Jain v. State

• Decision Date: 07 September 2000
• Docket Number: No. 98-800.,98-800.
• Citation: 617 N.W.2d 293
• Parties: Uttam JAIN, Administrator of the Estate of Sanjay Jain, Deceased, Appellant, v. STATE of Iowa, Appellee.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

617 N.W.2d 293

Uttam JAIN, Administrator of the Estate of Sanjay Jain, Deceased, Appellant, v. STATE of Iowa, Appellee.

No. 98-800.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

September 7, 2000.

Rehearing Denied October 10, 2000.

Jay H. Honohan of Honohan, Epley, Braddock & Brenneman, Iowa City, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Charles S. Lavorato and Darrel L. Mullins, Assistant Attorneys General for appellee.

Considered en banc.

NEUMAN, Justice.

This appeal concerns the tragic death of Sanjay Jain, a freshman at the University of Iowa. Sanjay committed suicide in his dormitory room. His father and administrator of his estate, Uttam Jain, sued the university for wrongful death, claiming it negligently failed to exercise reasonable care and caution for Sanjay's safety. In particular he claimed that if the university had followed its policy of notifying parents of a student's self-destructive behavior, the suicide could have been prevented.

On the university's motion for summary judgment, the district court dismissed Uttam's suit. It concluded the university owed no legal duty to Sanjay Jain to prevent him from harming himself, nor did it breach any legally recognized duty of care by failing to notify his parents of an earlier suicide attempt. For the reasons that follow, we affirm.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings.

Sanjay Jain had just celebrated his eighteenth birthday when he enrolled as a freshman at the University of Iowa and moved into an off-campus university dormitory, the Mayflower. Sanjay came to Iowa from Addison, Illinois, the second of three children born to Uttam and Anita Jain. By all accounts they were a close-knit family.

Sanjay had enjoyed a successful academic career in high school and planned to major in biomedical engineering at the university. That course of study proved difficult. By the middle of the first semester his personal life as well as academic performance were showing the strain. He became moody and skipped many classes. He experimented with drugs and alcohol. In early November he was involved in an egg-throwing incident at the dormitory. He was penalized with three hours of compulsory community service. Soon after he was placed on one-year disciplinary probation for smoking marijuana in his room. Beth Merritt, the hall coordinator for the Mayflower dorm, imposed this discipline and ordered him to attend a series of alcohol and drug education classes.

Sanjay's parents and family were unaware of these difficulties. University policy calls for privacy with respect to the university's relationships with its adult students. Although Sanjay confided to his mother that he wished to switch his major from engineering to computer science, he told his father and brother that he liked biomedical engineering and his classes were going well. His frequent phone conversations with his parents were reportedly upbeat. Sanjay, in his father's words, described everything about college as "awesome."

In the early morning hours of November 20, 1994, resident assistants on duty at the Mayflower were called to a "domestic" dispute outside Sanjay's apartment. When they arrived they observed Sanjay and his girlfriend, Roopa, fighting over a set of keys to Sanjay's moped. Sanjay had moved the motorized cycle into his room. Roopa asserted that Sanjay was preparing to commit suicide by inhaling exhaust fumes and she was merely trying to stop him. Sanjay was interviewed independently. He, too, reported that he was trying to commit suicide. The RAs concluded from their conversation that Sanjay "had a lot of frustrations about family life and academics." After discussing the situation for about an hour, the group disbanded. Sanjay assured the RAs that he would seek counseling after getting a good night's rest.

Beth Merritt met with Sanjay the next day. He was reportedly evasive and refused to admit or deny that he had tried to commit suicide. She encouraged him to seek help at the university counseling service. She also demanded that he remove the moped from his room because storing it there violated university policy. He agreed to do so. Merritt also gave Sanjay her home phone number, urging him to call her "if he thought he was going to hurt himself." Sanjay assured her he would do so. He reportedly claimed that he just really needed to talk to his family and looked forward to doing so during the Thanksgiving break that would start the next day.

In keeping with university protocol, Merritt discussed the Sanjay incident with her supervisor, David Coleman, the assistant director for residence life. She expressed concern that the RA's incident report stated "Sanjay was trying to commit suicide by inhaling fumes of his scooter in an unventilated room" while Sanjay insisted the report "wasn't exactly the truth." She told Coleman that her personal conversation with Sanjay revealed more tiredness on his part than hopelessness or despair. She also advised Coleman that she requested permission to contact Sanjay's parents about the incident, but he refused to consent. Coleman concurred in Merritt's decision to encourage Sanjay to seek counseling. He took no further action on the matter.

Evidently Sanjay's visit with his family at Thanksgiving did not include discussion of the turmoil in his life. His parents and siblings perceived nothing amiss in his attitude or behavior. Sanjay returned to the university when classes resumed on November 28. Merritt encountered him briefly and inquired about how things were going. Sanjay responded "good." Unbeknownst to Merritt, however, the moped was back in Sanjay's room. In a statement given after Sanjay's death, his roommate, Scott, reported that the vehicle had been stored in Sanjay's room for roughly three weeks. Sanjay reportedly told Scott that "he would kill himself by running the cycle in the room ... when Scott was not there."

This threat, apparently taken in jest by Scott, played out on December 4. Scott planned to spend the weekend in Cedar Rapids. Sanjay called his brother to make arrangements for a ride home over the upcoming winter break, then joined friends for a night of drinking downtown. They stayed until the bars closed at 2 a.m. Sanjay was described as "visibly intoxicated but coherent." His friends fed him sandwiches when they returned to the dorm. One friend was reportedly reluctant to leave him alone in his room, telling him she would post herself outside his door until Scott returned. Sanjay convinced her this was not necessary, and she retired to her room around 4 a.m.

At approximately 10:30 a.m., one of Sanjay's suite-mates awoke to the smell of something "unusual." He ignored it but, thirty minutes later, he felt dizzy when he tried to get up. He suspected the pilot light might have gone out on the apartment's stove. When he opened the door to the kitchen a cloud of exhaust smoke appeared there and in the bathroom. Fearing another suicide attempt by Sanjay, he knocked on his door but received no answer. All he heard was loud music coming from the room. He contacted the RA on duty, who unlocked the door and found Sanjay unconscious, the moped still running. Emergency medical personnel were summoned and the dormitory was evacuated. Sanjay was pronounced dead of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning.

The record reveals that an unwritten university policy dealing with self-destructive behavior dictates that, with evidence of a suicide attempt, university officials will contact a student's parents. The decision to do so rests solely with Phillip Jones, the dean of students. The dean bases his decision on information gathered from a variety of sources. In this case, no information concerning Sanjay Jain was transmitted to the dean's office until after his death.

Plaintiff Uttam Jain commenced this wrongful death action against the university in accordance with the "state agency" provisions of the State Tort Claims Act. See Iowa Code § 669.2 (1995). The suit claimed that Sanjay's death proximately resulted from university employees' negligent failure to exercise care and caution for his safety. The State generally denied the claims and asserted, by way of affirmative defenses, the doctrine of superseding-intervening cause and the discretionary function exemption to the State's waiver of sovereign immunity. Extensive discovery ensued. By the close of discovery, the only specification of negligence seriously advanced by plaintiff was his claim that Sanjay's death resulted from the university's failure to notify his parents of his earlier suicide attempt.

The State moved for summary judgment. Following a hearing, the district court ruled that (1) no special relationship existed between the university and Sanjay that would give rise to an affirmative duty to prevent his suicide, (2) by adopting a policy of notifying parents of a student's suicide attempt, the university did not thereby assume a voluntary duty to prevent Sanjay's self-inflicted death, and (3) the facts, viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, do not establish an exception to the general rule that suicide is an intentional intervening act which supersedes any alleged negligence by the defendant. The court therefore concluded the State was entitled to judgment as a matter of law. This appeal by plaintiff followed.

II. Scope of Review.

Well-settled rules define the scope of our review on appeal from an order granting summary judgment:

Our review is at law. Summary judgment is proper only when there is no genuine issue of material fact, and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. To determine whether a genuine issue of material fact exists, the court must examine the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, admissions on file, and affidavits. The burden is on the moving party to show the absence of a material fact issue, and the resisting party is accorded all possible inferences reasonably deducible from the evidence. On

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