Georgia High Court Narrows Path to Recovery in Action Over Teen's Suicide

When 14-year-old Sydney Sanders attempted suicide on Valentine's Day 2011, the Richmond Hill police officers who responded to the hospital to investigate took photos of multiple wounds created when the teen cut herself. One of those officers subsequently showed those police photos to his daughter, a classmate of Sanders, who then began showing them to other students, court papers said. Six weeks later, Sanders hanged herself. The day she died, Sanders had raged to her mother and her softball coach about the circulating photos and expressed fears about what other information about her local police might release. On Monday, more than three months after oral argument, the Supreme Court of Georgia effectively blocked one road to recovery by the teen's estate when it reversed rulings by the trial court and the Georgia Court of Appeals that would have allowed a wrongful death suit brought by Laurel Lane Maia, Sanders' mother, against Richmond Hill, city officials, and Officer Douglas Sahlberg to go to trial.

May 30, 2017 at 07:00 PM

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