A school board cannot be held liable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, but may be liable in a state wrongful death claim, when a school official becomes aware of a student's suicide attempt and fails to notify the student's mother or take any other action. As a result, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed judgment for the school board as a matter of law on the mother's federal civil rights claim and held that evidence supported the jury's verdict in favor of the mother on her state wrongful death claim.
A student walked into the boys' room of his school and found a classmate, Shawn Wyke, trying to hang himself with a football jersey. That afternoon, the student told his mother, Brenda Morton, about the incident, and Morton then called the school. According to her testimony, she spoke to Jim Bryan, the Dean of Students, and Bryan told Morton that "he would take care of it." Trusting Bryan, she did not tell anyone else about Shawn's suicide attempt.
Bryan's way of handling the situation was to call Shawn into his office the next day and read to him verses from the bible. Bryan did not notify anyone else of Shawn's suicide attempt, worried that it would be "just too much red tape.' Later that clay, Shawn hanged himself in his backyard.
Shawn's mother, Carol Wyke, filed an action in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 alleging that the school board's failure to properly train its employees in suicide prevention constituted a violation of her constitutional rights. She also asserted a pendent state wrongful death claim based on the school's breach of its duty to supervise Shawn. The court granted judgment on the § 1983 claim as a matter of law, and the jury entered a verdict in favor of Wyke on the state claim, finding that the School Board was 33 percent responsible for Shawn's death. The jury was not allowed to consider Shawn's intentional conduct in apportioning blame. Wyke appealed the judgment on the § 1983 claim and the school board appealed its loss on the state claim, as well as the judge's decision not to allow the jury to apportion blame to Shawn.
The 11th Circuit found that in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, none of Wyke's asserted bases for establishing a constitutional duty on the part of the school board to protect Shawn when he was not in the custody of the school district were proper. The court noted that while Bryan told Morton he would handle the situation, he in no way prevented her from informing Shawn's mother or anyone else about Shawn's suicide attempt. Since Wyke could not establish this duty on the part of the school board, there was no constitutional violation, and the trial court properly granted judgment to the school board as a matter of law.
The court then addressed the state wrongful death claim. After considering the applicable state statutory law on the subject, the court found that "[t]he risk of a child's death substantially outweighs the burden of making a phone call." Thus, the court held that if "a person of ordinary prudence" would notify a student's parents of an attempted suicide, there is no reason why a school board should not be held to the same standard, and why a breach of those duties should not subject the school district to liability for reasonably foreseeable injuries.
The court, however, withheld final judgment until the Florida Supreme Court answered its certified question as to whether Florida law allows a jury to consider the actions of an intentional tortfeasor, in this case Shawn, when allocating fault.
