## Facts

- Mary Conley taught sixth grade at a public middle school in suburban Boston.
- During a study hall on January 12, 2001, Conley noticed one of her homeroom students, John Doe, writing on a sheet of paper with a black marker.
- Across the top of the paper, Doe had written “People I want to kill.”
- Conley confiscated that paper; at the time, it contained no names.
- Conley sent Doe to the school office and notified school officials about what she had found.
- Later the same day, school officials confiscated a second sheet of paper from Doe with the same title, “People I want to kill.”
- The second sheet listed nine names, including Conley’s.
- Conley learned of the second sheet five days later; after learning her name was on the list, she became afraid for her life, left the school building, and did not return.
- Two days after Conley learned of the list, school officials met with Doe’s parents and told them Doe could not return to school unless he underwent a psychological evaluation.
- That evening, Doe attended a school dance; a parent provided a psychological evaluation to a school official at the event.
- Conley believed the school did not take meaningful disciplinary action because it feared a lawsuit threatened by Doe’s parents.
- Conley sued Doe, asserting assault and other tort theories; Doe moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim.

## Issues

1. Whether a sixth-grade student commits common-law assault by writing a “People I want to kill” list that includes the teacher’s name, without additional acts that create a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact.
2. Whether the pleaded allegations state other tort claims (including emotional-distress and negligence-based theories) arising from the list and the events that followed.

## Decision

- The court allowed Doe’s motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim.
- The assault claim was dismissed because the alleged conduct did not include an overt act that would cause a reasonable apprehension of imminent harmful or offensive contact; the list reflected hostility or a threatened future harm, not an immediate one.
- The court dismissed Conley’s other pleaded tort theories against Doe because the complaint did not allege facts meeting the required elements for those causes of action on these circumstances.

## Legal Principles

- Common-law assault requires an intentional act that actually causes the plaintiff to reasonably fear an imminent harmful or offensive contact; words or writings, without an act indicating immediacy, ordinarily are not enough.
- “Imminent” in assault focuses on present, near-term threatened contact, not a generalized fear of possible later violence.
- On a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, a complaint must allege facts that, if proved, satisfy each element of the claim; conclusory characterizations do not substitute for element-based factual allegations.
- Emotional-distress and negligence-based tort theories still require pleading facts that satisfy their distinct elements (including the required level of misconduct and a legally sufficient causal link), and courts may dismiss when the allegations amount to fear from a non-imminent threat rather than actionable tort conduct.

## Conclusion

In *Conley v. Doe*, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge dismissed a teacher’s tort complaint stemming from a sixth-grade student’s written “People I want to kill” list that named her, holding that the allegations did not show the kind of overt, imminent threatening act required for assault and did not otherwise plead facts sufficient to state additional tort claims arising from the incident and the school’s response.


Conley v. Doe, 2001 Mass. Super. LEXIS 490 (2001)