Opinion
E041000
4-24-2008
CHAFFEY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. DALE C. TATUM, Defendant and Appellant.
Law Offices of Gloria Dredd Haney and Gloria Dredd Haney for Defendant and Appellant. Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, Mary L. Dowell, Pilar Morin and Arlin Kachalia for Plaintiff and Respondent.
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED
Dale C. Tatum, defendant and appellant (hereafter Tatum), appeals from the summary judgment entered against him and in favor of Chaffey Community College District, plaintiff and respondent (hereafter Chaffey), on Chaffeys complaint for breach of contract. In its complaint, filed in October 2003, Chaffey alleged in pertinent part that Tatum is a tenured professor of political science employed by Chaffey; Tatum applied for sabbatical leave for the 2000-2001 academic year; Chaffey granted the request, Tatum took the leave, and Chaffey paid Tatum $62,845.04 in salary and benefits during that time; Tatum did not use his sabbatical leave to conduct the research he had identified in his sabbatical leave request; and as a result Tatum breached the sabbatical leave agreement. Therefore, Chaffey sought recovery of $62,845.04, the amount it had paid in salary and benefits to Tatum during his sabbatical leave. Tatum answered the complaint, denying every allegation except two—that Chaffey is a public community college and that Tatum is a natural person—and asserted 59 purported affirmative defenses.
Chaffeys complaint also included a second cause of action for violation of Education Code section 87767, which Chaffey dismissed. Although Tatum complains in this appeal that "the dismissal was highly prejudicial" he does not cite any facts to support the assertion. Because Tatum did not file his own summary judgment motion we cannot conceive of any way in which Chaffeys dismissal of its second cause of action could have prejudiced Tatum. Therefore, we reject his claim, and will not mention the second cause of action again.
Tatum also filed a cross-complaint, the details of which are not relevant to the issues in this appeal, and the trial court ultimately sustained Chaffeys demurrer to that pleading without leave to amend.
In August 2005, Chaffey filed a motion for summary judgment asserting there was no triable issue of material fact on the breach of contract cause of action, and therefore it was entitled to judgment in its favor as a matter of law. In its separate statement of undisputed material facts, Chaffey claimed that each of the facts alleged in its complaint was undisputed, in particular, that Tatum had submitted a request for sabbatical leave for the 2000-2001 academic year; in that request Tatum stated that the purpose of his sabbatical leave was "to do research on the effectiveness of the tactics and strategies used by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Security strategies deployed by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union will also be examined"; that, as set out in his sabbatical leave request, Tatums objectives while on sabbatical were to research, write, and publish a book examining the security motives and objectives of the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, determine if the objectives of each country were achieved, determine the reasons for the success or failure, as pertinent, of the policy outcome, examine the post-Cold War foreign policy goals and outcomes of the United States, and to develop a new paradigm for analyzing the behavior of states and the reasons why they succeed or fail in their policy objectives. Chaffey also asserted that it was undisputed that it had approved Tatums sabbatical leave request, and that Tatum took that paid sabbatical leave during the 2000-2001 academic year.
In its separate statement of undisputed material facts Chaffey also stated that as part of the sabbatical leave procedure, a faculty member agrees that within 30 days after returning from leave the faculty member will submit a written sabbatical leave report, the content of which is set out in Chaffeys sabbatical leave procedures. Tatum submitted his initial sabbatical leave report on October 2, 2001, which was more than 30 days after his return from sabbatical. Chaffeys Faculty Senate, the pertinent review body, found Tatums report deficient for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that Tatum did not refer in the report to the activities and objectives he had set out in his sabbatical leave application. The Faculty Senate sent Tatum written notice of the deficiencies and granted him additional time to submit a revised report. Tatum submitted a second draft of his sabbatical leave report on October 23, 2001, to which he appended his book manuscript, entitled Who Influenced Whom, that University Press of America had agreed to publish. The Faculty Senate determined that, with only minor revisions, the manuscript was a nearly verbatim copy of Tatums 1990 doctoral dissertation and as such did not constitute new research. In addition, the Faculty Senate found Tatums revised sabbatical leave report deficient and notified Tatum of the same. In April 2002, Tatum submitted a third undated sabbatical leave report and another copy of the book manuscript.
Because Tatums manuscript did not constitute new research and did not comport with the research activity Tatum had specified in his sabbatical leave application, the Faculty Senate did not approve his sabbatical leave report, and instead forwarded it, without the signature of the Faculty Senate president, to Chaffeys executive vice president for the next level of review specified in the procedure. The executive vice president, in turn, found that Tatum had not met his sabbatical leave obligation because he had failed to document his research activity and the manuscript he submitted was nearly identical to the doctoral dissertation Tatum had written in 1990. Because he had not fulfilled his sabbatical leave obligations, Chaffey demanded that Tatum repay the $62,845.04 it had paid him as salary and benefits during his sabbatical leave.
Although Tatum filed opposition to Chaffeys summary judgment motion, it was untimely. Nevertheless, the trial court considered Tatums opposition papers, including those to which Chaffey had raised objections. In his opposition, Tatum disputed that he had proposed to conduct research and write a manuscript during his sabbatical leave. According to Tatum, his only obligation while on sabbatical leave was "to write and publish a book on the research findings." To support his claim, Tatum cited Chaffeys sabbatical leave procedures, its purported customs and practices, and Education Code section 87767, which confers authority on a community college to grant sabbatical leaves.
Education Code section 87767 provides, in pertinent part, that, "The governing board of a community college district may grant any employee of the district employed in an academic position, a leave of absence not to exceed one year for the purpose of permitting study or travel by the employee which will benefit the schools and students of the district."
Following a hearing on November 15, 2005, the trial court granted Chaffeys motion for summary judgment. Chaffey moved to dismiss its second cause of action, a motion the trial court also granted, and the trial court entered judgment against Tatum, accordingly. Tatum appeals from that judgment.
DISCUSSION
The size of the record and length of the parties briefs notwithstanding, there is only one issue in this appeal. That issue, stated bluntly, is what did Tatum say in his sabbatical leave request that he would do while on leave, and did he do it? Stated in the parlance of summary judgment, the issue is whether there is conflicting evidence, and therefore a triable issue of material fact, regarding what Tatum stated in his sabbatical leave request as the purpose for that leave, and whether he did what he said he was going to do. Tatum contends that the terms of the sabbatical leave agreement are ambiguous and therefore a triable issue of material fact exists with regard to those terms and thus with respect to what he had proposed to do during his sabbatical. We disagree, for reasons we now explain.
We begin our discussion with the well-settled rule that on appeal, we review de novo an order granting summary judgment. (Aguilar v. Atlantic Richfield Co. (2001) 25 Cal.4th 826, 860 (Aguilar).) The trial court must grant a summary judgment motion when the evidence shows that there is no triable issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c); Aguilar, at p. 843.) In making this determination, courts view the evidence, including all reasonable inferences supported by that evidence, in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (c); Aguilar, at p. 843.) A plaintiff moving for summary judgment has the burden to show that there is no defense to the cause of action by producing evidence to establish each element of the cause of action. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (p)(1); Aguilar, at pp. 849, 850-851, 854-855.) The burden then shifts to the defendant to produce specific evidence showing a triable issue of one or more material facts as to the cause of action or a defense. (Code Civ. Proc., § 437c, subd. (p)(1); Aguilar, at pp. 849, 850-851.)
The terms of Tatums sabbatical leave request are undisputed. In that request, Tatum stated that during his sabbatical leave he would conduct research on a specific topic, and then write and publish a book on the research findings. It is equally undisputed that the specific topic Tatum proposed to research was the security motives and objectives of the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War, including whether those goals were achieved, and if so the duration of success, and the reasons for success or failure of the goals. With that research as the focus, Tatum also proposed to "[d]evelop a new paradigm for analyzing the behavior of states and the reasons why they succeed or fail in their policy objectives." Tatum did not state in any of his papers in the trial court, and does not state in this appeal, that he conducted research on the identified topic while on sabbatical leave.
It is also undisputed that what Tatum presented as the product of his sabbatical leave was a minimally revised version of his 1990 doctoral dissertation that contained very little if any new scholarship or research. Although the extent of the revision is disputed, that dispute is irrelevant because, as previously noted, it is undisputed that Tatum did not mention his dissertation in his sabbatical leave request. In other words, and his repeated contrary assertion notwithstanding, it is undisputed that Tatum did not state in his request for sabbatical leave that he would use his leave to revise his doctoral dissertation and prepare that manuscript for publication. Because Tatum had not proposed to use his leave for the purpose of revising his dissertation, all arguments Tatum asserted in the trial court and raises again in this appeal regarding his doctoral dissertation, including whether the dissertation is a scholarly work, and whether other instructors at Chaffey had used their sabbatical leaves to prepare their doctoral dissertations for publication, are simply irrelevant.
In his statement of disputed and undisputed material facts, Tatum acknowledged that he had not mentioned his dissertation in his sabbatical request but asserted that he was not required to do so.
Moreover, even if relevant it is equally undisputed that Tatum made only minor revisions to his doctoral dissertation, none of which were the result of any significant new research. As set out in the declaration of Chaffeys expert witness, Dr. Steven Lamy, who compared Tatums 1990 dissertation with the manuscript Tatum ultimately submitted as the product of his 10-month leave, the manuscript differed from the dissertation only in very minor respects, and the differences were not the result of additional research. Lamy noted that the manuscript contains only three references to new sources, i.e., sources and material that Tatum did not cite in his 1990 dissertation. After comparing the works Tatum cited in his dissertation with those cited in the manuscript, Dr. Lamy concluded that Tatums "dissertation and the 2002 manuscript are basically the same."
Tatum did not claim in his opposition to Chaffeys summary judgment that he wrote the manuscript in question during his sabbatical leave. Instead, he denies that he represented to Chaffey in his sabbatical leave report that he had written the manuscript during his sabbatical and states that he represented only that he had accomplished his objectives.
Equally irrelevant are Tatums discrimination claims. Tatum has filed his own lawsuit against Chaffey and several of its administrators in which he raises those claims. While Tatum would have this court believe that personal animus toward or discrimination against him is the motive behind Chaffeys rejection of his sabbatical leave project, those claims are not relevant in this breach of contract action. In short and simply put, Tatum did not demonstrate in the trial court that the manuscript he submitted at the conclusion of his sabbatical leave was the product of research he conducted over the course of his 10-month teaching hiatus. For that reason, as well as the reasons previously discussed, we conclude based upon our independent review that there is no triable issue of material fact with respect to the breach of contract cause of action and the trial court properly granted Chaffeys motion for summary judgment.
Tatum requests that this court take judicial notice of an order on a summary judgment motion made in that federal court proceeding. Although he cites Evidence Code section 459 as authority for the judicial notice request, Tatum does not discuss the relevance of the document to any issue in this appeal. Accordingly, Tatums request for judicial notice is denied.
DISPOSITION
The summary judgment in favor of Chaffey and against Tatum is affirmed. Chaffey to recover its costs on appeal.
We concur:
Ramirez, P.J.
Hollenhorst, J.