Student suicide: Who's liable?

NEA Today, Feb 1999 by Simpson, Michael D

The suicide of a child is an unthink. able tragedy. But can parents hold school employees legally liable?

Stephen was in second grade when he hanged himself. He used a belt tied to the safety rail of his bunk bed. In the lawsuit that followed, Stephen's parents blamed his teacher-among others-for their son's death.

On the day he committed suicide, Stephen and his classmates in a Michigan elementary school were shown the film Nobody's Useless. It was supposed to teach self-esteem.

The movie depicts the story of a young amputee who becomes so depressed that he tries to kill himself-by hanging. The fictionalized boy's life is changed when he learns from an older friend how to deal with his disability.

Stephen's parents argued that the teacher should be made to pay because the movie was inappropriate for second graders and caused their son's death.

In a 1994 decision, the Michigan Court of Appeals threw out the lawsuit, holding that parents can't sue teachers or other school officials for using an "allegedly improper teaching device."

Unfortunately, the Michigan case is not unique. In recent years, parents have filed a slew of court actions trying to hold school employees legally liable for student suicides.

The results are mixed. Courts in at least five states have rejected these kinds of cases. But courts in three others have ruled that, in certain circumstances, school employees' failure to act can make them or the school legally responsible for a student's suicide.

In a case from New Mexico decided by a federal appeals court last fall, a 16-year-old special ed student shot himself after being suspended for threatening a teacher.

The court ruled that the school principal and counselor could be held liable if, as the parents alleged, they took the student home knowing he was suicidal, alone, and had access to firearms, and yet failed to notify his parents.

In a 1997 Florida case, another federal appeals court held the Polk County School Board partially responsible for the suicide of a 13year-old. The court said school offcials were negligent because they knew that the student twice had tried to hang himself at school, but neglected to inform his parents.

And the Maryland Court of Appeals ruled in 1991 that two school counselors could be liable for the suicide of a 13-year-old because they failed to call her parents after hearing from her friends that she intended to kill herself.

The counselors' concern about maintaining student confidences, the court added, didn't excuse their failure to notify the parents.

But courts in other states have refused to impose liability in these kinds of cases, primarily because of state laws granting immunity to public schools and their employees. For example:

An Illinois appellate court in 1997 absolved a school counselor of legal liability where the counselor failed to tell the student's parents about his threats of suicide.

The Idaho Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that an English teacher and her school district were immune from liability, despite allegations that the teacher had read entries in the student's journal assignment that indicated he was contemplating suicide.

In a 1996 Minnesota case, the court ruled that a school counselor was not responsible for a ninth grader's suicide even though the counselor decided not to tell the parents that the student had written an essay for her English class about a teenage girl committing suicide.

* And a Texas court held in 1995 that good faith immunity precluded parents' claim that school officials caused their daughter's suicide by expelling her from school for selling drugs.

As these decisions illustrate, the answer to the question whether a school employee can be held legally liable for a student's suicide varies from state to state.

All of the cases that imposed liability, however, involved employees who failed to notify parents that their children had written or talked to others about killing themselves.

The obvious lesson here is that teachers and counselors ought to alert parents if students show any sign of contemplating suicide, even if it means possibly breaching a student's confidence.

The Code of Ethics for the American School Counselors Association explicitly permits disclosure when there may be "clear and imminent danger" to the student or others. In addition, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a school district lawfully can. punish a counselor for failing to report a student's "suicidal tendencies."

-Michael D. Simpson NEA Office of General Counsel