Pitt: Parents have no basis for lawsuit

The University of Pittsburgh said last week in court documents that the parents of Antwon Rose II have no grounds on which to sue the school.

Antwon Rose Sr. and Michelle Kenney filed a lawsuit in December alleging negligence and misrepresentation or nondisclosure, claiming that the university allowed former Pitt Officer Michael Rosfeld to resign without any notice in his file after he was suspended following his arrests of three men in Oakland on charges that were later withdrawn.

In their complaint, Antwon’s parents said university officials knew then-Officer Rosfeld filed false charges, but instead of taking action against him, allowed him to quit in January 2018.

Five months later, Mr. Rosfeld was hired by the East Pittsburgh police department.

It was there, on June 19, that Mr. Rosfeld shot and killed Antwon, 17, as he fled a traffic stop following a drive-by shooting in North Braddock.

Mr. Rosfeld faces a count of homicide and jury selection in his trial is set to begin in late February.

In their lawsuit filed in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, the plaintiffs allege that Pitt had a duty to adequately report Mr. Rosfeld’s job performance so it could be known by future employers.

But in preliminary objections filed by the University of Pittsburgh last week, the school’s attorneys said that Pitt had no connection to Antwon’s shooting and that his parents have nothing on which to cite a claim.

In its filing, university lawyers said there was no relationship between Antwon’s parents and the school, and that Mr. Rosfeld was not employed at Pitt when the shooting occurred.

“The university was not responsible for policing East Pittsburgh,” the attorneys wrote.

The filing goes on to say that there was no way the university could have “reasonably foreseen” the shooting because “plaintiffs allege no similar prior conduct.”

In addition, the attorneys allege that Pitt had no obligation under state or federal law to report on Mr. Rosfeld’s job performance.

“Imposing such a duty on the university in this case would be unprecedented,” they wrote. “It would also have troubling policy implications, leading employers to discourage others from hiring their former employees for fear that otherwise they could be held liable for unforeseeable criminal acts committed by the former employees months later.”

In the weeks after Antwon was killed, state legislators planned to introduce a bill that would create a statewide database with police officers’ disciplinary records, which could prevent a new department from hiring officers with problems in their past.