Robert Kenny v. Susan Denbo ( 2018 )

NOT PRECEDENTIAL
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
_______________
No. 17-2342
_______________
ROBERT KENNY,
Appellant
v.
SUSAN M. DENBO;
RIDER UNIVERSITY;
THE RIDER UNIVERSITY CHAPTER OF THE
AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITY PROFESSORS
_______________
On Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of New Jersey
(D.C. No. 3-16-cv-08578)
District Judge: Honorable Anne E. Thompson
_______________
Argued March 23, 2018
Before: HARDIMAN, BIBAS, and ROTH, Circuit Judges
(Filed: May 3, 2018)
_______________
Robert Kenny, Esq. [ARGUED]
145 Shrewsbury Court
Pennington, NJ 08534
Pro Se Appellant
Steven Gerber, Esq. [ARGUED]
Mary P. Gallagher, Esq.
Schoeman Updike Kaufman & Gerber
155 Willowbrook Boulevard
Suite 300
Wayne, NJ 07470
Counsel for Appellees Rider University and Susan Denbo
Matthew D. Areman, Esq.
Markowitz & Richman
123 South Broad Street
Suite 2020
Philadelphia, PA 19109
Counsel for Appellee The Rider University Chapter of the American Association of
University Professors
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OPINION *
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BIBAS, Circuit Judge.
Adjunct Professor Robert Kenny substituted for Professor Susan Denbo while she was
on sabbatical. After an arbitration, he was suspended for borrowing her syllabus. Kenny’s
borrowing resulted from an excusable misunderstanding. Only later did evidence come out
that Denbo had passed along that syllabus specifically for the adjunct to use. But the una-
vailability of certain evidence at the arbitration does not justify rescinding his settlement. †
I.
A. Requesting and Receiving a Syllabus. For sixteen years, Kenny taught accounting
and business law as an adjunct professor at Rider University in New Jersey. Denbo taught
*
This disposition is not an opinion of the full court and, under I.O.P. 5.7, does not
constitute binding precedent.
†
Kenny appeared pro se and argued his case before us. His argument was reasoned and
helpful to the Court.
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Legal and Ethical Aspects of Management. In the fall of 2011, Rider hired Kenny to teach
that course the next spring, when Denbo was to go on sabbatical. In preparation for her
sabbatical, Denbo gave her syllabus to department chair Ira Sprotzer to share with the ad-
junct who would fill in for her.
At Kenny’s request, Sprotzer gave Kenny a hard copy of the syllabus. Kenny thought
that Sprotzer had pulled the copy from his files. He did not know, and learned only in
discovery in this lawsuit, that Denbo had given that syllabus to Sprotzer to share.
Kenny also visited Rider’s Blackboard website, where faculty post course materials,
and downloaded a copy of the syllabus from Denbo’s web page. Denbo’s Blackboard set-
tings, which were not the default, let guests access her other course materials as well, in-
cluding student resources and assignments. But Kenny did not download or share them. He
tweaked the syllabus’s grading scale, but otherwise kept the readings, sequence, and as-
signments verbatim. Then he uploaded the syllabus to the spring 2012 course module.
The week before classes started, Kenny called Denbo to ask permission to use some of
the student resources listed in the syllabus and available on her Blackboard site. Respond-
ing by email, she complained that it was “[u]nbelievable!!!!!” that his syllabus was all but
identical to hers. DA 86. She also asked how he had accessed her materials and which
materials students might have seen.
Kenny explained that he could access the materials through Blackboard and that, if she
wished, he would “change everything including the homeworks.” DA 82. She wished, so
he reworked the syllabus, did not post any of her student resources, and did not use her
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assignments. In an effort to appease her, Kenny also apologized and assured her it would
never happen again.
Nonetheless, Denbo was “outraged!!!!!” by all this. DA 86. In a series of emails to
Rider administrators, she accused Kenny of “EXTREME unethical behavior,” fuming that
he had accessed “MY ENTIRE BLACKBOARD!!!” using the guest access permitted by
her Blackboard privacy settings. DA 99. Denbo also fulminated that Kenny’s syllabus “is
IDENTICAL to my syllabus and references all of my Blackboard materials.” Id. In follow-
up emails, she continued her tirade, deploying such punctuation-peppered interjections as
“UGH!!!!” and “REALLY?????????” DA 102, 105. Even though she conceded that “he
assured me that he had not posted anything yet,” she suggested that Kenny never teach at
Rider again. DA 99-100.
B. Unprecedented Discipline for Borrowing a Provided Syllabus. Rider acceded to
Denbo’s request. For the first time at Rider (as far as we know), an adjunct professor was
disciplined for using a syllabus given to him by his department chair for a course that he
was hired to substitute teach. As the Union grievance officer testified, in his thirty-eight
years at Rider, he had never seen syllabi posted with attribution. And Sprotzer conceded
that he had never heard of any university where adjuncts were given syllabi but needed to
seek further permission to use them. App. 315-16. He also admitted that Rider developed
its unwritten policy against such borrowing only after Kenny’s arbitration. App. 298-99,
315.
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Rider’s Dean sent Kenny a letter charging him with “serious unprofessional conduct”
and suspending him for the summer and fall of 2012. DA 55. Under the Collective Bar-
gaining Agreement, the Union appealed that discipline to the Provost on Kenny’s behalf.
As the Union’s letter explained, Kenny had “reasonabl[y] but inaccurate[ly] assum[ed]”
that, because Denbo made her course materials available to guests on Blackboard, she had
given implied permission to use them. DA 61. The Provost rejected these arguments and
sustained the discipline.
C. Nondisclosure in Arbitration. Kenny’s discipline went to arbitration. The Union
was not allowed to depose witnesses, but it asked for all materials collected during the
Provost’s investigation, including correspondence, emails, and Blackboard records.
The arbitration itself was never completed. The arbitrator took no evidence or testi-
mony. After Rider’s opening statement, and ten minutes into the Union’s opening, the ar-
bitrator cut off the Union’s lawyer and held a sidebar conference. When the Union’s lawyer
returned from that conference, he relayed to Kenny and to the Rider faculty’s Union rep-
resentative that the arbitrator “wanted to see a settlement,” and “gave a broad outline” of
the sort of agreement the arbitrator had in mind. DA 277. According to the Union’s lawyer,
the arbitrator felt that any settlement “needed to include [Kenny’s] suspension.” Id.
The Union’s lawyer came back to Kenny with a proposed settlement and presented it
as a fait accompli. Kenny signed it. As part of the settlement, he apologized in writing to
Denbo and accepted a suspension for the fall of 2012. Neither side admitted wrongdoing.
Since then, Rider has not offered Kenny any teaching assignments. When Kenny applied
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for unemployment compensation, Rider told the state authorities that Kenny had been sus-
pended for misconduct. So his application was denied.
D. Discovery Surfaced During This Suit. Kenny filed this suit in New Jersey state
court. He alleged that Denbo had libeled him by claiming that he had used her syllabus
without permission and that Rider had breached the settlement agreement by reporting his
suspension to the state. In discovery, three previously undisclosed emails came out. And
in depositions, both Denbo and Sprotzer admitted that Denbo had given Sprotzer the hard
copy of the syllabus so that Sprotzer could give it to Kenny. But neither Sprotzer nor Denbo
testified that Kenny was authorized to copy or to teach directly from Denbo’s syllabus.
Kenny then added a fraud count, seeking to rescind the arbitration settlement. And after
Kenny discovered emails in which Denbo questioned why the Union was defending Kenny,
he added a claim against the Union for breaching its duty of fair representation.
The Union removed this case to federal court, and all defendants moved for summary
judgment. The District Court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all counts.
We review the grant of summary judgment de novo. DiFiore v. CSL Behring, LLC, 879
F.3d 71, 75 (3d Cir. 2018).
II.
Although Rider’s and Denbo’s behavior was perhaps overheated and uncalled for in
light of the actual conduct at issue, no reasonable juror could find that it crossed the line
into legal wrongs.
A. Fraud. Though Rider did not produce three emails before arbitration, that fact can-
not support either Kenny’s legal or equitable fraud claim. Both torts require a material
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misrepresentation. Banco Popular N. Am. v. Gandi, 876 A.2d 253, 260 (N.J. 2005);
Liebling v. Garden State Indem., 767 A.2d 515, 518 (N.J. Super. Ct. App. Div. 2001). But
Kenny has produced no evidence that could justify a jury in finding a misrepresentation
here. Not turning over the three emails in question could amount to one only if Rider had
an obligation to do so. And while New Jersey does recognize that “[s]ilence in the face of
a duty to disclose may constitute a fraudulent concealment,” it imposes such a duty only in
limited circumstances. See United Jersey Bank v. Kensey, 704 A.2d 38, 43 (N.J. Super. Ct.
App. Div. 1997). This is not a case involving—at least as between Kenny and his em-
ployer—“fiduciary relationships such as principal and agent.” Id. at 44.
Nor are settlement negotiations the kind of “transactions which in their essential nature,
are intrinsically fiduciary, and necessarily call for perfect good faith and full disclosure.”
Id. (internal quotation marks and alteration omitted). In other circumstances, the New Jer-
sey courts have declined to find a quasi-fiduciary relationship when the parties act “at arms-
length, . . . in their own interest,” and stand in “essentially adversarial” positions. Id. at 44-
45 (discussing lender-borrower negotiations). All of these qualities are present in a labor
arbitration conducted, like this one, between sophisticated parties represented by counsel.
New Jersey also recognizes, however, that in some circumstances “the nature of [the
parties’] dealings, or their position towards each other,” “necessarily implie[s]” a level of
“trust and confidence” that creates a duty to disclose. Id. at 44 (internal quotation marks
omitted). And perhaps, as Kenny argues, the informal discovery that the parties engaged
in leading up to the arbitration was such a situation. See Kenny Br. 26 (“[A]fter agreeing
to discovery it was incumbent upon the University to proceed honestly and in good faith.”).
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Even if New Jersey law would imply such a duty here, it could hardly extend any further
than obligating Rider to respond in good faith to the discovery requests that the Union
actually made. If Rider’s duty to disclose arose from the Union’s request for documents,
then that duty could have extended only as far as disclosing all the documents that were
actually responsive, namely those that the Provost collected in deciding to uphold Kenny’s
discipline. As Rider and Denbo point out, the Union’s grievance officer testified under oath
that he was unaware of any responsive documents that the Provost held back. Given the
limited scope of the Union’s request, Kenny must present evidence from which a jury could
conclude that the Provost collected those three emails during the disciplinary process. Be-
cause Kenny has marshalled no such evidence, he cannot prove a misrepresentation and
his fraud claims cannot survive.
B. Libel. Kenny’s libel claim likewise fails. The District Court arguably erred in find-
ing that Denbo’s statements were mere opinion rather than factual. But “[w]e can affirm
the District Court’s grant of summary judgment on any basis supported by the record.”
United States ex rel. Spay v. CVS Caremark Corp., 875 F.3d 746, 753 (3d Cir. 2017).
Denbo’s complaints to administrators fall within a qualified privilege for reporting em-
ployees’ conduct to their supervisors. Feggans v. Billington, 677 A.2d 771, 775-77 (N.J.
Super. Ct. App. Div. 1996). Denbo sincerely believed that Kenny’s conduct amounted to
plagiarism, so her statement was not knowingly false. And her mistake about Kenny’s per-
mission does not amount to reckless disregard of the truth. See id. at 777. She did not give
the syllabus directly to him and was not completely unreasonable in believing that passing
it along to Sprotzer did not authorize verbatim copying. That is particularly true because
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the Collective Bargaining Agreement recognized syllabi as intellectual property. No rea-
sonable juror could find otherwise. So the statements are privileged, not libelous.
C. Breach of Contract. Kenny claims that Rider breached its settlement contract by
telling a partial truth. Rider told the unemployment-compensation authorities that it had
suspended Kenny for misconduct at work. He asserts that Rider should also have explained
that he had not admitted guilt. But nothing in the settlement agreement required Rider to
say anything more.
D. Duty of Fair Representation. Finally, Kenny claims that the Union breached its
duty of fair representation. That claim is time-barred. Under 29 U.S.C. § 160(b), such
claims must be brought within six months of the breach. Here, Kenny added Count Four
more than four years after the arbitration. Nor does equitable tolling apply. The Union did
not actively conceal Denbo’s email, and its reply evinces its commitment to represent him
vigorously.
*****
As the District Court suggested, Kenny had to endure not only the “outrage[ ] !!!!!” of
tenured Professor Denbo, but also a “University [that] overreacted . . . in order to placate
[that] overwrought tenured professor.” App. 33; DA 86. Regardless of how one judges the
propriety of their behavior, they did not violate the law. So we must affirm the judgment
of the District Court.
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