Parents send their kids to college for a safe environment where they can earn a degree and learn to be independent adults. So, when things go awry at universities, colleges—the supposed safe havens—can expect to get sued. Though no lawsuits have been filed yet, April’s Virginia Tech shooting could prompt the parents of victims to seek compensation for their losses.
Similar suits have occurred at schools like Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Ferrum College following student suicides that parents said the colleges should have prevented. Those schools settled with the families out of court for millions of dollars.
 Any Virginia Tech lawsuits following the shooting incident will have to come soon—there’s a 12-month notice requirement for wrongful death lawsuits. |
But reaching such a settlement for the families of Seung-Hui Cho’s victims at Virginia Tech would be another matter.
First, filing suit “goes under the assumption that there’s any liability,” says Sheldon E. Steinbach, a Washington, D.C. higher education attorney and former vice president of the American Council on Education. “At the moment it seems as if, from the evidence that has become public, that the university…did everything according to the book.”
“This doesn’t mean someone’s not going to file a lawsuit,” Steinbach says. “This is 21st century America and people will be looking for blame.”
Second, unlike other universities who’ve faced lawsuits, Virginia Tech is public. Kent Sinclair, a UVA law professor and expert in Virginia procedure, offers some insight: “The general lay of the land is that the Commonwealth is the correct party in suits against a state university.” That means Virginia Tech, like other state entities, is protected by sovereign immunity, which used to mean the state would dole out no money in liability suits.
Virginia’s Tort Claims Act now provides a limited waiver of that immunity but also allows some respite—a $100,000 cap per count. Yet a family could easily rack up that sum in lawyer’s fees trying to convince the state to pay out more, a difficult endeavor.
“I’m not saying there’s never been a payment above that,” Sinclair says. “But no, you can’t show gross negligence and get out from that statutory cap.”
Even if an attorney could argue around the limited waiver offered by the Tort Claims Act, it would be difficult to estimate damages a family was owed, according to Sinclair, since part of estimating loss has to do with the deceased’s earning power.
“If you had a student who hadn’t graduated…there would be some problems in imagining what the earnings of that person would have been,” Sinclair says. “That component of the damages would probably be viewed as quite speculative by the Virginia courts.” It’s the legal result of most of the shooting victims being, tragically, young and in college.
One more element: though the statute of limitations on wrongful death suits is two years, there’s a 12-month notice requirement on such cases. So expect to hear of any impending Virginia Tech lawsuits sooner rather than later.
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