Court Opinion

ID: 9684151
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 13:48:05.133253+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:53.296314
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Judge,
dissenting.
I am unable to agree that there was any ambiguity in the phrase “a non-probationary faculty member’s place” as that term is used in District Procedure 3.0034. I would affirm the trial court’s judgment based upon a directed verdict for defendant.
The meaning of “non-probationary faculty member’s place” (as distinguished from the place, or the job, or the duties, of a part-time faculty member) is clear from the written contracts entered into from year to year by the plaintiff with the district. Those contracts provided an annual salary, regardless how many or how few credit hours of classroom teaching the faculty member did. They simply place the professional services of the faculty member at the disposal of the district for the term of the contract. By the terms of the contract the faculty member agrees “that (s)he will perform such related duties as the board of trustees, the chancellor or their designated representatives shall direct”. It provides that it is “anticipated” that her assignment would be that of instructor at Penn Valley Community College, but that “(s)he may be required to serve at any other college or facility of the district”. It provides that in case the facility where the faculty member has served is temporarily closed because of an emergency, the faculty member may, after termination of the emergency, be required to serve corresponding additional periods without additional compensation.
Plaintiff’s witness, Ronald E. Great-house, vice-chancellor of administrative services for the district, amplified the duties of the full-time faculty member as follows:
There are many responsibilities of full-time faculty members outside of the classroom. ... Such as developing curriculum, ordering supplies, working with programs. We have various committees to determine the future program direction, what we call upon the full-time faculty to help us determine future direction of the community college.
He testified also that full-time faculty members “have interaction with the students that part-time faculty don’t have in the way of having office hours”.1
Witness Greathouse said that part-time faculty members, on the other hand, “are paid by the credit hour. They are paid ... $320 for one teaching credit hour which equals to one hour in the classroom per week for 16 weeks.” He was then asked by plaintiff’s counsel: “And as far as the requirements put on part-time faculty members, they just have to come on to campus, teach their class. And if they teach their class in a satisfactory manner, that’s the only requirement of them getting paid. Is that right?” Witness Greathouse replied: “That is correct. They have to grade the papers and prepare for the class course outside of the classroom.”
The question in this case is whether one part-time teacher teaching 15 hours, or five part-time teachers teaching 3 hours apiece, have “filled the place” of a full-time faculty member. To put the question in another way, has a furloughed full-time faculty member’s place been “filled by a replacement” if 15 credit hours are being taught by part-time faculty members? That both questions should be answered in the nega*722tive seems beyond cavil. The additional duties, other than teaching, required of a full-time faculty member by the written contract between himself and the district are not “filled” by part-time teachers. The additional duties (or we may say the alternative duties, for some full-time faculty members carry less than a full-time load of classroom teaching, and some may do no teaching at all) required of full-time faculty members are simply foregone by the district. If the district does not need the additional services provided by full-time faculty members, then it is the privilege of the district to dispense with them, as it did when it furloughed the plaintiff.2
The majority opinion says, however, that the plaintiff’s testimony of her unilateral “understanding” that the “place” of a full-time faculty member consists of 15 credit hours of teaching, and similar testimony by plaintiff’s witness Jean Scurlock, renders the contract ambiguous and raises an issue of fact which must be determined by a jury. I doubt that either the plaintiff or Dr. Scurlock really intended to say that the full-time faculty member’s “place” consisted of 15 credit hours of classroom teaching and nothing more. If their testimony is to have any reasonable meaning at all, it was that 15 hours was a normal full-time teaching load, which agrees with other evidence in the case. But if their testimony is to be given the literal meaning that the majority opinion gives to it, it is so obviously and patently wrong and unreasonable, so contradictory to the basic written contract between the district and the plaintiff, that it cannot be considered to raise any genuine issue of fact. Not every unreasonable, obviously incorrect statement by a witness can be regarded as substantial evidence.3 Reasonable men could not accept the hypothesis that the “place of a full-time faculty member” in the context of this case consisted of 15 credit hours of classroom teaching and nothing else. The trial judge was not required to have such a capacious swallow.
To take another approach which leads to the same result, the parol evidence rule will not allow the “understanding” of a party to vary or contradict the written contract. Absent the testimony of plaintiff’s “understanding” of the meaning of “place”, there would have been no ambiguity in the written contract. Plaintiff’s testimony of her “understanding” created the ambiguity. Parol evidence is not admissible for that purpose. Parol evidence is admissible only to resolve ambiguities. (The parol evidence rule is not a procedural rule governing the admission or exclusion of evidence, but is a rule of substantive law of contract interpretation.) 4 S. Williston, A Treatise on the Law of Contracts, §§ 631, 632A (3d ed. 1961).
*723The meaning of this regulation is simply that if the district elects to add a full-time faculty member in a given department, a faculty member who has been furloughed within the preceding two years has the first refusal of the appointment. The district has not violated that requirement by having 15 credit hours taught by one or more part-time faculty members.4 The trial judge was correct in holding that to be so as a matter of law.
I do not think, either, even under plaintiffs interpretation of the contract, that plaintiff proved that there were 15 credit hours of Social Science courses taught during the 1981 spring term. I will not expand on that, however.

. There is in a large book of District policies, regulations and procedures the following definitions of "Full-Time Faculty” and "Part-Time Faculty” (Board policy 3.0002):

Full-Time Faculty

The full-time faculty shall be those who are awarded at least nine-month faculty contracts and who are assigned responsibilities for not less than fifty percent of their total assignment within the District as instructors, counselors, librarians/media or division chairpersons who also perform some administrative tasks and/or duties related to their divisions. Part-Time Faculty
Part-time faculty shall be those who are assigned responsibilities as instructors, counselors, or librarians/media on a credit hours or contact hour rate not to exceed 10 credit hours or 14 contact hours.
The book was marked for identification but the foregoing policies were not read into evidence.

. The furloughing of the plaintiff followed the adoption by the District of a Master Plan in 1975. The Master Plan adopted as a goal a 55-45 ratio between full-time faculty members and part-time faculty members. Throughout the five-campus system a considerable number of full-time faculty members were furloughed. In the Social Science department in which plaintiff taught there were 8.75 too many full-time faculty members, although only plaintiff and one other were actually furloughed and that not until 1979.
While the services of a certain number of full-time faculty members are necessary, part-time faculty members bring a useful dimension to the faculty. Use of part-time faculty members saves payroll money, allows for greater flexibility in scheduling classes, and brings to the classroom, in many cases, the practical workaday experience of a teacher who comes from the world of the journeyman rather than academia.

. The general principle is thus stated in Hill v. Illinois Terminal Co., 100 S.W.2d 40, 47 (Mo.App.1937):
The rule which requires us, in considering a demurrer to the evidence, to take plaintiffs evidence as true and to give him the benefit of every reasonable favorable inference arising from all the evidence and to disregard defendant’s evidence where it conflicts with plaintiffs evidence, does not go so far as to require us to disregard the dictates of common reason and to accept as correct or true that which obviously, under all the circumstances in evidence, cannot be correct or true, nor does it require us to give plaintiff the benefit of any other than reasonable inferences.
See also Probst v. Seyer, 353 S.W.2d 798, 802 (Mo.1962); Brawley v. Esterly, 267 S.W.2d 655, 659 (Mo.1954); Grube v. Associated Dry Goods, Inc., 663 S.W.2d 310, 311 (Mo.App.1983).

. By plaintiff’s theory, there could never he more than one part-time faculty member in any department so long as there were in the wings non-probationary faculty members who had been placed on probation in the preceding two years — this because for every 15 hours the furloughed non-probationary teacher would have first call. A part-time teacher could only have any classes, less than 15 hours, left over.