De Sanchez v. Department of Mental Health

The plaintiffs’ decedent, an involuntary patient in a state psychiatric hospital, committed suicide in a hospital restroom. Plaintiffs, the personal representatives of decedent’s estate, filed a wrongful death suit, alleging that the overhead bar from which decedent hanged himself was a “dangerous or defective condition of a public building.” If proved, that allegation would bring the plaintiffs’ claim within the public building exception to the defendant’s governmental immunity. MCL 691.1406 and 691.1407(1).

The plaintiffs filed this Court of Claims lawsuit in 1984. On two previous occasions,…