City of Brownsville v. Alvarado

Ricardo Serna Alvarado committed suicide in the Brownsville City Jail by hanging himself with a blanket from the bars of his cell. His parents, Victor and Olga Alvarado, brought this wrongful death and survival action against the City, claiming that the City’s negligence proximately caused Ricardo’s death. Although the jury failed to find that any negligence on the part of the City caused Ricardo’s death, the court of appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the trial court had improperly excluded all the evidence relating to certain discrete grounds of negligence and that…