The Appeals Court of Massachusetts on Thursday overturned a jury's decision to award $4-million to the parents of a Northeastern University student who they said had died because the campus health clinic failed to diagnose her leukemia.

The ruling came more than a decade after Michel Goldberg, then a freshman from Fort Lee, N.J., died of complications from the disease, in 1993. A jury in Suffolk County Superior Court had awarded her parents the money in 2000 in response to their allegations that negligence at Northeastern's Lane Health Center had contributed to their daughter's death.

But on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the appellate court unanimously reversed that verdict, finding that Ms. Goldberg's parents had failed to provide the expert testimony needed to show that the university ran its clinic improperly.

Northeastern issued a statement on Thursday that took a measured response to the ruling.

"We are pleased that the court of appeals has reached a decision favorable to Northeastern," the statement said, "but our thoughts today are with the Goldberg family and their tragic loss."

The Goldberg family's lawyer, Michael T. Eskey, could not be reached for comment. But he told the Associated Press that he was "personally shocked" by the ruling and that there had been "an abundance of expert testimony" at the trial.

While a student at Northeastern in 1993, Ms. Goldberg visited the health center several times complaining of nausea, dizziness, and other symptoms. On her last visit, about two weeks before her death, a nurse diagnosed the flu and allowed her to go back to her dormitory.

When Ms. Goldberg's illness worsened, she returned home to New Jersey, where she died on February 28, 1993. Her parents have said that a more-thorough medical examination at the health center would have revealed the cancer, perhaps saving her life.