Court Opinion

ID: 9909624
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-12-13 20:02:12.074486+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:48:02.706299
License: Public Domain

Filed 12/13/23
                 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION

IN THE COURT OF APPEAL OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

                 SECOND APPELLATE DISTRICT

                        DIVISION EIGHT

RICARDO CAMPBELL,                       B320590

       Plaintiff and Appellant,         Los Angeles County
                                        Super. Ct. No. 21STCP00003
       v.

CAREER DEVELOPMENT
INSTITUTE, INC.,

       Defendant and Respondent.

     APPEAL from a judgment of the Superior Court of
Los Angeles County, Mitchell L. Beckloff, Judge. Vacated and
remanded.
     Kosnett Law Firm and James Victor Kosnett for Plaintiff
and Appellant.
     O’Hagan Meyer, Vickie V. Grasu and Angeli C. Aragon for
Defendant and Respondent.
                      ____________________
     The Career Development Institute, Inc. dismissed Ricardo
Campbell from its vocational nursing program. Campbell
brought a writ petition under section 1094.5 of the Code of Civil
Procedure. The trial court denied the petition because the
Institute’s own policies did not require it to hold a hearing. Since
this ruling, the Supreme Court issued its landmark decision
about the doctrine of fair procedure. (Boermeester v. Carry (2023)
15 Cal.5th 72 (Boermeester).) We vacate and remand for the trial
court to determine whether the doctrine of fair procedure applies
and if so, whether it required the Institute to offer Campbell
additional procedure. Undesignated statutory citations are to the
Code of Civil Procedure.
                                    I
       The Institute’s student handbook and school catalog outline
student discipline procedures. The handbook describes grounds
for discipline and states students may appeal dismissals. The
catalog describes appeal procedures. These procedures do not
require a hearing or some other opportunity for students to be
heard before the Institute dismisses them.
       On September 29, 2020, the Institute’s director of nursing
wrote a two-page letter saying the Institute was dismissing
Campbell. The letter recounted an incident at Campbell’s clinical
placement from earlier that day. Three nurses said Campbell
was rude. Campbell said he had merely tripped on a nurse’s foot.
Campbell reported the incident to Human Resources at the clinic.
The letter said the Institute requires students to report problems
to their instructors, not to staff at clinics. Campbell’s actions
“placed the school’s continuation with that facility at risk. . . .
[T]he decision has been made that Ricardo Campbell will be
dismissed . . . effective immediately.”
       The Institute tells us this was not the first problem it had
with Campbell. Its appellate brief describes issues between the
Institute and Campbell predating the September 29, 2020

                                 2
incident. The dismissal letter giving the basis for the dismissal,
however, did not mention these earlier issues.
      On September 30, 2020, Campbell emailed the Institute his
account of what had happened on September 29, 2020.
      The director of nursing wrote another letter on October 9,
2020 stating, “we have determined that you will no longer be able
to continue” at the Institute.
      Campbell filed an internal appeal of the dismissal on
November 2, 2020. The Institute contends this appeal was
untimely. The record does not contain evidence about how the
Institute processed this appeal, but the parties agree the
Institute upheld the dismissal.
      Campbell brought a writ petition challenging his dismissal.
      The trial court heard oral argument and later issued a
written ruling denying the petition without reaching the merits.
      During argument, the trial court told Campbell’s counsel, “I
agree with you that if I get to the merits, then you prevail”
because Campbell had the right to notice and an opportunity to
be heard. The court found it could not get to the merits, though,
because “there is no requirement that a hearing be held. The
rules don’t require that.”
      In its written ruling, the court explained that, because the
Institute was not a state actor and because Campbell did not
argue a statute required the Institute to provide hearings, the
Institute could be subject to administrative mandamus only if its
own rules and regulations required hearings. The court found
that the Institute’s procedures did not require it to provide
hearings. Common law fair hearing requirements did not apply
“because [the Institute] provides no right to its students for a

                                3
hearing prior to discipline.” The court concluded Campbell
therefore was not entitled to relief under section 1094.5.
                                   II
       We remand for the trial court to consider whether the
doctrine of fair procedure applies and, if so, whether Campbell
was entitled to more process under this doctrine. These
questions do not turn solely on whether the Institute’s rules
provided a hearing. If the court finds Campbell was entitled to a
hearing, it must address the merits of his petition.
       Under section 1094.5, subdivision (a), the court may issue a
writ to “inquir[e] into the validity of any final administrative
order or decision made as the result of a proceeding in which by
law a hearing is required to be given . . . .”
       In its recent Boermeester decision, the California Supreme
Court, for the first time, applied this section to a private
university’s disciplinary decisions. (Boermeester, supra, 15
Cal.5th at p. 86.) The high court had not decided this case when
the trial court made its ruling.
       Boermeester details the common law doctrine of fair
procedure. The doctrine applies when exclusion from
membership deprives a person of substantial educational,
financial, and professional advantages. (Boermeester, supra, 15
Cal.5th at p. 88.) It does not require people to show they will be
completely unable to practice their chosen profession absent
membership. (Ibid.) A student’s interest in completing a
postsecondary education at a private university is analogous to a
person’s interest in continuing membership in a private
organization that affects the person’s ability to practice a chosen
profession. (Id. at p. 89.) The Supreme Court held that the

                                 4
doctrine applied when the University of Southern California
expelled a student. (Id. at p. 86.)
       Boermeester also explains what the doctrine requires.
“Among other things, this doctrine, when applicable, requires a
private organization to comply with its own procedural rules
governing the expulsion of individuals from the organization, and
it permits courts to evaluate the basic fairness of those procedural
rules when the organization seeks to exclude or expel an
individual from its membership.” (Boermeester, supra, 15 Cal.5th
at p. 86, italics added.) “Where it applies, the common law
doctrine of fair procedure requires private organizations to
provide adequate notice of the charges and a meaningful
opportunity to be heard.” (Id. at p. 90.)
       In Boermeester, the Supreme Court ultimately held that the
University, which provided evidentiary hearings before expelling
students, was not required to give students the opportunity to
cross-examine witnesses at a live-witness hearing. (Boermeester,
supra, 15 Cal.5th at pp. 80–81 & 92.) Because the University had
provided some kind of a hearing, the Supreme Court “d[id] not
opine on whether and under what circumstances a private
university might properly choose to refrain from providing an
accused student with a hearing that gives the accused student
the opportunity to respond to the evidence before the
[U]niversity’s adjudicators.” (Id. at p. 96.)
       We remand for the trial court to determine in the first
instance whether the fair procedure doctrine applies to the
Institute’s dismissal of Campbell. If the doctrine applies, the
court must determine whether it required the Institute to hold a
hearing, and whether the Institute in effect did provide a
sufficient hearing.

                                 5
      On remand, the trial court also is free to consider the
persuasive value, if any, of a new tentative advisory publication
by the American Law Institute (ALI). The ALI recently has
articulated “Minimal Due Process Standards” for certain kinds of
cases. (ALI, Principles of the Law, Student Sexual
Misconduct: Procedural Frameworks for Colleges & Universities
(Tent. Draft No. 1, Apr. 2022) § 6.1, p. 167.) “Colleges and
universities, whether public or private, should not subject their
students to formal discipline without procedures meeting the
minimal standards of the Due Process Clause, which include
providing:
      (a) notice of their alleged wrongful conduct, and
      (b) an opportunity to respond to and counter the allegations
      against them in a fair proceeding
      (c) before a neutral decisionmaker.” (Ibid.)
                           DISPOSITION
      We vacate the judgment and remand for further
proceedings. On remand, the trial court may allow or order the
parties to submit additional records of the proceedings, which
could include affidavits from Campbell and the Institute about
the procedures the Institute followed. (See § 1094.5, subd.
(a); Malott v. Summerland Sanitary Dist. (2020) 55 Cal.App.5th
1102, 1111.) The parties shall bear their own costs on appeal.

                                          WILEY, J.
We concur:

             STRATTON, P. J.              VIRAMONTES, J.

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