Rebecca Iannantuoni, Administratrix v. Yale–New Haven Hospital et al. (2014)

MEMORANDUM OF DECISION RE MOTION TO STRIKE AMENDED APPORTIONMENT COMPLAINT (No. 184)

The Motion To Strike now before the Court focuses on the foreseeability of a suicide.   The question presented arises from a tragic situation.   As far as the pleadings indicate (and at this stage, the facts asserted in the pleadings must be taken as true), the plaintiff's decedent, Alan E. Jarecki (“Alan”), was a patient of the defendant Yale–New Haven Psychiatric Hospital (“YNH”) from June 30, 2009 to July 10, 2009.   Following his release from YNH, Alan was a patient of co-defendants, Harbor Health Services, Inc. (“Harbor”), Melanie M. Camerato, and Peter Cimino, Jr. from July 21, 2009 to August 2, 2009.   On August 2, 2009, Alan killed himself.

Alan's sister, Deborah Jarecki (“Deborah”), was subsequently appointed administratrix of his estate.   On October 27, 2011, Deborah commenced this action by service of process against the various defendants.  (The present plaintiff, Rebecca Iannantuoni, is a successor administratrix.)

The Amended Complaint consists of eight counts, three of which are relevant here.   Count Four is directed against Harbor.   It alleges that Harbor undertook the care, treatment, monitoring, diagnosing and supervision of Alan between July 21, 2009, and his death on August 2, 2009.   It further alleges that Alan's death was caused by Harbor's negligence in that, among other things, it “failed to adequately and properly care for, treat, monitor, diagnose and supervise [Alan] for anxiety, depression, benzodiazepine dependence/taper and history of suicidality.”   Count Five is directed against Camerato, a licensed social worker employed by Harbor, and makes similar allegations.   Count Seven is directed against Cimino, a licensed professional counselor employed by Harbor and makes similar allegations.

On September 14, 2012, Harbor, Camerato, and Cimino filed a Proposed Amended Apportionment Complaint (“Apportionment Complaint”) pursuant to Conn. Gen.Stat. § 52–102b.   The Apportionment Complaint is directed against Deborah in her personal capacity.   It alleges that, “Prior to [Alan's] death, [Deborah] took charge of [Alan] by coordinating with and communicating with his medical providers on his behalf, by arranging for appointments[,] by assisting with his personal care needs and by discussing his mental health conditions with his providers.”   It alleges that, if Alan's death was caused by negligence, it was caused by the negligence of Deborah in that, among other things, “she failed to alert the defendants or their staff of the facts alleged in her Complaint, facts that she now claims created ‘a risk of suicide.’ “

On November 30, 2012, Iannantuoni, Alan's successor administratrix, filed the Motion To Strike Amended Apportionment Complaint now before the Court.   The Motion contends that the Apportionment Complaint fails to “allege a cognizable action in negligence.”   The Motion was argued on January 13, 2014.

Does the Apportionment Complaint state a cognizable cause of action?   Broadly speaking, two different conceptual arguments might be made as to why it does not:  (1) suicide categorically breaks the chain of causation, and (2) even if there is no categorical bar, the suicide at issue here was not legally foreseeable.   The first (categorical) argument is unpersuasive in the modern legal world.   The second (applied) argument may turn out to be persuasive once all the relevant facts are known, but cannot prevail at this early stage of the proceedings when the pleadings must be broadly construed.

The first (categorical) argument, embodied in the Latin phrase ex turpi causa non oritur actio (“from a base cause an action does not arise”), has not been pressed by the plaintiff.   This argument was once plausible because suicide was a felony at common law.   See 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 189 (1769).   But suicide appears to have never been a crime in Connecticut;  see 2 Zephaniah Swift, A System of the Laws of the State of Connecticut 304 (1796) (rejecting the Blackstonian approach);  although it remains a crime to intentionally aid another person to commit suicide;  Conn. Gen.Stat. § 53a–56(a)(2) (2013).   In any event, the old notion that the chain of causation is categorically broken by suicide was rejected by our Supreme Court in Edwards v. Tardif, 240 Conn. 610, 692 A.2d 1266 (1997), which holds that “liability will be imposed on a physician when suicide was one of the foreseeable risks that made the physician's antecedent conduct negligent.”  Id., at 616.

The second (applied) argument may, as mentioned, turn out to be persuasive, but cannot prevail in the context of a motion to strike, when the pleadings must be broadly construed.   It is true that, “[a]s a general rule, negligence actions seeking damages for the suicide of another will not lie because the act of suicide is considered a deliberate, intentional and intervening act which precludes a finding that a given defendant, in fact, is responsible for the harm.”  Edwards v. Tardiff, supra, 240 Conn., at 615.  (Internal quotation marks and citation omitted.)   But “[c]onversely, suicide will not break the chain of causation if it was a foreseeable result of the defendant's tortious act.”  Id., at 616.

Posner, J. has observed that both the general rule and its exception are grounded in “the role of foreseeability in determining tort liability.”   Jutzi–Johnson v. United States, 263 F.3d 753, 755 (7th Cir.2001).   He explains that,

If an employer refuses an employee's request for a raise, the latter may respond by killing himself, and yet the employer even if somehow negligent in failing to give the employee the raise would not be legally responsible for the death, just as if through the carelessness of the driver a truck spilled a toxic substance and a passerby scraped it up and poisoned his mother-in-law with it the driver would not be liable to the mother-in-law's estate;  the son-in-law's criminal act would be deemed a supervening cause ․

A person is not liable for such improbable consequences of negligent activity as could hardly figure in his deciding how careful he should be.   Liability in such circumstance would serve no deterrent, no regulatory purpose;  it would not alter behavior and increase safety.   Nothing would be gained by imposing liability in such a case but compensation, and compensation can be obtained more cheaply by insurance.   But by the same token the doctrine of supervening cause is not applicable when the duty of care claimed to have been violated is precisely a duty to prevent the risk from materializing.

Id., at 755–56.

“The duty of care may sometimes extend to preventing people injuring themselves deliberately.   The person to whom the duty is owed ․ may be of unsound mind, with the result that he is at risk of doing something to himself which no rational person would do.”   Reeves v. Commissioner of Police, [2000] 1 A.C. 360, 380 (H.L.1999).   If a risk of suicide becomes foreseeable to a particular person with a legally recognizable duty to care for the person at risk, it would be nonsense to hold that “the occurrence of the very act which ought to have been prevented negatived causal connection between the breach of duty and the loss.”  Id., at 367–68.   If a particular harm is foreseeable, reasonable care can be taken to prevent its occurrence.   The promotion of such reasonable care is a central function of modern tort law.

Whether Deborah in fact had a legally recognizable duty to care for Alan and whether the particular harm at issue here—Alan's suicide—was foreseeable to Deborah are mixed questions of fact and law that cannot be answered at this early stage of the proceedings.   But affirmative answers to these questions are not implausible from the pleadings.

According to the Amended Complaint, Alan was a patient in a psychiatric hospital from June 30, 2009 to July 10, 2009.   Following that, he was given psychiatric treatment administered by Harbor and its employees until his suicide on August 2, 2009.   He had a history of anxiety, depression, drug dependence, and suicidality.   According to the Apportionment Complaint, Deborah “took charge of [Alan] by coordinating and communicating with his medical providers on his behalf, by arranging for appointments[,] by assisting with his personal care needs and by discussing his mental health condition with his providers.”   These pleadings, broadly construed, indicate that Deborah was in “charge of” Alan and his affairs during this critical and vulnerable time and had specific awareness of his suicidality.   Under these circumstances, the contention that she had a legally recognizable duty to exercise reasonable care to prevent the very harm that occurred cannot be dismissed at this stage of the proceedings.

These conclusions are reached at an early stage of the proceedings based upon a broad reading of the pleadings.   The facts, as they are developed in the litigation, may well show that Deborah was not, in fact, in “charge of” Alan or that, even if she was, she could not reasonably foresee the harm that was to occur, or that, even if she could, she took due care.   But these questions must be answered by facts developed later in the litigation.

The Motion To Strike the Apportionment Complaint is denied.

Jon C. Blue

Judge of the Superior Court

Blue, Jon C., J.