Hearing Roommate Have Sex Caused Suicidal Depression: Lawsuit

3-5-2012 Massachusetts:

A former student at Stonehill College, a Catholic university in Massachusetts, has sued the school over that which plagues many a college student:

Loud roommate sex.

Lindsay Blankmeyer is accusing the school of violating the Rehabilitation Act and the federal Fair Housing Act. Her roommate sex lawsuit claims the school denied her a reasonable accommodation when it refused to move her into a quiet, single room.

You see, Blankmeyer's roommate was allegedly having a lot of sex while she was trying to sleep. She also engaged in "sexually inappropriate video chatting." The discomfort caused Blankmeyer, who was already suffering from depression, to develop suicidal thoughts.

When roommate mediation didn't work, the Associated Press reports the school gave her other options. But she didn't want to move into a dorm room with a girl she didn't know. Instead, she and her parents asked the school to move her roommate and let her keep the room. If not, she wanted to move into a single room of her own.

The school denied the requests, explains CBS, claiming she wasn't entitled to such an accommodation. It was probably right, which means Stonehill College has a good chance of winning the roommate sex lawsuit.

The law only requires housing providers and schools make reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities. A request is unreasonable when it poses an undue financial or administrative burden on the provider. What Lindsay Blankmeyer wanted is in many ways burdensome.

Her requests potentially affected a handful of other students -- her roommate and whoever would have to be moved so she could have a single room. Moving all these students could have also been costly and an administrative hassle.

Instead of filing a roommate sex lawsuit, she probably should have opted for the new roommate. ..Source.. by Stephanie Rabiner, Esq. at FindLaw.com