Federal Jury Awards $41.7 Million After a School Trip to China Left a Student Unable to Speak, and the Connecticut Supreme Court Says Schools Owe a Duty to Warn

In the summer of 2007, Cara Munn was fifteen and on a school-sponsored trip to China with a group from the Hotchkiss School. The itinerary included a hike down Mount Panshan, a forested mountain in a region the CDC had flagged for tick-borne disease risk. The group made the descent on foot through wooded terrain, without insect repellent containing DEET.

A tick bite during that hike infected Munn with tick-borne encephalitis, a rare but severe viral infection that attacks the brain. She fell seriously ill in China and had to be evacuated back to the United States for treatment. The virus caused permanent brain damage. Munn survived, but she lost the ability to speak. Since then she has communicated with a speech-generating device, and the damage affected her motor skills and her ability to organize and execute everyday tasks.

Munn sued Hotchkiss in federal court, arguing the school had a duty to warn students and chaperones about the region's tick-borne disease risk and to take basic precautions, like insect repellent, on a hike through known tick habitat. Hotchkiss rejected a pretrial settlement offer of $750,000. The case went to trial before Judge Stefan Underhill in Bridgeport, with Antonio Ponvert III of Koskoff, Koskoff and Bieder leading the trial for Munn alongside Michael P. Koskoff and William M. Bloss. On March 27, 2013, the jury returned a verdict of roughly $41.5 to $41.7 million (sources round the figure slightly differently): about $10.25 million in economic damages for medical and evacuation costs and future care, and roughly $31.5 million in non-economic damages for the loss of a young woman's ability to speak.

Hotchkiss appealed, and the case reached the Second Circuit, which in turn sent two questions to the Connecticut Supreme Court, since no Connecticut court had ever ruled on whether a school owes this kind of duty. The first question was whether Connecticut public policy supports imposing a duty on a school to warn about or protect against the risk of a serious insect-borne disease when it organizes a trip abroad. The second was whether the roughly $41.5 million verdict, three-quarters of it non-economic damages, was so large it should be reduced.

In August 2017, the Connecticut Supreme Court answered both questions against Hotchkiss. The court held unanimously that Connecticut public policy does support imposing that duty on schools running trips abroad, reasoning that a school which organizes and controls a trip's itinerary is in a position to research known regional health risks and take modest precautions against them. On the damages question, the court found no legal basis to set aside or reduce the jury's award. The Second Circuit later applied that ruling and upheld the verdict.

The decision is the reason the case matters beyond Munn's own recovery. It set Connecticut precedent that schools organizing trips abroad, whether K-12 or college programs, owe their students a duty of care that extends to researching and warning against known environmental and disease risks in the places they are taking them, not only the risks of the activity itself.