Myth in a Work of Art Peter

¶ … Myth in a Work of Art Peter Dalton, Respondent, vs. Educational Testing Service, Appellant Court of Appeals of New York, Dec. 7, 1995 The facts of the case, as presented by the chief judge, are as follows. In May 1991, Brian Dalton took the SAT administered by the ETS (Educational Testing Service), obtaining a very low score. Subsequently, in November 1991, he took the test a second time, scoring this time over 350 point more than he had previously done.

As the results fell into a "Large Score Differences" category, ETS found it appropriate to review the two test sheets, to submit them to a document examiner who opined that they had been completed by two different individuals.

As specified in the Registration Bulletin, ground material to which Dalton had agreed to in a written statement, the test score was cancelled for reason of question its validity and Dalton was presented with five options, of which he chose the first one: "the opportunity to provide additional information." ETS employed a second document examiner who sustained the first opinion of invalidity and continued to deny the November score release, at which point Peter Dalton, Brian Dalton's father, filed an action at law.

The issue of the case is whether ETS breached its contractual agreement that stipulated it would consider any additional information provided by the student. The trial court and the Appellate Division both concluded that ETS ignored the documentation provided and took into consideration only the facts supplied by the two document examiners. As a remedy for the contractual breech, an immediate release of the November score was ordered. The discussion around the issue raised revolves around the contractual agreement between ETS and Dalton.

The question is whether the breach of contract did or did not occur based on the fact that Dalton chose to exercise one of the options provided for him. Previous cases, such as Yaeger vs. ETS, gave no problems when none of the options was exercised and had not ruled in favor of the plaintiff.

The facts of the case showed that Dalton had provided several additional information (with respect to his exercising option number one), such as statements from felloe test-takers and statement from the classroom proctor, all very relevant to the suspected impersonation issue. However, ETS failed to take any of it into consideration on account of irrelevancy and based its decision solely on the examination provided by the two document examiners it had hired.

As such, in agreement with the decisions of the trial court and the Appellate Division, the Court of Appeals ruled that there was indeed a breach in the contractual agreement, provided by the fact that ETC did not fulfill its part of the contract and did not examine the additional information provided by Dalton. However, opposite to the decisions of the lesser court, the Court of Appeals found.