Written by: Barbara Lauren
Published: 04/05/2006

MIT Student Suicide Case Settled Out of Court

MIT student Elizabeth Shin committed suicide by setting herself on fire in her dorm room in 2000. In 2002, the Shin family sued MIT – the institution, two student life staff members, and four psychiatrists at the institution.

In 2005, a Massachusetts state court judge (Superior Court Judge Christine McEvoy) ruled against MIT’s motion for summary judgment, meaning that the case could go to trial. At the same time, however, she dismissed the institution itself as a defendant, so that only the administrators and the medical staff were left as defendants.

The case has just been settled out of court. The amount of the payment to the Shin family has not been disclosed, although when the family filed its wrongful death lawsuit, the damages they requested amounted to $27.65 million. A spokeswoman for the university explained that the university has always considered Shin’s death to be a tragic accident and that the family, in settling the case, agreed to that view.

The Shin family had originally contended, among other arguments, that MIT had violated the “health or safety exception” in FERPA (34 C.F.R. 99.36), in not notifying the parents in a situation where the “health or safety” of the student was involved. Because the case has been settled, the court has had no occasion to rule on that issue, and the parents’ FERPA-based argument has been left unaddressed.

In 2006, when it appeared likely the case would go to trial, AACRAO joined the American Council on Education and six other professional organizations in filing a friend-of-the-court (amicus curiae) brief. The brief, filed by Boston law firm Hogan & Hartson, argued in essence that, in its ruling allowing the case to go forward, “the Superior Court found that non-clinician university employees are obliged to prevent a student’s suicide based on a ‘special relationship’ purportedly created by the ‘foreseeability’ of the student’s act. As explained in the accompanying brief, this holding has engendered the opposite of its intended effect. By imposing a legal duty on non-clinician university personnel to detect and prevent student suicides, it has fostered perverse incentives for members of campus communities to disengage from troubled students’ lives….”         

As discussed in a pertinent article in Inside Higher Ed, there is already a state court ruling in Iowa – Jain v. Iowa (2000) – holding that non-therapist college administrators have no general duty of care to prevent student suicide. Gary Pavela, director of student judicial programs at the University of Maryland College Park, was quoted in the same article as stating: “With Jain still the most viable precedent, college administrators can focus on best practices in preventing student suicide without resorting to the hair trigger response of removing students who make any suicidal gesture.”      

With the settlement of the Shin case, attention has shifted to another high-profile case raising some of the same issues. According to Inside Higher Ed, student Jordan Nott claims he was forced to leave George Washington University and threatened with criminal prosecution after he sought help for depression at the university’s counseling center.

MIT has made some enhancements to its mental health policy which should be of interest to many other schools. Among the new policies are:

•Extended hours for the mental health department (students had always had 24-access to emergency medical care);

•Hiring of additional mental health staff fluent in languages other than
English; and

•Enhanced coordination of mental health and medical care with other departments on campus, from athletics to the chaplain’s office, and from the disabilities office to residential life.

Related Links:

Settlement in MIT Suicide Suit
http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/04/04/shin

MIT Makes Mental Health a Priority
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2006/lawsuit-mental-health.htm