A lawsuit filed by the
parents of a mentally-disabled student who committed suicide last October
claims that it can.
Apparently, the 17-year-old student was bullied nearly
constantly while at school. The allegations are quite upsetting, claiming that
he was pushed down stairs, spit on, struck, and verbally harassed.
The student had Asperger’s syndrome, an autism-spectrum
disorder which is characterized by severe social anxiety. The bullying appeared
to have been motivated, at least in part, by the student’s mental disability,
which made it quite difficult for him to fit in among his peers.
The lawsuit claims that the school did nothing to stop the
bullying, and ignored repeated warnings.
Suing schools over bullying is a relatively new phenomenon.
This is partly because the severe psychological damage that bullying can cause
has not always been well-understood. What would have once been written off as
“boys being boys” is now a cause for serious concern, given the effects it can
have on a child’s short-term safety, and how they function as a member of
society in the long term.
With that in mind, it seems perfectly reasonable to hold
schools responsible when they fail to do anything to mitigate bullying or
harassment. Still, the notion of suing for wrongful death in the case of
suicide does raise some interesting legal issues.
Generally, when suing someone for wrongful death, or any
other form of negligence, the plaintiff has to show that the negligent conduct
of the defendant was the proximate cause of the harm suffered by the defendant.
“Proximate cause” essentially means that the causal chain is not so long and
attenuated that there was no way for the defendant to have foreseen that its
conduct would have such consequences.
When a person dies by their own hand, no matter how clear
their motivations were, some people are very uncomfortable with holding a third
party legally responsible for that person’s death. “After all,” they might say
“that person made an affirmative choice to commit suicide.”
This argument is tempting, but it doesn’t really hold water.
It’s well known that severe depression, and other forms of distress, can weigh
so heavily on a person that they truly feel like suicide is the only option.
Some people can be pushed to a point where suicide, without intervention, is
all but inevitable.
Accordingly, if the allegations against the school are
correct (that they knew about the bullying and did little or nothing to stop
it), and a student commits suicide because of the bullying (and it can be
proven that bullying was, in fact, the main cause), the school can and should
be held liable.
Remember, schools serve in
locus parentis, (in the place of the parents). From a legal standpoint,
schools, while the students are in their custody, have all of the same
responsibilities as parents. And it should go without saying that parents have
a duty to keep their children safe, to the extent possible.
Of course, schools can’t, and are not required, to ensure
that everyone on school property is 100% safe 100% of the time. They are,
however, responsible for taking reasonable steps to bring the risks that
students face when the walk through the school doors down to an acceptable
level.
Given all we know about bullying, and the effects it can have on a person, taking an aggressive, zero-tolerance approach to the problem seems like a perfectly reasonable step.
By: Rusty Shackleford
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