A Signal Mountain woman’s lawsuit against the state of Tennessee for the death of her teenage son was dismissed Friday morning in Monroe County Circuit Court.

Holland Rainey’s 16-year-old son, Nicholas Kemp, committed suicide in
November of 2002 after the Tennessee’s Department of Children’s Services placed the child with his paternal grandparents in Monroe County. The child had initially gone into state custody in March of 2000 in order to get psychiatric services for severe depression after the mother exhausted her resources in paying for residential psychiatric treatment.

In August of 2001, once he no longer needed residential treatment, the
state released him to live with his paternal grandparents.

The mother’s lawsuit alleged that the state of Tennessee was negligent
in placing the child there because he had been diagnosed not only as
clinically depressed, but also as being bi-polar and suicidal. The
lawsuit argued the placement was negligent because the grandparents had several firearms in the home, including the shotgun Nicholas Kemp used to kill himself, and because the state never conducted a home study
before placing the child there, never checked to see if there were firearms in the home, and never advised the grandparents how to reduce the risk the boy would commit suicide, all of this despite the fact that teenage boys are at high risk of suicide and that most suicides are committed with firearms in the home.

The mother’s lawsuit also claimed that because she was never found or
even alleged to have been an unfit parent, nor to be guilty of any abuse
or neglect, the state illegally interfered with her parenting rights
when it placed her then 15-year-old son with the paternal grandparents
instead of returning the child to the mother’s home once the boy’s
residential treatment was completed.

The state did not deny the mother’s claims in her lawsuit, but instead
argued the state is immune to any suit for negligence and that the
lawsuit should have been filed with the Tennessee Claims Commission
instead of in Circuit Court, and that as a result the case had to be
dismissed.

Although the state could have allowed the court to have transferred the
case to the Claims Commission to let it go forward, the state would not allow this, even when directly asked by Judge Lawrence Puckett if it
would let him transfer the case that way instead of dismissing it on a
procedural technicality.

The lawsuit sought no specific sum in monetary damages, but asked that
the Department of Children’s Services be ordered to adopt “reasonable
suicide prevention precautions,” similar to The Garrett Lee Smith
Memorial Act (S.2636) passed unanimously by the United States Senate Thursday night.

That bill, a merger of the Youth Suicide Early Intervention and
Prevention Expansion Act (S. 2175) and the Campus Care and Counseling
Act (S. 2215), would amend the Public Health Service Act to support the
planning, implementation, and evaluation of organized activities
involving statewide foster care and youth suicide early intervention and
prevention strategies, and may prevent other teen suicides like Nicholas Kemp.

The mother said the case "should serve as a stark warning to any parent who ever considers allowing a child to go into state custody to get
services the state provides. The problem is that once the state of
Tennessee takes over as ‘the parent’, even though your child is there
solely to get medical help unavailable any other way, you might never get your child back. And if the child dies from the state’s own neglect, it can legally claim it is ‘absolutely immune’ from responsibility. They won’t even allow a judge or jury to determine if it’s practices or policies are reasonable or should be changed.”

“More than 10,500 children are in the custody of the State of Tennessee,
and National Mental Health Association figures are that 80% of those kids probably have some psychological problems, yet the state fails to take even minimally reasonable measures to reduce the risk of suicide by those kids by doing something as simple as finding out if there are firearms in the home when the children are placed with someone other than a parent.”

Since her son’s death, Rainey has become active with suicide prevention
efforts, including being on the Governor’s Suicide Prevention Advisory Council, forming a local chapter of Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program (website at www.suicidenets.org) and frequently speaking to schools and local health care groups about suicide prevention.

The attorneys in the case are Jes Beard of Chattanooga for Holland
Rainey, Elizabeth Driver of the Attorney General’s Office in Nashville, and John Barry of
Chattanooga, representing the grandparents, who are also named as
defendants in the lawsuit.

The case is styled at Holland Kemp Rainey v. State of Tennessee in Monroe County Circuit Court, Docket #V-04-067P.