Thomas v. Board of Trustees, 296 Neb. 726

Tyler Thomas, a freshman at Peru State College (PSC), lived in a campus dorm and went missing on December 3, 2010; she was later declared dead though her body was not recovered.
Joshua Keadle, a PSC student living next door to Thomas, was alleged by the plaintiffs to have abducted, raped, and murdered her; the plaintiffs obtained default judgment against Keadle on liability and a jury awarded damages on which judgment was entered.
Plaintiffs (Thomas’s parents and estate) sued the Board of Trustees of the Nebraska State Colleges under the State Tort Claims Act for negligence, alleging the Board failed to protect Thomas from foreseeable harm by Keadle.
Evidence showed Keadle had troubling prior conduct at PSC: rejected volunteer athletic role after background check concerns, multiple student-conduct charges (some sexual-misconduct allegations without physical contact), a misdemeanor theft conviction, and a dorm-damage incident then pending in court.
The district court granted summary judgment for the Board, concluding the Board did not owe a duty because the alleged crimes occurred off-campus and, alternatively, that Keadle’s violent acts were not reasonably foreseeable; the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed, holding the Board owed a duty but that the alleged abduction/rape/murder was not foreseeable as a matter of law.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Board owed a legal duty to Thomas	Board, as college, had duty to exercise reasonable care toward students	Board argued no duty because alleged crimes occurred off campus	Court: Board did owe a duty of reasonable care to students
Whether Keadle’s alleged abduction/rape/murder was reasonably foreseeable	Plaintiffs argued prior misconduct and warnings made violent attack foreseeable	Board argued prior incidents were not directly related and did not make such extreme violence foreseeable	Court: Risk of abduction/rape/murder was not foreseeable as a matter of law
Whether Board breached any duty by its handling of Keadle	Plaintiffs argued failures (e.g., not removing Keadle) constituted breach given warning signs	Board argued even if practices imperfect, no reasonable inference that breach caused the extreme harm	Court: No breach because the specific violent harm was not foreseeable
Whether summary judgment was proper	Plaintiffs argued factual disputes precluded summary judgment	Board argued no genuine issue of material fact on foreseeability and duty breach	Court: Affirmed summary judgment for Board; foreseeability resolved as matter of law

A.W. v. Lancaster Cty. Sch. Dist. 0001, 280 Neb. 205, 784 N.W.2d 907 (adopted Restatement (Third) duty analysis; duty as legal conclusion)
Pittman v. Rivera, 293 Neb. 569, 879 N.W.2d 12 (foreseeability and relation of circumstances to harm)
Hodson v. Taylor, 290 Neb. 348, 860 N.W.2d 162 (foreseeability can be decided as matter of law in some cases)
Ashby v. State, 279 Neb. 509, 779 N.W.2d 343 (elements for negligence under State Tort Claims Act)
Cisneros v. Graham, 294 Neb. 83, 881 N.W.2d 878 (summary judgment standards)
Doe v. Gunny’s Ltd. Partnership, 256 Neb. 653, 593 N.W.2d 284 (foreseeability need not precisely predict exact harm)