The First Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined faculty members sufficiently alleged the policies in the university’s faculty handbook had the force of contract and therefore a breach of contract action was viable:
A university’s academic and administrative decisions require professional judgment and may only be reviewed by way of an article 78 proceeding to ensure that such decisions are not violative of the institution’s own rules and neither arbitrary nor irrational … . However, “[i]f the claim involves a matter of contractual right it may, of course, be vindicated in an action [at] law” … .
For the purpose of surviving respondents’ cross motion to dismiss, petitioners, tenured faculty members of respondent New York University’s School of Medicine, have sufficiently alleged that the policies contained in respondent’s Faculty Handbook, which “form part of the essential employment understandings between a member of the Faculty and the University,” have the force of contract … . Further, for the purposes of surviving respondents’ cross motion to dismiss, petitioners have sufficiently alleged that they had a mutual understanding with respondent that tenured faculty members’ salaries may not be involuntarily reduced. Additionally, petitioners have sufficiently alleged that they reasonably relied on oral representations by respondents that their salaries would not be involuntarily reduced. Matter of Monaco v New York Univ. & N.Y. Univ. School of Medicine, 2016 NY Slip Op 08467, 1st Dept 12-15-16
EMPLOYMENT LAW (FACULTY MEMBERS SUFFICIENTLY ALLEGED BREACH OF CONTRACT CAUSE OF ACTION AGAINST UNIVERSITY BASED UPON POLICIES DESCRIBED IN THE FACULTY HANDBOOK)/CONTRACT LAW (EMPLOYMENT LAW, FACULTY MEMBERS SUFFICIENTLY ALLEGED BREACH OF CONTRACT CAUSE OF ACTION AGAINST UNIVERSITY BASED UPON POLICIES DESCRIBED IN THE FACULTY HANDBOOK)/EDUCATION-SCHOOL LAW (UNIVERSITIES, FACULTY MEMBERS SUFFICIENTLY ALLEGED BREACH OF CONTRACT CAUSE OF ACTION AGAINST UNIVERSITY BASED UPON POLICIES DESCRIBED IN THE FACULTY HANDBOOK)