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Abstract: 

Sometimes a foolish person can turn a minor infraction into a serious act of misconduct just by lying about what happened. This was certainly true in Gati v. University of Pittsburgh. Gati, a dental student, was dismissed from the school shortly before graduation for falsifying a form (a patient had consented to a dental procedure Gati was to perform, but forgot to sign the required consent form, and Gati signed it instead). Gati sought an injunction annulling the dismissal and directing the medical school to graduate him on time. The school’s defense rested on clear and thorough policies and procedures, set forth in the school’s handbook on academic integrity. In another case challenging a dismissal, a student alleged that his suspension from the college hockey team without a formal hearing breached an implied contract (the College Handbook) as well as the school’s fiduciary duty to the student; the school’s defense persuaded the court that the handbook was not a contract under the generally understood meaning and that a college’s duty to educate did not entail a fiduciary duty per se.

Keywords: Gati v. University of Pittsburgh; Knelman v. Middlebury College

Affiliations:  1: Co-Editor; 2: Co-Editor.