Cases & Developments

Memorandum Opinion granting Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss. Plaintiffs, the parents of a student at Vanderbilt University who died by suicide, brought negligence, disability discrimination, and contract claims against the University, after the student made suicide attempts in Fall 2020 and Spring 2021 before his passing in Summer 2021, all in University dormitory rooms. In dismissing plaintiffs’ wrongful death claim, the court declined to find a “special relationship and resulting affirmative duty of care … where a university requires a student to live on campus, the student has reported suicidal thoughts to the university, and the student has previously attempted suicide,” noting that no Tennessee court has recognized such a duty and under an “Erie-guess” the Supreme Court of Tennessee was unlikely to do so. In dismissing their disability discrimination claims, the court noted the lack of allegation that the student had ever requested an accommodation. In dismissing their contract claim, the court found no factual allegations of an express contract or breach of an implied contract created by the student-university relationship.

Amicus Brief from the American Council on Education (ACE) and 16 other higher education associations in Zhang v. Emory University. Plaintiffs-Appellants, the parents of a 17-year-old student at Emory University who died by suicide, brought negligence claims against the University alleging that it knew or should have known that their son was at risk of suicide. After permitting limited plausibility discovery, the district court granted the University’s motion to dismiss, finding conclusory an allegation that an instructor knew that the student appeared to be suicidal prior to when he passed away. Through this amicus brief, the associations ask the Eleventh Circuit to affirm dismissal and decline to find that a university may be liable “on a negligence-based theory for a student’s suicide where there are no well-pled facts showing that the university had any knowledge that the student was considering suicide or self-harm.” The brief argues that to impose such a duty would be both inconsistent with the expectation held even by students who matriculate before the age of 18 that they be treated as autonomous adults with protected privacy interests and would otherwise hinder the higher education community’s progress in removing stigma associated with seeking mental health care.