Sain v. Cedar Rapids Community School District

626 N.W.2d 115 (2001)

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Nature of the Case

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Facts

P attended Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids during his junior and senior years. P was a member of the varsity basketball team and maintained aspirations of receiving a scholarship to play basketball for a major college. He received many basketball accolades and awards during high school, including selection to the all-state basketball team. P's guidance counselor was Larry Bowen. Bowen was generally familiar with the high school credits and course requirements imposed by the NCAA for incoming student-athletes to be eligible to compete in sports as a freshman at those Division I institutions which maintain membership in the NCAA. In part, a student was required to complete three years of English courses approved by the NCAA, as well as core courses in mathematics, science, and the social sciences. The NCAA maintains a list of high school courses for each school which satisfy the core course requirements for each discipline. This list is known as Form 48-H. A high school submits the courses it offers to students to the NCAA for approval. A separate organization known as the NCAA Initial Eligibility Clearinghouse is responsible for evaluating and approving the courses submitted. The Clearinghouse identifies for each high school those courses which qualify as core courses and updates the list annually to reflect any changes or additions. This list is sent to each high school by the Clearinghouse. P needed to take three approved English courses during the three trimesters of his senior year to meet the NCAA core course requirements for English. P was dissatisfied with one of the classes and met with Bowen to determine if he could drop it and add another English course. Bowen suggested he take 'Technical Communications.' It was a course in modern communications offered by the school district for the first time during the 1995-96 school year. Bowen told P that the course would be approved by the NCAA as a core English course. P subsequently dropped 'English Literature' from his schedule and enrolled in the 'Technical Communications' course. He satisfactorily completed the course, as well as another English course during the final trimester. The school failed to include the 'Technical Communications' course on the list of classes submitted to the NCAA for approval. Although the high school typically submitted a list of its courses each year to the NCAA, it left the 'Technical Communications' course off the list it submitted in 1995. The course was not approved by the Clearinghouse and was not included on Form 48-H. However, the course had been approved by two of the three state universities in Iowa as a core English course. It was also approved by the National Council of Teachers of English. P was offered and accepted a full five-year basketball scholarship at Northern Illinois University beginning in the fall semester of 1996. Shortly after graduation, P received a letter from the NCAA Clearinghouse. The Clearinghouse informed P that the 'Technical Communications' course he took during the second trimester did not satisfy the core English requirements. P fell one-third credit short of the core English requirements to participate in Division I basketball as a freshman. P requested a waiver from the NCAA. The request was denied, and P lost his scholarship. P sued D for negligence and negligent misrepresentation under the Restatement (Second) of Torts section 552(1) (1977). D moved for summary judgment. The district court granted the motion. It found the negligence theory was a claim for educational malpractice and determined the claim was required to be dismissed because a school counselor has no duty to a student as a matter of law to use reasonable care in providing course information. It also found the claim for negligent misrepresentation did not apply to an educational setting but was limited to commercial or business transactions. D appealed.