Court Rulings

The plaintiff state police trooper appealed from the trial court's judgment for the defendant R following the granting of R's motion for summary judgment on the plaintiff's complaint, which alleged that R had transferred the plaintiff from his job in a certain work unit in retaliation for having filed a report three years earlier about another officer's sexual harassment of a female officer. The plaintiff claimed that the court improperly concluded that no genuine issue of material fact existed as to whether he had established a prima facie case of retaliation. Held: The trial court properly rendered summary judgment for R, as the plaintiff failed to establish a factual basis connecting R to the alleged retaliatory transfer, in that it was undisputed that R did not see the report until his deposition in this matter, that the plaintiff had not discussed the report with R or had any dealings at all with R, and the plaintiff's assertion that retaliatory animus on the part R could be inferred from an order that was given to another police unit to stop cooperating with the plaintiff's work unit was merely speculative, the plaintiff having presented no evidence that it was the defendant, rather than another supervisor, who gave the order or that the plaintiff was the target of the alleged retaliatory animus. Argued June 4—officially released September 2, 2025

This appeal arises from a complaint filed by a faculty member against The Vanderbilt University (\Vanderbilt\) after Vanderbilt rejected her applications for promotion and tenure during the academic years 2015-16 and 2018-19. The faculty member initially alleged one count each of gender discrimination, retaliation, and breach of contract but subsequently amended her complaint to omit the gender discrimination and retaliation claims. Concerning her breach of contract claim, the faculty member alleged that Vanderbilt had not followed its own policies and procedures for promotion and tenure when reviewing her tenure file and had shown bias against her, thus exhibiting a substantial departure from accepted academic norms and procedural regularity. After discovery, the parties filed competing motions for summary judgment. The trial court adopted this Court's deferential standard for reviewing promotion and tenure decisions by academic institutions as set forth in Figal v. Vanderbilt Univ., No. M2012-02516-COA-R3-CV, 2013 WL 5459021 (Tenn. Ct. App. Sept. 27, 2013), and determined that Vanderbilt had not exhibited a substantial departure from accepted academic norms or procedural regularity in denying tenure to the faculty member. The trial court then determined that Vanderbilt had met its burden of negating an essential element of the breach of contract claim because the evidence was insufficient to establish that Vanderbilt had failed to follow its own tenure review process. The trial court further determined that the faculty member had failed to establish undisputed material facts that would entitle her to summary judgment. Accordingly, the trial court denied the faculty member's motion for summary judgment, granted Vanderbilt's motion for summary judgment, and dismissed the case with prejudice. The faculty member timely appealed. Discerning no reversible error, we affirm.