IF foxnews is right that the mail /package JH sent to a psychiatrist is sitting on the mail room for a week before the crime... i will possibly hear Lawsuits
IF JH failed in that Oral Exam that cause his depression and mental illnesses and he isnt really supposed to fail.... Yaiks, i hear a bigger Lawsuits.
We dont have complete facts for now and so the above could be wrong so all of these are just some theory on how could they be liable possibly......For now, am just wondering what Media is also after since they want record of his emails at that University.
I have explained this but it bears repeating. As an attorney, I can tell you definitively that the only way the school or anyone associated with the university could be found liable for what the murderer did is if the murderer threatened to harm himself or others, the university knew of the threat or should have known of the threat, the university did nothing to prevent the harm and the harm occurred.
Further, even if they did or should have known of specific threats prior to the threats being acted upon, which we do not yet know, they needed to have time to react. If there was not enough time, then there is no liability.
Additionally, even if this guy did make threats of harm, the university itself would be unlikely to bear any duty of care to those outside the university system. So, if those harmed were not university students, the university would not be liable.
Finally, a
treating psychiatrist has a duty to warn under Colorado law, but only if there was a direct threat to harm a specific person or persons:
A physician, social worker, psychiatric nurse, psychologist, or other mental health professional and a mental health hospital, community mental health center or clinic, institution, or their staff shall not be liable for damages in any civil action for failure to warn or protect any person against a mental health patient's violent behavior, and any such person shall not be held civilly liable for failure to predict such violent behavior, except where the patient has communicated to the mental health care provider a serious threat of imminent physical violence against a specific person or persons.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...sg=AFQjCNH91zYvPYfYY7sFm4owdRJN6yz84Q&cad=rja
That means a few things. One, if the murderer sent a package containing specific threats to harm someone, to a research psychiatrist or a psychiatric professor who was not treating the murderer, that psychiatrist would have no duty to warn. The murderer would have had to actually be a mental health patient of the psychiatrist for the mental health practitioner to have any duty associated with specific threats.
Two, it means that vague threats of violence, or threats to "take out a whole bunch of people" would not open up the mental health professional to liability.
Three, that means that changing one's hair color, becoming withdrawn, failing exams and/or dropping out of school, would not even come close to being threats to harm and even taken as a whole, even when coupled with the subject buying an arsenal, on the off chance that the university knew of that, would still not come close to constituting a threat of harm to a specific person or persons.
Yes, there may be lawsuits. Anyone can file a lawsuit. But that does not mean such lawsuits will have any merit or will result in a finding of liability against the university or the professionals that work there.
The bottom line is that unless the coward actually was being treated by a mental health professional at the university and told that mental health professional in advance, that he was going to massacre people at the theater, there is zero liability.
This is my professional opinion as a lawyer.
