Decision allows parents to seek damages from university employees
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Article: A Film Delves Into Student Suicides
A Massachusetts judge has handed down a key ruling in a student-suicide lawsuit against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, stirring concerns among some college officials that the case heralds a storm of wrongful-death litigation.
In late June, the judge ruled that the parents of Elizabeth H. Shin, an MIT student who committed suicide on the campus in 2000, can proceed with their claims against MIT administrators and staff members for failing to prevent her death, although the plaintiffs cannot seek damages from MIT itself.
Ms. Shin’s parents originally sought $27.7-million from the institution, administrators, and members of MIT’s medical staff. The ruling clears the way for a jury trial.
In recent years an increasing number of costly lawsuits arising from student deaths have alarmed administrators throughout academe. Although colleges and their employees generally have not been held liable for student suicides, the judge’s decision indicates that the legal responsibilities of colleges in student-suicide cases could expand, at least in some circumstances.
In her June 27 order, Judge Christine M. McEvoy of the Middlesex Superior Court ruled that Ms. Shin’s parents had presented sufficient evidence to try two administrators and four medical employees for negligence in her death. Judge McEvoy ruled that two administrators -- Dean A. Henderson and Nina Davis-Millis -- had a “special relationship” with Ms. Shin, allowing them to “reasonably foresee” that she would harm herself unless they intervened.
The decision was not a complete loss for MIT. Judge McEvoy dismissed all claims against the institution, as well as some of the claims against individual administrators and staff members.
Nonetheless, the plaintiffs’ partial victory has worried some campus legal experts.
“By allowing the Shin family to have a foot in the courthouse, it will encourage others to seek a similar resolution,” says Sheldon E. Steinbach, vice president and general counsel at the American Council on Education, the umbrella group for higher-education associations. “It increases the scope of liability, the expansion of the blame game, and the potential for suits solely designed for settlement.”
‘Imminent Probability’
Not everyone thinks the case will cause new headaches for college officials. David A. DeLuca, a Quincy, Mass., lawyer representing Ms. Shin’s parents, scoffs at the notion that the judge’s ruling spells doom for academe.
“There’s no sense from this decision that a university administrator has an absolute duty to ensure the safety of all students under all circumstances,” Mr. DeLuca says.
But, as he notes, the circumstances of suicides vary. The judge’s ruling suggests that a case in which a student kills himself without alerting anyone about his immediate intentions would differ from a case in which a student had told others of his plans.
Mr. DeLuca has argued that MIT officials were negligent in Ms. Shin’s death because they knew of her suicide threats but did not immediately attempt to help her on the day she died. Had the defendants in the case hospitalized Ms. Shin, called her parents, or gone to her dormitory room, the lawyer believes, the student might not have taken her life.
“There was a need for them to respond in a much more aggressive way,” Mr. DeLuca says.
Ms. Shin, who enrolled at MIT in 1998, first experienced psychiatric problems on the campus during the spring of her freshman year, according to court records. In 1999 she spent a week in a Belmont, Mass., hospital after overdosing on Tylenol with codeine. Ms. Shin told psychiatrists there that she had mental-health problems and had cut herself deliberately while she was in high school.
After returning to MIT, Ms. Shin received treatment from numerous campus psychiatrists through the spring of her sophomore year.
On April 10, 2000, Ms. Shin told two students in her dormitory that she planned to kill herself that day -- a threat she reiterated to her dorm supervisor. At a meeting later that morning, MIT deans and psychiatrists discussed Ms. Shin’s condition, including her statements about committing suicide.
Although it is contested what, if any, treatment options were discussed at the meeting, one MIT psychiatrist scheduled an appointment for Ms. Shin at a nearby psychiatric facility for the following day, according to the judge’s ruling. The psychiatrist also left Ms. Shin a voice-mail message in which he informed her of the appointment and told her that he was available for the rest of the day.
That night Ms. Shin set herself on fire inside her room. She died three days later.
In her ruling, Judge McEvoy wrote that the MIT officials had a duty to Ms. Shin because they knew of her mental-health problems and threats to kill herself. The plaintiffs, the judge wrote, had provided sufficient evidence that MIT officials “failed to secure Elizabeth’s short-term safety ... by not formulating and enacting an immediate plan” in response to those threats on the day she died.
The judge based her conclusion on Schieszler v. Ferrum College, a 2002 student-suicide case. In that decision, a federal court in Virginia found that Ferrum officials had had a legal duty to ensure the safety of the deceased student, Michael Frentzel, because they knew of the “imminent probability” that he would try to harm himself.
Shortly before his death, Mr. Frentzel had sent a note to his girlfriend indicating that he planned to hang himself. Days later, he sent her another note stating that “only God can help me now.” Mr. Frentzel’s girlfriend had given both notes to an administrator, after which the student hanged himself in his dorm room.
In 2003 Ferrum settled the lawsuit with Mr. Frentzel’s family, admitting “shared responsibility” for his suicide -- the first such acknowledgment by an American college.
A Potential Landmark
Gary Pavela, director of student judicial programs and student ethical development at the University of Maryland at College Park and the editor of a weekly newsletter on campus legal issues, says the cases at Ferrum and MIT have national implications.
“Some would say there is a problem in terms of underreaction on the part of administrators to a known suicide threat or attempt,” Mr. Pavela says. “What these cases are saying is that one should err on the side of overreaction.”
Although a lower court’s ruling in one state does not establish a national precedent, Mr. Pavela says the MIT ruling increased the likelihood that the “imminent probability” theory would gain cachet nationally.
However, similar wrongful-death lawsuits decided recently have not increased colleges’ legal responsibilities. In 2000, for instance, the Iowa Supreme Court found that officials at the University of Iowa had no duty to notify parents that their son was in “impending danger” before he took his own life.
Peter F. Lake, a law professor at Stetson University and co-author of The Rights and Responsibilities of the Modern University: Who Assumes the Risks of College Life? (Carolina Academic Press, 1999), says the MIT case would help clarify the legal framework for suicide cases.
One possible outcome: Colleges will see more lawsuits and administrators will spend more time in courthouses.
“If we apply a general foreseeability rule to suicides, it’s off to the races on the mental-health responsibilities” of colleges, Mr. Lake says. “A lot of administrators are going to win these cases, but it’s quite a burden.”
It is too soon to tell how the outcome of the Shins’ lawsuit might affect campus mental-health policies for depressed and suicidal students.
A spokeswoman for MIT says officials there are not commenting on the case. Last month the university released a written statement expressing disappointment that the judge had allowed the Shins’ lawsuit against the deans and employees to proceed.
“The death of Elizabeth Shin was a tragedy -- for this bright young woman, her family and friends, and all those at MIT who tried to help her,” the statement says. “But it was not the fault of MIT or anyone who works at MIT. The Institute will continue its defense of the members of its community who tried to help her.”
http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 51, Issue 49, Page A1