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Commonwealth v. Peterson | 749 S.E.2d 307 (2013)

Generally, a person doesn’t have a duty to warn others of known or reasonably foreseeable risks of harm. However, a duty to warn may be imposed by statute or when a special relationship exists.2 In the 2013 case Commonwealth versus Peterson, the Virginia Supreme Court considered whether Virginia Tech University had a duty to warn its students of the risks of harm posed by a potential shooter on campus.

On April 16th, 2007, at approximately seven-thirty in the morning, the Virginia Tech Police Department responded to a call regarding an incident that occurred in a campus dorm room. When the officers arrived, they found two gunshot victims in the room. The Blacksburg Police Department and Virginia State Police investigated the incident.

Following the investigation, police concluded that the shooting was an isolated incident, that the shooter fled the scene, and that no other lives were in danger. Additionally, the police didn’t believe that it was necessary to lock down Virginia Tech’s campus. Based on the investigation, Virginia Tech sent out a campus-wide e-mail stating that there’d been a shooting on campus and urging others to be on the lookout for suspicious activity.

At around nine-forty-five that morning, a mass shooting occurred in a different campus dorm room. Among those victims killed in the shooting were Erin Peterson and Julia Pryde. At nine-fifty, Virginia Tech sent out a second campus-wide e-mail, which read, quote, “A gunman is loose on campus. Stay in buildings until further notice. Stay away from windows,” unquote. The police later stormed the dorm room and identified the shooter, who’d committed suicide.

Subsequently, Peterson’s and Pryde’s estates brought wrongful death suits against the Commonwealth of Virginia in state circuit court based on negligence. In the suits, the estates argued that a special relationship existed between Virginia Tech and the decedents and that Virginia Tech breached its duty to warn them of the risks of harm posed by the shooter. Following trial, the jury returned a verdict for Peterson and Pryde for $4 million each, which the court reduced to $100,000. The commonwealth appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court.

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