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113 Nw. U. L. Rev. 767 (2018-2019)
Abolishing the Suicide Rule

handle is hein.journals/illlr113 and id is 807 raw text is: Copyright 2019 by Alex B. Long Printed in U.S.A. Vol. 113, No. 4 ABOLISHING THE SUICIDE RULE Alex B. Long ABSTRACT-Suicide is increasingly recognized as a public health issue. There are over 40,000 suicides a year in the U.S., making suicide the tenth- leading cause of death in the country. But societal attitudes on the subject remain decidedly mixed. Suicide is often closely linked to mental illness, a condition that continues to involve stigma and often triggers irrational fears and misunderstanding. For many, suicide remains an immoral act that flies in the face of strongly held religious principles. In some ways, tort law's treatment of suicide mirrors the conflicting societal views regarding suicide. Tort law has long been reluctant to permit recovery in a wrongful death action from a defendant who is alleged to have caused the suicide of the decedent. In many instances, courts apply a strict rule of causation in suicide cases that has actually been dubbed the suicide rule in one jurisdiction. While reluctance to assign liability to defendants whose actions are alleged to have resulted in suicide still remains the norm in negligence cases, there has been a slight trend among court decisions away from singling out suicide cases for special treatment and toward an analytical framework that more closely follows traditional tort law principles. This Article argues that this trend is to be encouraged and that it is time for courts to largely abandon the special rules that have developed in suicide cases that treat suicide as a superseding cause of a decedent's death. AUTHOR-Doug Blaze Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tennessee College of Law. Thanks to Charles Clark and Katie Dwyer for their research assistance. 767

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