Top NC court asked to clarify school’s liability for suicidal student

It’s rare for a school to face legal liability for a student’s actions off campus.

But North Carolina’s highest court could decide soon whether to take a case addressing a school’s alleged role in failing to prevent a student’s suicide. The case pits the student’s parents against the Southern Wake Academy charter school.

“A school learns that its thirteen-year-old student, Silas, is suicidal,” according to an Oct. 6 North Carolina Supreme Court petition. “Teachers, administrators, and the school social worker all receive the warning. Two teachers remove Silas from class to question him about it. But no one tells his parents. Eight days later, Silas dies by suicide at home.”

Lower courts have ruled against parents Sabin Tulachan and Mary Raynor.

“The Court of Appeals held that, on those facts, the school owed no common-law duty to notify the parents about what it knew,” the petition continued. “Its reason was not that the danger was unforeseeable, that parental notification would have been burdensome, or that the school lacked an opportunity to act. The panel instead focused on where the suicide ultimately occurred.”

“Because Silas Tulachan died at home rather than at school, the panel concluded that Southern Wake Academy lacked the ‘ability and opportunity to control’ him at the moment of his death,” the parents’ lawyers wrote.

“The Court’s holding misses the point as to why schools across the country have a duty to notify parents when their children are considering suicide,” the petition continued. “Once the student leaves the school, the student’s parents need to know that their child is suicidal so they can prevent the suicide. It’s because of the risk of off-campus suicide, not in spite of it, that parental notification is necessary.”

The state Appeals Court “creates a categorical rule with horrible consequences,” the parents’ lawyers wrote. “Whether a school owes a duty to notify parents cannot sensibly depend on a fact that occurs days later and that no one can know when the duty to notify arises. The question is what ordinary care required when the School possessed life-or-death information about a child then in its custody. A parental-notification duty necessarily operates before the child leaves school, precisely so that parents can protect the child afterward.”

The parents accused appellate judges of misreading a 2006 precedent involving “whether a school had a duty to control dangerous students for the protection of an unrelated motorist after those students left school custody,” the petition explained. “This case involves something fundamentally different: the school’s relationship with its own student and a duty to communicate information to his parents during the school day.”

“The resulting rule matters far beyond this case,” the parents’ lawyers wrote. “Schools routinely learn information about children that their parents do not know, and suicidal ideation is often concealed from parents. Whether the common law requires a school to exercise ordinary care by passing such information to parents is an important question of state jurisprudence and public concern. It should not turn on the happenstance of where a child later dies.”

Southern Wake Academy urged justices to uphold lower court rulings.

“Having failed to persuade the Court of Appeals to radically expand a school’s common law duty to its students, [Silas’ estate] now asks this Court to reach a conclusion no North Carolina appellate court has reached: that a school can be liable for negligence due to a student’s suicide that occurred outside the school’s control,” the school argued.

“The Court of Appeals’ affirmance of schools’ longstanding common law duties is of little significance to the jurisprudence of this State, as evidenced by the Court of Appeals’ decision not to publish its opinion and in its nearly unanimous denial of the Estate’s motion for rehearing en banc,” a Southern Wake court filing explained.

The appellate decision “merely affirmed the common law and did not conflict with any decision of this Court,” the school argued.

“Finally, the Estate attempts to clothe the denial of its complaint with ‘significant public interest’ by implying that student safety depends on its prevailing in this action,” the court filing explained. “[T]he Court of Appeals’ decision does nothing to reduce a school’s duties to its students or impair the availability of redress when schools fail to discharge those duties.”

Lower courts have ruled for the school and against the parents. The state Supreme Court faces no obligation to take the case. Justices will choose whether to weigh competing legal arguments about the duty a school owes to parents of children battling suicidal thoughts.

Mitch Kokai is senior political analyst for the John Locke Foundation.