Court Opinion

ID: 9564681
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:05:26.008984+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:36.759564
License: Public Domain

FADELEY, J.,
dissenting.
I fully concur in the dissent of Justice Durham, following this special dissent. I write further, however, because the rationale offered by the majority opinion is founded on *245faulty concepts not there discussed. The Restatement (Second) of Torts has got it right, not the majority. A negligent misrepresentation in the course of one’s business or professional discourse is actionable by those damaged by the careless failure to tell the truth in that setting.
The majority holds in this case that a university dean has no duty (or, as the majority would require, no “heightened duty”) to exercise care to tell the truth. In the majority view, there is no duty in this case for a dean to avoid damaging a faculty member by negligently misrepresenting to and misleading the faculty person, even one who comes to that dean for specific information on promotion or tenure. The effect of the majority holding in this case is that as a matter of law, there is no special relationship of the sort needed, as a matter of fact, between a dean and a faculty member, or between a university and its professors.
The majority acknowledges that there is such a relationship between most other professionals and the persons who rely or who may be expected to rely or act on information provided by them in their profession. The majority simply holds that that sort of professional relationship rule does not apply here, and thus bases its holding in this case on its own factual declaration that the nature of the relation between a dean and a professor, or a university and a professor, is adversarial, being but a relation grounded in the individual economic self-interest of each and, thus, a relation that rises only to an “arms-length” negotiation between business adversaries.
When examined, the authority offered for this misanthropic outlook is no more than ipse dixit, i.e., “because we say so.” The majority offers no cases or examples relating to a university community; indeed, the majority does not deny the accuracy of the statements about the special relationships in a university community that are included in this dissenting opinion. Instead, the majority relies on its adversarial, dog-eat-dog construct that is contrary to the university community’s own view of the relation between a university, its academic dean, and one of its professors. The jury returned its verdict for plaintiff for negligent misrepresentations made by the dean to the professor.
*246The relationships between professionals in university communities, as seen by members of those communities, does not support the dog-eat-dog approach. Over the course of this century, many members of the university community have indicated that a special relationship exists among professionals in that community such that they are not arm’s-length adversaries. A few examples related to university relationships should suffice, inasmuch as the majority provides no examples to the contrary.
After citing a report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Woodrow Wilson’s essay “What Is A College For?,” the dean of an Oregon law school 63 years ago declared that there is a special relationship between the faculty and a state university, as follows:
“That leads me to another observation. A university is not a factory or a department store * * *.
“There is a need to recognize that faculty members are highly trained specialists and scholars and constitute a professional class of at least as high standing as doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other professionals.”1
The parents of students and other listeners who heard that declaration and the remainder of the dean’s speech about university governance arranged for the dean’s full remarks to be mailed to all parents of students attending that university at that time.
Later, in 1936, also attesting that a university is a special community, James Bryant Conant said, “He who enters a university walks on hallowed ground.” In the Godkin Lectures at Harvard University in 1963, Clark Kerr, speaking as executive head of the extensive system of universities in California, described facets of the job of the university’s top official,
“The university has become the multiversity and the nature of the presidency has followed this change.
‡ * * *
*247“The president in the multiversity is leader, educator, wielder of power, pump; he is also officeholder, caretaker, inheritor, consensus-seeker, persuader, bottleneck. But he is mostly a mediator.” Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 34, 36 (1963).
No internal dog-eat-dog philosophy within the university is expressed above.
Assuming that the statements of individual leaders of university communities, unrebutted, are not enough to establish special, professional relationships within that sort of community, there is much more. Statements declaring the special relationship have been made on a national level implicating all universities and faculty. In 1966, building on earlier cooperative statements dating back to 1940, the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges and representatives of their faculties, the American Council on Education, and the American Association of University Professors, jointly drafted and issued a statement entitled the Joint Statement on Government of Colleges and Universities.
The Joint Statement acknowledges the special “relationship” among all participants in the university community, stating:
“The variety and complexity of the tasks performed by institutions of higher education produce an inescapable interdependence among governing board, administration, faculty, students, and others. The relationship calls for adequate communication among these components, and full opportunity for appropriate joint planning and effort.” American Association of University Professors, Policy Documents and Reports, 120 (7th ed 1990) (emphasis added).
The Joint Statement describes a role for faculty in the selection of “academic deans” and also points out that:
“[B]uilding of a strong faculty requires careful joint effort in * * * staff selection and promotion and the granting of tenure.” Id. at 121.
In part V, entitled “The Academic Institution: The Faculty,” the Joint Statement asserts:
*248“Faculty status and related matters are primarily a faculty responsibility; this area includes appointments, reap-pointments, decisions not to reappoint, promotions, the granting of tenure, and dismissal.” Id. at 123.
Those examples demonstrate that, in the university community setting, the status of dean and of professor connote a special, interdependent relationship between them that best forwards their common enterprise when the dean uses due care not to mislead the professor to her or his detriment, and vice versa.
On questions of promotion and tenure, the dean is an information bridge between the university, its faculty, and the students. The dean is, in that situation, a professional giving professional advice. All are engaged in a common enterprise of ancient origin. That common-enterprise concept of the university community was adopted by the Oregon Legislature (and remains the statutory law of this state for public universities). ORS 352.010 provides in part:
“The president and professors constitute the faculty of each of the state institutions of higher education and as such have the immediate government * * * of it and the students therein.”
No dog-eat-dog concept there.
The examples of recognized special relationships among a university, its dean, and its faculty could be multiplied manyfold. But there seems little reason to do so here, because the majority offers no contrary examples or other authorities for its arm’s-length view. Had the majority tested its dog-eat-dog construct by relating it to a university setting, that testing would have revealed that it is part of the dean’s job to communicate knowledge and information on the subjects of tenure and promotion. Those are, of course, the subjects about which the jury in this case found, as fact, that the dean misrepresented to the plaintiff as a faculty member, who then relied on the dean’s negligently uttered misinformation to his substantial damage.2
*249Employing ipse dixit to duck the facts found by a jury is a constitutionally forbidden practice in Oregon. Facts determined by a jury are not to be “otherwise re-examined in any court of this state, unless the court can affirmatively say there is no evidence to support the verdict.” Or Const, Art VII (Amended), § 3. The exception in the “unless” clause does not apply here. No one can say that there was no evidence of the special relationship existing between the dean, as an academic professional and agent of the university, and the faculty professional for whom the jury rendered its verdict in this case. The majority does not deny the presence of that evidence. Instead, the majority declares that the evidence is not good enough, even though it shows that the risk of harm to plaintiff was foreseeable and that the dean’s carelessness (:i.e., his negligent misrepresentation on behalf of the university) caused that foreseeable harm.
The majority opinion permits the law to be, in effect, (a proposition of law from which I also dissent), that in Oregon one can play fast and loose with the truth, provided that it is in a business negotiation and that one’s negligent misrepresentations cause only economic harm. Of course, those provisos do not fit the facts of this case, or the law as declared in Onita Pacific Corp. v. Trustees of Bronson, 315 Or 149, 843 P2d 890 (1992), because the dean is a professional giving advice here. The majority, nonetheless, applies that rule within this community of professionals. I dissent.

 Onita Pacific Corp. v. Trustees of Bronson, 315 Or 149, 160-61, 843 P2d 890 (1992), stated that such enumerated professionals would be liable for negligent misrepresentation. The dean is an analogous professional in my view, a view that is not disputed.

 The jury, drawn from the vicinity in which defendant had provided higher education services for 150 years, determined that the dean’s careless misrepresentations damaged the plaintiff, who, relying on the dean’s professional advice, gave *249up a secure job at another college to take the position offered at the university. They assessed damages in the amount of $95,000, of which $5,000 were not economic damages.