D-lightful Student Gets Litigious

Thanks to Miriam Cherry (left) for sharing this one:

I love this fact pattern: as reported in the National Law Journal, a student who received a D in contracts is suing the law school he attended, as well as his contracts professor, claiming that the professor deviated from the syllabus by counting quizzes towards the final grade.  He claims $100,000 in harm because the D in contracts resulted in his suspension from the law school.  He could not transfer to a different law school because he was ineligible for a certificate of good standing.  

The case is a cautionary tale.  It appears that the syllabus indicated that the quizzes would be optional.  The professor then announced in class that the quizzes would actually count.  The plaintiff claims to have been uanaware of the change or at least adversely affected by it.  I say it is a cautionary tale because I sometimes make changes to my syllabus, usually in response to student feedback.  I make sure to e-mail all students to make certain that everyone is aware of the changes and I obsessively remind students of the changes because I worry about precisely what happened here.  It may well be that the defendant contracts prof did the same, although the National Law Journal article states that the change was evidenced by the handwritten notes of another student.

There is an interesting exchange on the merits of the case in the comments to the ABA Journal article on this subject.  Apparently, there is some case law stating that a syllabus is a contract.  For the most part, I think such a rule would benefit instructors.  No student could complain about my attendance or no-technology policies because I could tell them (doing my best Comcast imitation) that by continuing to attend my course, they had agreed to my terms.  But many of the commentators think that written contracts can never be orally modified.  I don’t think a syllabus is a contract because I don’t think there are parties to a syllabus and I don’t think there is intent to enter into legal relations.  Things might be different if the syllabus identified itself as a contract and informed students of the manner of acceptance of its terms.

Friend of the blog, Peter Linzer (right), chimes in (comment #13) and succinctly dismisses this notion that a contract not within the Statute of Frauds cannot be orally modified.  In any case, he thinks the claim is best understood as sounding in promissory estoppel, and plaintiff’s claim fails because, in short, he cannot claim to have reasonably relied on a promise just because he missed class or did not pay attention when that promise was retracted.