Remote Students v. Student Records
73 U.Va. 11 (2020)
Justice Re delivered the opinion of the Court.
This case requires us to consider whether the Law School has jurisdiction to enter grades against remote students. Because remote students no longer have minimum contacts with the School, we hold that the School lacks jurisdiction to grade remote students.
I
A class of remote law students requested an injunction preventing Student Records from entering grades.[1] The Court of Hopeless Pleas, which has jurisdiction over challenges to the actions of Student Records, conducted a trial and entered final judgment in favor of Student Records, thus allowing grades to be entered. Section 3 of the “Trying to Make Class Registration Less Horrible” Act (“TTMCRLHA”) allows for direct appeal to this Court in cases seeking to enjoin Student Records. The remote students appealed under § 3 of the TTMCRLHA.[2] We now reverse.
II
It may be helpful first to review the development of this Court’s jurisdictional doctrine. In Annoyer v. Jeff, 9 U.Va. 714 (1878), the Court held that the Law School’s jurisdiction was strictly limited to its territorial boundaries. Annoyer arose when a 2L named Jeff was repeatedly annoyed by an undergrad (named “Annoyer” by the Court t0 protect his anonymity) while Jeff was trying to read for class at a tavern downtown. Jeff asked the Law School to tell Annoyer to stop, but the Annoyer Court found that the Law School was powerless to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over Annoyer, who had no connection to the Law School. Unlike other undergrads, he had never even studied in the Law Library during finals or taken our free coffee.
While Annoyer has not been overruled, the Court has significantly modified its rigidly territorial focus. The canonical opinion in this area remains Intramural Shoe Co. v. North Grounds Softball League, 32 U.Va. 310 (1945), in which we held that the School may exercise jurisdiction over someone not present on the Law School’s grounds if that person has “certain minimum contacts with [the School] such that the Law School’s action does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.” Intramural Shoe arose when Intramural Shoe Company, which specialized in selling athletic shoes to intramural college athletes, was sued by the North Grounds Softball League. Intramural Shoe had employed traveling salesmen to market its shoes to law students present at the UVA Law Softball Invitational.[3] The salesman had claimed that their shoes were so sturdy that “you won’t slip, even if you’ve had a bunch of beer.” Id. at 317. Some of the athletes tested this claim, found it to be false, and sued, claiming that Intramural Shoe had lied, in violation of the Honor Code. Id. at 322. The Court held that the Honor Code could be applied against Intramural Shoe because its contacts with the School were “continuous and systematic.” Id. at 341.
III
Turning to the case at hand, we must apply the Intramural Shoe standard to the students. Beyond the couple Tweets we saw, see supra, at n. 1 and n. 2, we have been unable to obtain further briefing from the remote students. Far from leading us to enter a default judgment against the students, we think it kind of proves their case. They exist in a happy state. Once the initial disappointment of the world ending wore off, they were allowed something that few law students are ever granted: forgetting that they are students during the semester. Sure, there is the occasional rude interruption of a Zoom class or the rare email that requires a response, but those invasions are few and far between. Certainly, those rare contacts with the School fall short of the “continuous and systematic” contacts required by Intramural Shoe. 32 U.Va. at 320.
While this case has barely gotten the attention of the plaintiff-appellants, it has attracted significant interest from various amici. Some have argued that grades and opportunities to compete against each other should absolutely continue. See Brief for Association of Gunners as Amicus Curiae 45 (“We thought that getting high scores on the LSAT would finally give us lasting self-worth, but the high faded. It is bad enough that we can only prove ourselves superior to our peers once a semester. Asking clever questions in class is okay, but only a curved grade gives real, empirical proof that we are not the hoi polloi.”). See also Brief for Cravath et al. as Amici Curiae 5-6 (“Without an updated and thorough GPA, the interviewers we send to OCI [sic] may actually be required to listen to the answers applicants give during interviews. This is too much to ask. The current system of asking formulaic questions, nodding politely through the response, and then accepting or rejecting the applicant based solely on GPA works well.”). Some amici, however, support the students’ request for an injunction. See Brief for Scholars of the UVA Law Faculty as Amici Curiae 11 [“Please, please, don’t make us grade these exams. It’s awful. We have to read 70 (usually incorrect) answers to the same fact pattern. There are so many typos. And most of us just base our grade on who wrote the most anyway. The rest of us throw all the exams down the stairs and give grades based on where they land.”].
One objection raised by Student Records was the issue of degrees: If the School cannot enter grades against students, how can it award degrees? The answer to this is simply that our jurisdictional constraints exist to prevent parties from being adversely affected by the School if they lack minimum contacts. We can take judicial notice of the fact that grades are always a hostile and adverse action taken against students, notwithstanding the claims in the Brief from the Association of Gunners.
* * *
Because remote students lack minimum contacts with the Law School, it would offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice to allow Student Records to enter grades against them. The judgment of the Court of Hopeless Pleas is reversed, and the case is remanded for the entry of an appropriate decree in accordance with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
---
wdr3mq@virginia.edu
[1] Technically, they didn’t file a complaint as much as a bunch of remote students hearted a Tweet that said, “I haven’t been to the law school in months. I don’t want to get graded on a bunch of exams! I wish they’d just let us graduate without grading us.” Several users, in addition to hearting the Tweet, posted a clapping-hands emoji and wrote, “This ^^”, in response. The lower court found that this constituted a complaint with a prayer for relief from a cohesive class of plaintiffs.
[2] It was another Tweet.
[3] R.I.P.