Opinion
No. 7038.
January 11, 1952.
J. Grant Frye, of Cape Girardeau, for appellant.
Blanton Blanton, of Sikeston, for respondent.
This case was tried by a jury, which, at the direction of the trial court, rendered a verdict for respondent (defendant) at the close of appellant's (plaintiff's) testimony. plaintiff has appealed.
Among other things, the petition alleged the qualifications of plaintiff as a teacher and that plaintiff and defendant, (the later a School District) entered into a contract on August 17, 1949, whereby plaintiff was employed as a principal for the year beginning on August 29, 1949, for a term of eleven months at a salary of $185 per month.
The petition further alleged that defendant did not notify plaintiff in 1950, concerning her re-employment, as required by Section 10342a, Mo.R.S.A. (Now Section 163.090, RSMo 1949, V.A.M.S.)
Defendant procured another person to teach in place of plaintiff and communicated to plaintiff that she would not be permitted to teach school in the year of 1950-1951. Plaintiff sought other employment and taught school at Charleston, Missouri, for nine months, at a salary of $150 per month, and plaintiff sued defendant for her alleged loss.
In its answer defendant admitted that plaintiff was a school teacher and that defendant was a public school district. It admitted employment of plaintiff for the school year of 1949-1950, but denied that the contract of employment of plaintiff for 1949-1950 was binding upon defendant, for the year 1950-1951.
Defendant alleged that on or before April 15, 1950, it had communicated to plaintiff that she had not been re-employed for the school year of 1950-1951, and notified plaintiff that another person had been employed in her place as a teacher.
Defendant's counterclaim will not be noticed, since no proof thereof was offered in the case.
So far as important in this case, RSMo 1949, Section 163.090, V.A.M.S. (formerly section 10342a, of the 1943 Laws of Missouri), among other things, reads as follows: "It shall be the duty of each and every board having one or more teachers under contract to notify each and every such teacher in writing concerning his or her re-employment or lack thereof on or before the fifteenth day of April of the year in which the contract then in force expires. Failure on the part of a board to give such notice shall constitute re-employment on the same terms as those provided in the contract of the current fiscal year; and not later than the first day of May of the same year the board shall present to each such teacher not so notified a regular contract the same as if the teacher had been regularly re-employed."
At the conclusion of plaintiff's testimony the trial court instructed the jury to find for the defendant. The jury returned such a verdict and the trial court refused to grant plaintiff a new trial.
RSMo 1949, Section 163.090, V.A.M.S., above set out, required defendant to notify its teachers (including plaintiff) of reemployment on or before April 15 of the year during which such teacher had a contract to teach.
By Exhibit "C", offered by plaintiff, dated April 8, 1950, defendant not only notified plaintiff that she was not only not reemployed, for the year 1950-1951, but that her contract to teach expired at the end of the school year 1950. Plaintiff contends that her contract extended to June 1950, but that is unimportant here.
Exhibit "C" is as follows: "At a meeting of the board April 8, 1950, it was voted to give all teachers a notice of termination of Contract. Your contract will expire at the end of school year in May 1950."
Plaintiff did not show any contract of employment for the year 1950-1951.
Plaintiff relies upon the case of Common School District No. 27, of Gasconade County, v. Brinkmann, Mo.App., 233 S.W.2d 768, 773. We have carefully examined the opinion of Judge McCullen, of the St. Louis Court of Appeals, in that case, and find that no notice whatever was given to the teacher. Under Section 10342a, Laws of Missouri 1943, page 890, (now RSMo 1949, Section 163.090, V.A.M.S.) Judge McCullen, in speaking of the acts of the School Board, said that what appellant in that case approved "did not relieve the Board of Directors of its clear and positive duty under the statute to notify defendant in writing, on or before the 15th of April of the year in which the contract then in force was to expire, of their intention not to re-employ him for the subsequent year. The statute plainly and unequivocally provides that: `Failure on the part of the board to give such notice shall constitute re-employment on the same terms as those provided in the contract of the current fiscal year'."
That case is quite different on its facts from the case before us.
By her testimony and exhibits, plaintiff failed to make a case against defendant and the trial court properly acted, in telling the jury to return a verdict for defendant. Its judgment must be and is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
VANDEVENTER, P. J., and McDOWELL, J., concur.