Local News in Brief : Suicide Suit’s End Upheld

The state Court of Appeal upheld the dismissal of a civil lawsuit that claimed singer Ozzy Osbourne’s recording of “Suicide Solution” drove a teen-ager to commit suicide.

The parents of 19-year-old John McCollum, who shot himself to death Oct. 26, 1984, had sued Osbourne and CBS Records. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John L. Cole, who has since retired, dismissed the suit in 1986 after CBS lawyers argued that Osbourne was no more responsible for his fans’ responses to his music than Shakespeare would be for an audience’s reaction to Hamlet’s soliloquy.

The appellate justices in Los Angeles, noting that Cole had correctly brought the case “to a prompt end,” said that Osbourne had no responsibility for the youth’s suicide, and that claiming he did had improperly infringed on his and the recording company’s First Amendment right to freedom of artistic expression.