Lawsuit against Phoenix-area school district over murder-suicide rejected

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona Supreme Court decision upholds the dismissal of a mother’s negligence lawsuit against a school district for the killing of the woman’s 16-year-old daughter by a 15-year-old boy who then died by suicide outside a Phoenix home after school in 2014.

The decision Friday said Deer Valley Unified School District officials took steps to protect another female student after being told the boy had made threatening comments toward her, but not toward the girl who was killed.

The mother’s suit claimed that school officials nevertheless failed to protect her daughter, but the court said there was no “known and tangible risk” to the daughter and that the district’s duty to protect students generally applies only when students are under school supervision and control.

“This is a tragic case,” Vice Chief Justice Ann A. Scott Timmer wrote, adding that the court empathized with the mother.

The court said some cases may involve unique circumstances so it wasn’t a drawing “a bright-line rule barring recognition of the school-student duty whenever the student suffers harm while outside the school’s supervision and control, although that may usually be the case.”