## Facts

- Lora Ann Booker, a 19-year-old Lehigh University sophomore, attended multiple on-campus fraternity parties on November 18, 1988.
- At one fraternity party, she consumed four or five vodka collins drinks and left feeling “buzzed.”
- At another fraternity party, she consumed a bottle of beer and multiple cups of grain punch that she poured herself.
- She was not asked for identification at either party, and she did not observe university or private security guards.
- After leaving the fraternity area around midnight, Booker chose a steep, unlit shortcut trail between the fraternity and sorority areas.
- Booker fell on the trail and suffered severe head injuries, including a brain hematoma requiring surgery.
- Lehigh had a written Social Policy prohibiting service of alcohol to persons under 21 and requiring party registration and security to check identification.
- The policy materials stated that registration did not constitute university approval and that party hosts, not the university, were responsible for compliance.
- Lehigh did not police fraternity parties to ensure compliance with the Social Policy.
- Booker sued in tort and claimed Lehigh assumed a duty to protect underage students by adopting the Social Policy and breached that duty by failing to enforce it.

## Issues

1. Whether, under Pennsylvania law, a university assumes a legal duty to protect an underage student from injuries arising from her voluntary drinking at on-campus fraternity parties by adopting alcohol-related rules requiring registration and ID-checking security.
2. Whether Pennsylvania law recognizes a special relationship (including an in loco parentis-type duty) requiring universities to control students’ off-curricular social behavior, including underage drinking.

## Decision

- The court granted Lehigh University’s motion for summary judgment.
- The court held Lehigh owed Booker no tort duty based on the Social Policy or any special relationship.
- Because duty was lacking as a matter of law, Booker’s negligence claim against Lehigh could not proceed.

## Legal Principles

- Under Pennsylvania law, colleges and universities generally do not stand in loco parentis to adult (or near-adult) students and are not broadly obligated to police students’ social conduct.
- Foreseeability of student drinking, without a recognized duty-producing relationship, does not itself create an institutional duty to prevent self-inflicted alcohol-related harm.
- A university’s internal alcohol policy framed as guidance and allocating responsibility to student hosts does not, without more, constitute a voluntary undertaking that creates a tort duty to protect students from the consequences of their own voluntary alcohol consumption.
- Courts may consider policy consequences in duty analysis, including the risk that imposing liability for adopting internal policies would discourage educational or regulatory efforts.

## Conclusion

The court ruled that Lehigh University’s adoption of an alcohol Social Policy did not create a legal duty to protect an underage student from injuries resulting from her own voluntary drinking and subsequent choices, and it entered summary judgment for the university.


Booker v. Lehigh Univ., 800 F. Supp. 234 (E.D. Pa. 1992)