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Doe Parents No. 1 v. State11/27/2002
" Eisel, 597 A.2d at 451-52 (emphases added; quotation marks and citations omitted).
The Eisel and Brooks courts also based their holdings on statutes that imposed a duty on schools to protect children from suicides. In Eisel, the Maryland "General Assembly ha made it quite clear [through the Youth Suicide Prevention School Programs Act] that prevention of youth suicide is an important public policy, and that local schools should be at the forefront of the prevention effort." Eisel, 597 A.2d at 453. In a clear reference to the distinction between adults and children, the Eisel court noted that " he Act d not view . . . troubled children as standing independently, to live or die on their own." Id. at 454. Likewise, in Brooks, the Idaho "legislature enacted I.C. ยง 33-512(4)," which "created a statutory duty . . . requir a school district to act reasonably in the face of foreseeable risks of harm" and "to act affirmatively to prevent foreseeable harm to its students." Brooks, 903 P.2d at 79. In contrast to school children, adults such as Perreira have much greater personal autonomy and decision-making freedom with respect to their own health care. Lee, 83 Hawaii at 171, 925 P.2d at 341 (some brackets and ellipsis points added and some in original).
In Eisel, the plaintiff (thirteen-year-old Nicole Eisel's father) brought a wrongful death action against the Maryland Board of Education, in which he argued that "school counselors have a duty to intervene to attempt to prevent a student's threatened suicide." 597 A.2d at 448. During the week preceding her suicide, Nicole informed several friends that she intended to commit suicide; these friends related Nicole's intention to their school counselor, who, in turn, related it to Nicole's school counselor. Id. at 449. Both counselors confronted Nicole with their knowledge of her statements to her friends, but Nicole denied making those statements. Id. Neither counselor, however, informed Nicole's parents or school administrators about Nicole's intent to commit suicide. Id. at 450.
The specific issue on appeal was whether the school had breached its duty of care by failing to inform Nicole's parents of her reported suicidal ideation. Id. at 448. With respect to the duty of care that the school owed to Nicole, the Eisel court acknowledged that a "special relationship between a defendant and the suicidal person creates a duty to prevent a foreseeable suicide," but noted that " ecent attempts to extend the duty to prevent suicide beyond custodial or therapist-patient relationships have failed." Id. Nevertheless, the Eisel court believed that a number of factors distinguished the case before it from "those cases finding an absence of any duty" on the basis that "the custodial relationship between the suicide victim and the defendant was other than that of hospital and patient or jailer and prisoner." Id. at 451. Those factors were: (1) that the suicide in Eisel was that of an adolescent; (2) that the school's conduct at issue in Eisel was its failure to communicate the child's reported suicidal ideation to her father, rather than a failure to physically prevent the child's suicide; (3) that the relationship between school counselor and students was "not devoid of therapeutic overtones," as reflected in the official job description of school counselors and in Nicole's counselor's specific qualifications; and (4) that the Maryland Court of Appeals (the state's court of last resort) had previously recognized that "the relation of a school vis[-]a[-]vis a pupil is analogous to one who stands in loco parentis, with the result that a school is under a special duty to exercise reasonable care to protect a pupil from harm[.]" Id. at 451-52. For the last p
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