The suicide 
At approximately 7 A.M. on June 2, 2009, Nguyen sent the project investigator an e-mail message, on
which he blind-copied Prelec:

          "I forgot to mention that this upcoming Monday I have a doctor's appointment that I had scheduled a long time ago, so I won't be able to come into the office until about 11:30 that day.  I hope that that won't be a problem. "If we can quickly follow up on the conversation tha we had yesterday, if you'll forgive me, I'd like to be honest with you about something.  [Prelec] recommended mefor this position . . .  [a]nd I'm not an undergrad anymore; I'm a grad[uate] student now. For those reasons, it was disturbing, as well as a little insulting, to me that yesterday you took pains to express your expectations of me in a manner that presumed that I would give you anything less than this project deserved, that you would 'give me a signal' if you didn't think that my contribution amounted to something deserving of authorship credit, that 'there would be a problem' if it turned out that '[you] could do [the work] faster [your]self,' that you threatened me that you could tell by visual inspection whether my work was up to par. I like to feel like I've earned the right not to have my effectiveness or my integrity questioned anymore, and to hear you do that yesterday was kind of hurtful. I'm not sure that if you continue to do this that I'll be able to work as effectively as I'd like to be able to. Although I keep asking about it, I'm not just doing this for the money. I want to learn something and make a meaningful contribution . . . . Would it be possible that we could move forward with an understanding of good faith on my part?"

Prelec forwarded the e-mail message to Wernerfelt, asking if Wernerfelt could "talk to [Nguyen] as a somewhat neutral party . . . [Nguyen] is misreading things.  

Even so, the tone of reply is totally out of line."  Wernerfelt responded, "I am so sorry.  I will talk to [Nguyen] and let you know what he says."
 
At approximately 9 A.M. on June 2, Nguyen arrived at a laboratory in a building on MIT's campus.  The laboratory coordinator noted that Nguyen's demeanourn appeared "pretty normal" and that Nguyen was preparing for a research project. After a number of missed calls between Nguyen and Wernerfelt, at 10:51 A.M., Nguyen reached Wernerfelt by telephone. Nguyen left the laboratory to take the call.10 After the telephone call ended at approximately 10:59 A.M., Nguyen went to the roof of the building and jumped off the building to his death. An first responder administered first aid to Nguyen "a few seconds" after he landed and did not identify any signs of breathing, eye movement, pulse, or consciousness. It was determined that the immediate cause of Nguyen's death was "blunt trauma with head, skull, torso and extremity injuries" and that it occurred within "seconds."

Meanwhile, after Wernerfelt finished speaking with Nguyen, at 11:04 A.M., Wernerfelt sent an e-mail message to Prelec:
     "I read [Nguyen] the riot act "Explained what is wrong about the e-mail
     "Told him that you or I would look over future e-mails he send[s] . . .