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ERIC Number: EJ1224882
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2019-Sep
Pages: 4
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0164-775X
EISSN: N/A
Liability for Student Suicide: An Updated Empirical Analysis of the Case Law
Zirkel, Perry A.
Communique, v48 n1 p1, 28, 30-31 Sep 2019
Suicide rates among teenagers have increased significantly in recent years. The professional literature for public school personnel has been increasingly extensive. Yet, the corresponding coverage of liability case law regarding student suicide has been far from systematic and objective. An article in a legal periodical, written by Zirkel and Fossey (2005), reported the rulings for eighteen court decisions from 1991 until early 2005 concerning student suicide in the K-12 context. The purpose of this article is to provide an analysis of the frequency and outcome trends of the student suicide cases for the subsequent 14-year period from early 2005, when the predecessor article's coverage ended, until early 2019. Per the method of the predecessor article, the pool of potentially pertinent cases resulted from a Boolean search of the Westlaw database of court decisions, using various combinations of "suicide," "school," and "student." The selection criteria remained the same as the earlier analysis, with two minor refinements. First, the exclusions extended from not only decisions in the private school context and attempted suicides but also decisions limited to threshold adjudicative issues, such as whether the plaintiff-parents had to exhaust available administrative remedies before proceeding to court or consequences other than monetary liability, such as employee discipline. Second and subject to less clear boundary lines, the exclusions also extended to suicide cases in which the legal claims appeared to be limited to bullying and those in which the student's death may have been accidental. The aforementioned search and selection process resulted in 44 cases containing 79 rulings. The findings of this update continue and confirm the frequency and outcomes trend of the earlier analysis of liability case law specific to student suicide (Fossey and Zirkel 2005). These findings are in clear contrast to the scarce and skewed coverage in the professional literature in school psychology and related fields. Contrary to the previous literature and prevailing perception, legal liability in the wake of student suicide is not a primary concern. The outcome odds for plaintiffs are low against school districts and--based on the deeper pockets of the district and the lesser legal bases applicable to individual defendants--negligible for school psychologists or other district employees.
National Association of School Psychologists. 4340 East West Highway Suite 402, Bethesda, MD 20814. Tel: 301-657-0270; Fax: 301-657-0275; e-mail: publications@naspweb.org; Web site: http://www.nasponline.org/publications/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Laws, Policies, & Programs: Fourteenth Amendment; Americans with Disabilities Act 1990
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A