Types of Contracts. Professor Dixon was an adjunct professor at Tulsa Community College (TCC) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each semester, near the beginning of the term, the parties executed a written contract that always included the following provision: "It is

Question

agreed that this agreement may be cancelled by the Administration or the instructor at anytime before the first class session." In the spring semester of Dixon's seventh year, he filed a complaint with TCC alleging that one of his students, Meredith Bhuiyan, had engaged in disruptive classroom conduct. He gave her an "incomplete" grade and asked TCC to require her to apologize as a condition of receiving a final grade. TCC later claimed, and Dixon denied, that he was told to assign Bhuiyan a grade if he wanted to teach in the fall. Toward the end of the semester, Dixon was told which classes he would teach in the fall, but the parties did not sign a written contract. The Friday before classes began, TCC terminated him. Dixon filed a suit in an Oklahoma state court against TCC and others, alleging breach of contract. Did the parties have a contract? If so, did TCC breach it? Explain.

Answer 1

Types of contracts
The trial court ruled in favor of TCC, and on Dixon's appeal, a state intermediate appellate court upheld the ruling. Dixon appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which affirmed the trial court's decision. The state supreme court concluded that "the employment relationship between Dixon and TCC for the fall . . . semester is impliedly contractual." The court explained, "When determining whether an implied contract exists, the Court will consider . . . the parties' acts, conduct and statements as a whole," among other factors. As evidence of the contract in this case, the court pointed out that in the spring, TCC told Dixon the classes he would teach in the fall and later told him that he had to clear up the Bhuiyan grade-dispute as a condition. The court also reasoned that "there would have been no need to terminate Dixon's employment if he had not been hired in the first place." But TCC did not breach the contract when it fired Dixon because every contract between the parties gave either of them "the right to terminate their contract for any reason before the first class of the fall semester . . . . There is no rationale offered nor can any be implied from the record that Dixon's hiring for the . . . fall semester would have been on a different basis."