Parents of Student Who Committed Suicide Tell Rutgers University They May Sue

The parents of a Rutgers University freshman who committed suicide after his intimate encounter with another man was secretly captured and streamed live on the Internet have filed notices that they may sue the university.

The freshman, Tyler Clementi, jumped off the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 22. His roommate and another student have been charged with criminal counts of invading his privacy, and the case has become a national flash point in the debates over gay rights, bullying and personal privacy in the Internet age.
The parents, Joseph and Jane Clementi of Ridgewood, N.J., filed legal notices with the university on Friday, said Paul Mainardi, a lawyer for the family. By law, they must wait six months to file a lawsuit, but they had to give notice within 90 days after the death to preserve their right to sue.
The filings were reported on Wednesday by The Home News Tribune of East Brunswick, N.J.

Mr. Mainardi said that the notices did not necessarily signal an intention to sue. “A decision as to whether to file suit against Rutgers University in the future has not been made,” he said.
Tyler Clementi, 18, an accomplished violin player, had been on the Rutgers campus in Piscataway, N.J., for less than a month, prosecutors say, when his roommate, Dharun Ravi, 18, of Plainsboro, N.J., used a camera in his computer to live-stream the dormitory-room encounter between Mr. Clementi and another man. Prosecutors say Mr. Ravi sent a Twitter message urging followers to watch.
Mr. Ravi and another Rutgers freshman, Molly Wei, 18, of West Windsor, N.J., were both charged with using “the camera to view and transmit a live image” of Mr. Clementi. The two students have since withdrawn from the university; their lawyers have said that they denied the accusations.
Prosecutors have said they may press for additional counts that would make the invasion of privacy a hate crime. But on Wednesday, Jim O’Neil, a spokesman for the Middlesex County prosecutor’s office, said only that the investigation was continuing.
One of the legal notices filed last week, a notice of tort claim, contends that Rutgers “failed to put in place and/or implement, and enforce, policies and practices that would have prevented or deterred such acts.” Another notice claims the university broke its agreement with Mr. Clementi to protect him.
E. J. Miranda, a spokesman for Rutgers, said the university shared the family’s sense of loss and understood that they would question whether an institution or other people were to blame. “While the university understands the reaction,” he said, “the university is not responsible for Tyler Clementi’s suicide.”

A day before his death, Mr. Clementi apparently discovered the surveillance and wrote in a blog post that he had complained to a resident adviser.
The tort claim lists as damages his pain and suffering, as well as his family’s loss of his company and support. No dollar amount is given.