Morein was accepted to the doctoral program in 1989 and assigned Dr. Paul Kalata as his thesis supervisor. Morein’s field of study was focused on noise reduction in certain types of sensors.



While advising Morein, Kalata had a financial relationship with a corporation called K-Tron Corp. and took some of Morein’s work to the company. Morein and Kalata had a dispute over this, which led Morein to bring his concerns to the chair of the program, Dr. Moshe Kam.



Kam and Kalata were both named defendants along with Drexel University.



Kam refused to assign a different adviser to Morein and instead formed a committee consisting of four professors to oversee the student’s work. Morein, however, met infrequently with the committee, and the committee “did not provide him with guidance or any suggestions as to how he could prepare his thesis,” according to the opinion.



In January 1995, Morein made a presentation to the committee, which was deemed insufficient. Morein was then dismissed from the program by a unanimous vote because he had not completed the program in five years as required by the university’s rules.



Breach of Contract

In her conclusions of law, Sylvester first stated that trial courts are “reluctant to interfere in disputes between students and post-secondary institutions of learning.”



The court relied heavily on the Swartley opinion to establish that a school has a contractual obligation to its students and are bound by written guidelines and procedures, in this case, Drexel’s Graduate Bulletin.



The Bulletin provides that the faculty will “teach and direct” students. Sylvester ruled that given the guidelines outlined in the Bulletin, the defendants “unequivocally failed to meet those standards.”



The court ruled that both the committee and Kalata failed to provide guidance to Morein, therefore breaching the written contract.



“Perhaps the evidence that best shows that Dr. Kalata’s motives were less than pure vis-a-vis the plaintiff is that establishing Dr. Kalata’s financial relationship with K-Tron Corp.,” Sylvester wrote. “Instead of focusing on the plaintiff and seeing that he make progress toward achieving his doctorate degree, Dr. Kalata appropriated the plaintiff’s work and shared it with K-Tron ostensibly for both his and K-Tron’s financial gain.”



The court also said Drexel breached its contract by failing to conduct an investigation of Morein’s complaints against Kalata.



The court said that because the defendants breached the written contract the school had with its student, Morein was entitled to the amount he paid in tuition while working on his doctorate plus counsel fees.



The court said Morein also deserved to be readmitted to the program, but if he chose to do so, it would be unfair to Drexel to have to refund the tuition and reinstate Morein. The court directed Morein to chose which path to take and inform the defendants and the court.