A federal judge from the District of Vermont has granted summary judgment and delivered a victory to Middlebury College and the school’s athletic director, which were named in a lawsuit by a former student athlete, who alleged that he was unfairly dismissed from the school’s hockey team and was not given a legally sufficient opportunity to appeal that decision.
In 2009, plaintiff James “Jak” Knelman applied for admission at Middlebury College, a Division III school in the NCAA, and simultaneously approached the school’s hockey coach, William Beaney, about playing on the hockey team. Beaney was only too happy to have Knelman, who had previously played in the United States Hockey League,
The first year, the marriage between Knelman and the hockey team was a success for the most part, however there was some controversy over what position he would play.
The situation began to worsen late in the second season, when Middlebury’s Athletics Department began planning an alumni banquet scheduled to take place on January 15, 2011. Knelman informed Coach Beaney beforehand that he would have to leave early to have dinner with his parents.
The day after the banquet, the coach allegedly assailed the plaintiff in front of the team, calling his decision to leave the banquet “selfish.” The coach allegedly continued to chastise the plaintiff and ultimately punished him with a suspension.
On January 24, 2011, Beaney met with Knelman and dismissed him from the team.
The next day, Knelman began meeting with faculty members, seeking redress for his dismissal. “During the meeting, Mr. Knelman asserted that he could not play under Coach Beaney and that there needed to be a process to protect student-athletes from a coach’s arbitrary behavior,” wrote the court. The meetings would continue well into the spring. With no relief in sight, Knelman sued, alleging breach of contract and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing claims, among others.
Knelman relied primarily on the student conduct policies and procedures sections of Middlebury’s College Handbook. The court noted that Knelman also relied upon the NCAA’s 2010-2011 manual, which sets forth the NCAA’s “Constitution, Operating Bylaws and Administrative Bylaws” for its Division III member institutions as a secondary basis for his contract-based claims.
The court first examined the breach of contract claim against Middlebury.
“(The plaintiff) concedes he had no contractual right to play hockey at Middlebury. See Jackson v. Drake Univ., 778 F. Supp. 1490, 1493 (S.D. Iowa 1991) (rejecting claim that student who was recruited to play basketball at college and received financial aid to facilitate his matriculation had a contractual right to play on the team); Hysaw v.
Washburn Univ., 690 F. Supp. 940, 946-47 (D. Kan. 1987) (rejecting breach of contract claim and noting, ‘Plaintiffs argue that they were promised that they would be allowed to play football during the 1986-87 season. Yet the written scholarship contracts they signed make no indication of such promises.’). He nonetheless contends that Middlebury breached a contractual promise to him that he would not be dismissed from the hockey team without due process,” pursuant to the Handbook’s Judicial Board and Procedures.
The court then addressed the plaintiff’s contention that only the Community Judicial Board (CJB) had the “authority” to impose a sanction such as a dismissal. But the court found that the transgressions and consequence went beyond the CJB’s scope.
“Essentially, Knelman asks the court to extend the disciplinary procedures of the Handbook to athletics, even though the ‘Athletics’ section of the Handbook does not reflect that intent,” wrote the court. “In accordance with this interpretation, the Handbook’s Procedures would be triggered any time a player was cut from a team, benched, suspended, dismissed, or otherwise suffered a material adverse change in circumstances as the result of a coach’s determination that some form of discipline for the player was warranted. Not only would this interpretation produce irrational results, there is no support for it in the Handbook.”
Next, the court turned to the plaintiff’s argument that Middlebury is “contractually obligated” to adhere to the NCAA manual. “First, he asserts that the NCAA manual is incorporated by reference into the handbook because ‘Middlebury promised in its College Manual to comply with the NCAA Division III’s rules and regulations.’ Second, he argues that he is an intended third-party beneficiary of the contract between Middlebury and the NCAA.”
The court squashed the first argument, writing that while “the handbook refers to the NCAA, those references are related only to NCAA eligibility and to rules for evaluating coaching faculty. Mr. Knelman has not based his contract claims on either of these premises.”
Turning to the second argument, it conceded that a few courts have recognized “intended third-party beneficiary status based upon the relationship between a member institution and the NCAA.” But those cases “are confined to enforcement of NCAA’s eligibility requirements. See, e.g., Bloom v. NCAA, 93 P.3d 621, 623-24 (Colo. App. 2004) (although state college football player had standing as third-party beneficiary to challenge NCAA’s eligibility requirements because ‘the NCAA’s constitution, bylaws, and regulations evidence a clear intent to benefit student-athletes,’ he was not entitled to injunctive relief as he failed to ‘demonstrate a reasonable possibility of success on the merits’); Oliver v. NCAA, 155 Ohio Misc. 2d 8, 13-14, 2008 Ohio 7143, 920 N.E.2d 196, 200 (2008) (noting that ‘the member institutions agree to let the NCAA set the criteria and to abide by the NCAA’s final eligibility decision,’ and ruling that ‘[t]he [student- athlete] plaintiff, who is not a party to the contract between NCAA and [the student’s university], stands to benefit from the contract’s performance, and thus he acquires rights under the contract as well as the ability to enforce the contract once those rights have vested.’). Mr. Knelman fails to identify a single case in which a court has held that a student-athlete is an intended third-party beneficiary of the NCAA manual’s ‘fairness’ provisions and is entitled to recover for breach of contract if a member institution fails to adhere to them. See Hairston v. Pacific 10 Conference, 101 F.3d 1315, 1320 (9th Cir. 1996) (intended third-party beneficiary relationship could not be inferred from the ‘vague, hortatory pronouncements’ of the Pac-10’s constitution or mission statement including goals intended to benefit student athletes because, ‘[by] themselves, these pronouncements are not sufficient to support the players’ claim that the Pac-10 intended to assume a direct contractual relationship to every football player on a Pac-10 team.’) (quoting Hairston v. Pacific-10 Conference, 893 F. Supp. 1485, 1494 (W.D.Wash. 1994)).
“In this case, the court need not decide the issue because the ‘fairness’ provisions of the NCAA’s Manual on which Mr. Knelman relies create general ethical responsibilities and aspirations rather than ‘specific and concrete’ promises required by Vermont law for a breach of contract claim. See Reynolds, 750 A.2d at 1023; see also Gally, 22 F. Supp. 2d at 208; Ullmo, 273 F.3d at 677. Accordingly, in the unlikely event that Mr. Knelman could establish intended third-party beneficiary status under Vermont law, he could not further establish that Middlebury had breached ‘specific and concrete’ promises contained in the NCAA manual. His breach of contract claim based upon the NCAA manual must therefore be dismissed.”
The court next turned to Knelman’s claim for breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing against Middlebury, and that Middlebury “violated community standards of decency by failing to sanction Coach Beaney and by failing to provide Mr. Knelman with a hearing before dismissing him from the hockey team.”
The court also granted summary judgment on this claim, finding that Knelman “has not established any contractual rights that have been ‘undermined or destroyed.’ Howard Opera House Assocs. v. Urban Outfitters, Inc., 166 F. Supp. 2d 917, 934 (D. Vt. 2001).”
As for the claims of breach of fiduciary duty against Middlebury and Coach Beaney, the court was unwilling to identify and extend such a duty to an adult student athlete.
“It is inconceivable that the Vermont Supreme Court would impose a higher duty of care — that of a fiduciary — between a college or university and an adult student regarding the college student’s status on an extracurricular hockey team,” the court wrote.
Ruling for the plaintiff on the above claim “would be contrary to existing Vermont law and is not supported by the weight of authority elsewhere. It would also create an untenable situation in which a college simultaneously owed a fiduciary duty to students with competing interests, whose interests were not only also separate and distinct from one another’s, but also often in conflict with the interests of the college itself,” the court wrote.
James “Jak” Knelman v. Middlebury College and William Beaney; D. Vt.; Case No. 5:11-cv-123, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 140193; 9/28/12
Attorneys of Record: (for plaintiff) Andrew D. Manitsky, Esq., Robert F. O’Neill, Esq., Gravel and Shea, Burlington, VT; Joseph W. Anthony, Esq., PRO HAC VICE, Kristen B. Heebner, Esq., PRO HAC VICE, Mary L. Knoblauch, Esq., PRO HAC VICE, Anthony Ostlund Baer & Louwagie P.A., Minneapolis, MN. (for defendant) Karen McAndrew, Dinse, Knapp & McAndrew, P.C., Burlington, VT.
