Pomona College v. Superior Court

Petitioner, Pomona College, seeks a writ of mandate directing the superior court to set aside its order overruling Pomona’s demurrer to the complaint of real party Andrew Corin.

Corin filed a complaint for damages, claiming wrongful termination and breach of contract and of implied covenants after Pomona declined to offer him lifetime academic tenure as a college professor. Pomona demurred on the ground that Corin’s exclusive remedy is administrative mandamus review under Code of Civil Procedure section 1094.5. We conclude that mandamus review is the exclusive remedy and that the superior court should have sustained without leave to amend Pomona’s demurrer to Corin’s operative complaint. We therefore grant the writ.

I. Factual and Procedural Background

Pomona employed Corin as an assistant professor in the department of modem languages and literature from March 1987 to July 1994. (His chosen field of scholarship is Serbo-Croatian linguistics—historical as well as synchronic-descriptive—and philological research, with a particular emphasis on Old Church Slavonic. Corin taught courses primarily in Russian language and historical linguistics.)

Upon learning that he would…