$9.75 Million Share of a $15 Million Verdict After a Montana Honeymoon Lodge Ignored Calls to Check on a Poisoned Couple

Lew and Catharine Hudgens married in Florida on January 9, 2021, and two days later left for a honeymoon at Rainbow Ranch Lodge in Big Sky, Montana. They checked in on January 11 and spent their first night in the room, ordering room service and watching the Alabama and Ohio State national championship game. The room next to theirs held a boiler the lodge had installed to heat an outdoor hot tub, and holes had been drilled through the concrete wall between the two rooms.

According to the complaint, the boiler had been serviced about six weeks before the couple arrived and was not inspected again after that work. Carbon monoxide from the boiler room passed through the drilled holes and into the room where the Hudgenses were sleeping. Between January 13 and January 14, Catharine's sister called the lodge and asked someone to check on the couple. Court filings say no employee went to the room after either call.

On the morning of January 15, four days after check in, the lodge's general manager knocked, got no answer, and let himself in. He found Lew dead in the bed and Catharine lying beside him, severely disoriented.

Lew's death was ruled a carbon monoxide poisoning. Catharine survived with permanent brain damage. Coverage of her trial testimony described two holes in her brain and effects she is expected to live with for the rest of her life, and recounted that when she was found she did not know who she was, where she was, or who her husband was. The lawsuit also alleged that the room had no carbon monoxide alarm.

Catharine, individually and as personal representative of Lew's estate, sued Rainbow Ranch Holdings LLC, the lodge's general manager, and several plumbers and contractors who had worked on the boiler, alleging negligent maintenance of the equipment and a failure to respond to the family's requests for a wellness check. Several of those defendants settled confidentially before the case reached a jury. Rainbow Ranch Holdings did not.

The case went to trial in Gallatin County District Court in April 2024 and ran close to two weeks. Jurors heard testimony about the boiler and the work done on it, what lodge staff did and did not do when the family called, and the extent of Catharine's injuries. On April 10, 2024, the jury returned a $15 million verdict covering both Lew's death and Catharine's injuries, and it apportioned fault: 65 percent to Rainbow Ranch Lodge, with the remaining 35 percent attributed to the parties that had already settled out of the case.

Local reporters noted that the verdict more than doubled the previous largest jury award recorded in Gallatin County. Catharine Hudgens was represented by Cunningham Bounds of Mobile, Alabama, working with local counsel Justin Stalpes of the Bozeman firm Beck, Amsden and Stalpes. Under Montana's comparative-fault statute the judgment against a remaining defendant is reduced by the share of fault assigned to parties the plaintiff has already settled with, so Rainbow Ranch's share of the verdict is $9.75 million. The judgment as entered does not appear in the public reporting we located, and as of this writing no appeal of the verdict has surfaced in Montana Supreme Court records.