Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District in Kansas City
KANSAS CITY — The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, has revived two breach-of-contract theories brought by a former University of Missouri-Kansas City student, finding that his allegations regarding how the university calculated his science grade-point average were sufficient to proceed.
The court otherwise upheld the dismissal of Joshua Carter’s remaining contract theories and returned the case to Jackson County Circuit Court for further proceedings.
In an Aug. 4 opinion, a three-judge panel ruled that Carter adequately alleged UMKC failed to honor two specific promises connected to an alternative curriculum plan he was required to follow after receiving a D in Cell Biology during the summer of 2012.
The court said Missouri’s five-year statute of limitations did not bar Carter’s claims concerning the treatment of repeated courses and biology electives because he did not learn of the alleged GPA-calculation breaches until 2013.
Carter enrolled in UMKC’s joint B.A./M.D. program in August 2011.
The six-year program offered an accelerated path to a medical degree.
After completing his first year, Carter took several Year 2 courses during the following summer and received a D in Cell Biology, which was required to advance from Year 2 to Year 3.
UMKC faculty told Carter in August 2012 that he would not advance to Year 2 and instead would have to complete an alternative curriculum plan that would extend his program by an additional year.
Carter objected, citing the program manual’s provisions that identified Cell Biology as a Year 2 course and provided for academic probation rather than an alternative plan in the event a student failed a required Year 2 course.
The finalized plan required Carter to repeat Cell Biology and Functional Anatomy, a Year 1 course in which he had received a C and to take three biology electives not required on the ordinary program track. Carter received A grades in all five courses.
The appeals court said Carter’s petition identified two sufficiently concrete representations by UMKC.
The program manual stated that when a science course is repeated, only the final grade would be used in the science GPA calculation and the initial grade would be dropped from the cumulative science calculation.
Carter also alleged that the email containing his alternative curriculum plan represented that the three biology electives would be included in his science GPA.
According to the opinion, Carter learned on March 8, 2013, that his new Functional Anatomy grade would not count because his original C was not eligible for replacement.
He later learned that the electives would not be included in the program’s science GPA calculation, and that his second Cell Biology grade would be averaged with his original D rather than fully replacing it.
The court concluded that the manual’s grade-replacement policy and the alleged written promise about the biology electives required identifiable action by UMKC and could support breach-of-contract claims.
It also said Carter had alleged damages because, if the GPA had been calculated as promised, he claimed he would have remained above the program’s required 2.80 science GPA threshold and continued toward an M.D. degree.
Carter ultimately withdrew from the program after his science GPA fell below that threshold. He graduated from UMKC with an undergraduate degree in biology in December 2014.
The court rejected Carter’s claim that UMKC’s decision to place him on the alternative curriculum plan was timely.
It said Carter recognized in August 2012 that the plan conflicted with the manual and would add a year to his education, giving him notice of a potential claim more than five years before he first filed suit on March 2, 2018.
The panel also upheld dismissal of Carter’s theories involving medical-school accreditation and his transcript.
Carter alleged that the first two years of the joint program were not accredited as medical-school curriculum and that UMKC improperly included all coursework in his undergraduate GPA.
The court found his petition did not show UMKC promised that all six years would be accredited as medical school or that it had made a specific promise about reporting separate GPAs within a single joint program.
Judge Mark D. Pfeiffer wrote the opinion, joined by Presiding Judge Gary D. Witt and Judge Thomas N. Chapman.
Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District case number: WD87975
