Suicide Causation Experts in Teen Wrongful Death Claims: Will They Assist the Trier of Fact
![handle is hein.journals/jmlr45 and id is 73 raw text is: SUICIDE CAUSATION EXPERTS IN TEEN
WRONGFUL DEATH CLAIMS: WILL THEY
ASSIST THE TRIER OF FACT?
ANDREA MACIVER*
I. INTRODUCTION
After moving from Ireland to South Hadley, Massachusetts,
fifteen-year-old Phoebe Prince was ready to start her new life.'
Moving to a new country would mean starting school at a new
high school and making all new friends. But this new life was not a
story of happy endings for Phoebe Prince. Rather, it was a story
that ended in tragedy. After only a few months of attending
South Hadley High School, Phoebe Prince hung herself in the closet
of her new home.2 Why did she feel the need to take her life at
such a young age? At first glance, the obvious answer seemed to be
the relentless bullying that she endured day in and day out at her
new high school. After a short fling with the a senior football player,
Phoebe became the target of the Mean Girls, who decided then
and there that Phoebe didn't know her place and that Phoebe
would pay.3 The Mean Girls would call her a slut, they would
stalk her in the hallways, intimidate her, and even throw things at
her.4 On the day she committed suicide-in fact, only moments
before her suicide-the Mean Girls drove by Phoebe, who was
walking home from school, shouted insults out the window
about her and threw an energy drink at her.5 Rather than fight
back, Phoebe kept walking, past the abuse, past the can, past
the white picket fence, into her house . . . [and then] into a closet
and hanged herself.6
However, after all the hype surrounding her suicide died
down, it appeared that there may have been other factors that, at
least in part, could have contributed to Phoebe's suicide.
Apparently, Phoebe had a history of problems, including a
previous suicide attempt that occurred even before she met the
* Attorney at Law, The Deratany Firm, Chicago, Illinois
1. Kevin Cullen, The Untouchable Mean Girls, THE BOS. GLOBE, Jan. 24,
2010, http://www.bexno.com/familiaressay/TheUntouchableMeanGirls.html.
2. Id.
3. Id.
4. Id.
5. Id.
6. Id.
51](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/jmlr45&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Suicide Causation Experts in Teen Wrongful Death Claims: Will They Assist the Trier of Fact
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