Ramsden v. State of Ill.
| Decision Date | 07 August 1985 |
| Docket Number | No. 66749,66749 |
| Citation | 695 S.W.2d 457 |
| Parties | Mark RAMSDEN, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. STATE OF ILLINOIS, et al., Defendants-Appellants. |
| Court | Missouri Supreme Court |
Neil F. Hartigan, Atty. Gen., Patricia Rosen, Susan C. Weidel, Eugene P. Scharittgens, Jr., Asst. Attys. Gen., Chicago, Ill., for defendants-appellants.
Ted L. Perryman, St. Louis, for plaintiff-respondent.
Mark Ramsden sued Chicago Read Mental Health Center, the Department of Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities, and the State of Illinois for breach of contract and fraudulent misrepresentation. The jury awarded Ramsden $40,000 in actual damages on each claim. The Court of Appeals, Eastern District, held that the award of damages for fraudulent misrepresentation duplicated the award of damages for breach of contract and affirmed a judgment for $40,000 on the contract claim. This court ordered the cause transferred and it is now considered the same as if on original appeal. Mo. Const. Art. V, § 10. Reversed.
Chicago Read Mental Health Center is owned and operated by the State of Illinois and the parties agree that the State of Illinois is the real party in interest.
Ramsden had been a resident of Illinois but moved to St. Louis to begin work on a Ph.D. Degree. As a part of the requirements for this degree, Ramsden was obligated to spend a year in an approved internship program. Chicago Read, which had an approved internship program, advertised in The American Psychologist that it had ten internships available in clinical psychology. Chicago Read followed a national policy of interviewing applicants for its internship program and then notifying those applicants it wished to select on the second Monday in February of each year. Upon Ramsden's application to Chicago Read he was interviewed, and on February 9, 1981, Dr. Adam Fikso, the Director of the Internship Program, notified Ramsden that he had been selected for one of the ten positions at a specified salary and that his internship would begin in September. Ramsden wrote Dr. Fikso within a few days and stated that he accepted the offer for one of the positions.
About a month later, Dr. Fikso learned that the funding for the ten positions would not be available because of state budgetary problems. On March 11, 1981, he notified Ramsden and the others selected that funding was not available and that they would not be hired as interns.
At trial Ramsden testified to his notification by Chicago Read that he had been selected as an intern and that he had accepted. He testified that he turned down two other internship offers to accept the Chicago Read offer.
Ramsden called Dr. Fikso as a witness. On direct examination Dr. Fikso testified concerning the selection process. He stated that he had notified Ramsden of his selection and later notified Ramsden that he would not be hired because of budgetary problems. Dr. Fikso said the February uniform notification date complicated the selection process because in February, the amount of money available for the budget the following September was not known.
On cross-examination Dr. Fikso stated that Ramsden did not have an enforceable employment contract with the State as a result of his notification to Ramsden that he had been accepted into the internship program. Dr. Fikso stated that under Illinois procedures, after Ramsden was accepted as an intern, Dr. Fikso had to obtain an exemption to hire interns because the State had imposed a hiring freeze for the last five years. Dr. Fikso stated that it was difficult to get such an exemption but he had been able to do this in the past. He said it was also necessary to get an exemption for Ramsden because he was not an Illinois resident at the time of his selection. After he had obtained these exemptions, Dr. Fikso would have had to submit to the Department of Personnel Ramsden's application, which Ramsden had partially filled out but had not completed. Dr. Fikso testified that the hiring of state employees was at the discretion of the Department of Personnel under the Illinois Personnel Code.
Dr. Fikso said that Ramsden had not progressed beyond the selection stage because within about a month after Ramsden's selection, Dr. Fikso learned that funding was not going to be available for the internship program. Thus, Dr. Fikso had not obtained the exemptions which would allow Ramsden to be hired by the State, nor had he submitted Ramsden's application to the Department of Personnel. It was Dr. Fikso's testimony that Ramsden did not have an employment contract with the State when he was notified that he would not be hired. 1
The case was submitted to the jury on Ramsden's theory that he had a contract of employment when he was notified that he had been selected for the program, and the jury returned the verdicts noted above.
The State of Illinois contends that Missouri courts should have declined jurisdiction in this case. Ramsden contends that under Nevada v. Hall, 440 U.S. 410, 99 S.Ct. 1182, 59 L.Ed.2d 416 (1979), Missouri courts may exercise jurisdiction over another state. Hall did not find any federal constitutional impediment to a state being sued in the courts of another state. On the other hand, that case certainly does not mandate that a state entertain a suit in its courts against another state. Indeed, the court said that 440 U.S. at 426, 99 S.Ct. at 1191. Thus, the threshold question is whether the courts of this state should exercise their right under Hall to assert jurisdiction over the State of Illinois.
Illinois contends that even if the exercise of jurisdiction over the State of Illinois was proper, the Missouri courts should have dismissed this action based on principles of comity. Comity has...
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