference for an offer of tenure. The decision was split, with two in favor of the plaintiff and two, including Adams, opposed to offering the plaintiff tenure in favor of another candidate.

In an attempt to resolve the impasse, Richard offered to fund two tenured positions for Kant scholars in the philosophy department instead of one, so that both the plaintiff and the other candidate could be offered tenured positions. Jonathan Lear, a tenured philosophy professor, suggested an external committee of philosophy experts from outside Yale make the decision. Adams rejected both proposals.

Under the terms of the receivership, final tenure decisions were voted on by the advisory committee with the addition of the senior members of the philosophy department. On January 22, 1996, Richard informed the plaintiff that this body had voted by a narrow margin not to offer her a tenured position. The plaintiff believed that her application had been rejected because the persons on the advisory committee who were not members of the philosophy department improperly deferred to Adams' judgment. Although the plaintiff had two years of untenured employment remaining at Yale, she accepted employment elsewhere and left before her term expired. She did not challenge the final tenure decision through the grievance process contained in the 1993 edition of the faculty handbook.

Thereafter, in 1997, the plaintiff brought this action against Yale for damages allegedly sustained as the result of Yale's failure to offer her a tenured appointment. The complaint alleged breach of contract (count one), breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing (count two) and negligent misrepresentation (count three). The defendant filed a motion to dismiss all three counts on the ground that the trial court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the action because the plaintiff had failed to exhaust the remedies available to her at Yale, namely, the internal grievance procedure provided for by the faculty handbook.¹ Initially, the trial court granted the defendant's motion to dismiss with respect to the first two counts only. After granting Yale's motion to reargue, however, the trial court granted Yale's motion to dismiss the third count for negligent misrepresentation because it was inextricably entangled with the denial of tenure, which the plaintiff had failed to challenge internally before seeking relief from the court.

The plaintiff claims on appeal that the court improperly dismissed her complaint because: (1) the court improperly usurped the fact-finding role of the jury in determining that the faculty handbook constituted the terms of the employment agreement between the parties; (2) even if the trial court properly determined that the faculty handbook constituted a contract, Yale repudiated the contract; (3) the plaintiff substantially complied with the internal grievance procedures; (4) the exhaustion of remedies doctrine does not apply to the faculty handbook; and (5) it would have been futile for the plaintiff to utilize the internal grievance procedures.

"As a preliminary matter, we set forth the applicable standard of review. The standard of review of a motion to dismiss is . . . well established. In ruling upon whether a complaint survives a motion to dismiss, a court must take the facts to be those alleged in the complaint, including those facts necessarily implied from the allegations, construing them in a manner most favorable to the pleader. . . . A motion to dismiss tests, inter alia, whether, on the face of the record, the court is without jurisdiction. . . . Because the exhaustion [of administrative remedies] doctrine implicates subject matter jurisdiction, [the court] must decide as a threshold matter whether that doctrine requires dismissal of the [plaintiff's] claim. . . . [B]ecause [a] determination regarding a trial court's subject matter jurisdiction is a question of law, our review is plenary." (Internal quotation marks omitted.) Brookridge District Assn. v. Planning & Zoning Commission, 259 Conn. 607, 610-11, 793 A.2d 215 (2002).

Before considering whether the exhaustion of remedies doctrine applies, we entertain the plaintiff's contractual claims. We first address the plaintiff's claim that the trial court invaded the province of the jury by determining as a factual matter that the handbook constituted a contract. In support of this claim, the plaintiff points out that "whether [an employer's] personnel manual [gives] rise to an express contract between the parties [is] a question of fact properly to be determined by the jury." Finley v. Aetna Life & Casualty Co., 202 Conn. 190, 199, 520 A.2d 208 (1987), overruled on other grounds, Curry v. Burns, 225 Conn. 782, 786, 626 A.2d 719 (1993). She has not explained, however, how this claim can be reconciled with the allegations of her own complaint that "[t]he [h]andbook contained the terms and conditions of the plaintiffs employment at Yale," and that Yale has breached those terms and conditions. In other words, the plaintiff simultaneously claims that Yale is contractually bound by the provisions of the handbook and that the handbook does not constitute a contract. Under these circumstances, we conclude that the plaintiff was estopped from denying the existence of a contract and the trial court properly determined that a contract existed as a matter of law.

The plaintiff next claims that, even if the handbook constituted a contract, Yale repudiated the contract by breaching the provisions of the handbook when it placed the department in receivership and changed the process by which tenure...