U of A settles with slain professor Thomas Meixner's family

The University of Arizona has reached a settlement with the family of Thomas Meixner, the professor who was shot and killed on campus in 2022, and the family says it is a “multi-million-dollar resolution.”

The UA Executive Office of the President said the agreement includes both monetary and non-monetary commitments.

“The agreement includes a monetary settlement for the family, and non-monetary commitments that affirm the University’s continuing support for the well-being of those most affected by these events, and that provide the family with a voice in the University’s planning and implementation of measures designed to improve the safety and security of the University community,” it said Tuesday in an email to community members.

In their own statement, Meixner’s family, through lawyers, wrote that “as part of the multi-million-dollar resolution, the University of Arizona will provide critical assistance to those most immediately impacted by Dr. Meixner’s death.”

Additionally, it says, “since the murder, the university has earmarked substantial funding designed to protect the well-being of the university.”

Neither the UA nor the Arizona Board of Regents immediately released details of the settlement, including its cost to taxpayers.

The university is enacting specific measures by implementing 33 recommendations made by the PAX Group, a business focused on workplace safety, and it will conduct monitoring to confirm they remain in place. The PAX report conducted for the UA found a systemic lack of safety measures, and ineffective investigations into threats made against Meixner and other faculty by an expelled former graduate student beginning up to a year before Meixner was killed.

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Meixner, a hydrology and atmospheric sciences professor, was fatally shot on Oct. 5, 2022 in the Harshbarger building on campus. Former graduate student Murad Dervish is charged with first-degree murder and is scheduled to stand trial this year.

Meixner’s family filed an initial claim against the UA of $9 million in March 2023, and in October 2023 announced they were working with the university to settle the claim.

Their initial filing claimed the shooting was a “direct consequence” of the university’s failure to respond to repeated threats made by Dervish.

“To honor the memory of Professor Thomas Meixner on the anniversary of his death, the University and Professor Meixner’s family are working together to resolve the claim that the Meixner family has brought against the University,” the family and the school said in a joint statement at the time.

In the announcement released Tuesday by the family’s lawyers, Meixner’s wife, Kathleen, shared her own statement on the settlement.

“So often in the aftermath of school shootings, we learn all the ways that they could and should have been prevented,” she said. “That is exactly what happened here. Tom’s murder revealed missed opportunities, even though efforts by the Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences department were exemplary in communicating a credible threat and seeking help to protect the U of A community. But we must look to the future, and with urgency, ensuring that tragedies like ours do not happen to others.”