A $42 million verdict recently was rendered against a private secondary school in the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut as a result of an injury to a minor on a month-long trip to China. The victim sustained permanent brain damage as a result of a tick bite; based on the conclusions made with the verdict, the injury was due to the school’s negligence.*
A release signed by the victim’s parents was disregarded.
The victim’s attorney said, “I hope that this case will help alert all schools who sponsor overseas trips for minors that they need to check the Centers for Disease Control for disease risks in the areas where they will be travelling, and that they must advise children in their care to use repellant and wear proper clothing when necessary. [The victim’s] injuries were easily preventable.”
Any church that sends teams of minors on short-term missions projects needs to be aware of the lessons of this case. This article will review the facts of the case, summarize the court’s ruling, and assess the case’s significance to churches that send teams of minors on short-term missions trips either in the United States or overseas.
Background
A 14-year-old girl (the “victim”) enrolled in a private secondary school as a freshman in the fall of 2006. During the winter of her first year, she learned of the school’s international programs, and, after discussion with her mother, signed-up for the school’s summer school in Tianjin, China. The China program immersed students in Chinese language and culture. For one month, participants attended intensive language classes at a high school during the week and visited cultural landmarks on the weekends.
In the spring of 2007 the victim’s mother received information about the trip. The information noted that the students would visit “Mount Pan” as part of a Tianjin city tour.
Parents were instructed to sign and return a four-page “Agreement, Waiver, and Release of Liability.” The waiver described the rules governing the trip, the grounds upon which the school could send a student home, and the risks involved in foreign travel. Toward the end, the document also set forth a Release of Claims. This section first laid out the broad, general scope of the release in four bullet-pointed clauses. The victim and her parents would release the school from:
- “any and all claims that may arise from any cause whatsoever, whether resulting from acts or omissions of any persons, from the operation or condition of the facilities or premises, from acts of war or terrorism, or from acts of God or nature, or risks associated with the consumption of alcoholic beverages, use of illegal drugs in any form and injury or death from causes such as traffic accidents, crime, assault and theft;”
- “responsibility for any accident, illness, injury, or any other damage or consequence arising or resulting directly or indirectly from the Student’s participation in the Program;”
- “any liability, damage, or injury that may be caused by Student’s negligence or willful acts committed prior to, during or after participation in the Program,” and,
- “any liability, damage, or injury caused by the intentional or negligent acts or omissions of any other participant in the Program, or caused by any other person.”
Trip participants eventually received a complete itinerary, a packing list, and a handbook on international travel. The itinerary again listed “Mount Pan” as part of a city tour. The packing list mentioned bug spray under the category “Miscellaneous.” The travel handbook contained no warnings about insect-borne disease, though it devoted pages to other health risks, including a reminder to be wary of foreign blood banks in the event a student required surgery abroad.
As the victim headed to China, neither she nor her parents had received notice that she would visit a non-urban, forested area that might contain ticks or other insects carrying disease. Nor had she or her parents received any warnings about how to prevent insect-borne disease during the trip. The first few weeks of the trip proceeded without incident: the victim attended classes, visited sites, and made new friends.
On June 23, 2007, the students left for a weekend excursion about 60 miles from Tianjin’s city center. The students visited the Great Wall in the early morning, and they arrived at Mount Panshan in the late morning or very early afternoon. Mount Panshan is a forested peak that sits next to several other smaller foothills.
No one warned students to dress for a serious hike. All walked up the mountain in shorts and T-shirts or tank tops, and some even wore sandals instead of sneakers. No one warned students to apply bug spray before they trekked up the mountain. Indeed, the principal supervisor left her bug spray on the bus. At the beginning of the hike, a guide led students up a paved pathway to a set of temples at the top of the mountain. At the top of the mountain the group split up: Teachers, chaperones, and the majority of students rode a cable car down the mountain. The victim and two or three other students were given permission to walk down the mountain by themselves. The students decided to leave the paved path and venture down Mount Panshan on narrow dirt trails that connected other temples on the mountain. The hikers quickly became lost and ended up walking among trees and through brush before eventually finding the path and reconnecting with the others. The students then visited another forested area of Mount Panshan, one reached by a dirt path.
After the trip to Mount Panshan, the victim recalled having many insect bites and a welt on her arm. Other than itchy discomfort, though, she felt fine. Ten days later she awoke with flu-like symptoms—a headache, a fever, and wooziness. She soon grew more disoriented, and the group’s adult leaders decided to take her to the local hospital.
From that point, the victim’s condition deteriorated rapidly. The local hospital transferred her to a Beijing hospital, and her parents arrived from the United States. They found her severely ill. She was partially paralyzed, she could not speak, and she lapsed into a semi-comatose state. Once it became clear that her condition would not improve quickly, her father arranged for her to be airlifted to New York, where she was admitted to New York Presbyterian Hospital.
After a week at New York Presbyterian and a month at a rehabilitation center, the victim’s condition stabilized and improved, but she was left permanently disabled. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with tick-borne encephalitis, a virus transmitted by an insect bite that causes swelling to the brain. As a result of her infection, the victim permanently lost her ability to speak, control her drooling, many of her fine motor skills, and some of her cognitive capacity.
In 2009, the victim’s parents sued the school on behalf of their daughter in a federal district court in Connecticut, claiming that the school was negligent in:
- failing to properly warn the victim and her parents of the risks of insect-borne diseases, specifically viral encephalitis;
- failing to provide proper protective clothing, insect repellent, or vaccination by its employees and agents;
- failing to provide appropriate medical personnel on the trip who could diagnose or arrange treatment for students on the trip;
- failing to establish procedures for identifying medical emergencies, notifying parents of seriously ill children, and transporting seriously ill students to the United States for treatment; and
- failing to advise the victim and her parents of the availability of vaccines against viral encephalitis for persons traveling to rural areas of northeastern China.
At trial, the parents abandoned the majority of these grounds for liability, proceeding with their arguments regarding the school’s alleged failure to adequately warn of the risks of insect-borne disease on the China trip, and the alleged failure by its employees and agents to provide proper clothing, insect repellent, and vaccination.
In response to the lawsuit, the school:
- denied the allegations of negligence;
- claimed that the victim’s claims were all barred by the release of liability that the victim and her mother signed prior to the trip; and
- claimed that the victim contributed to her own injuries and that the risk of contracting insect-borne diseases while in Tianjin Province was unforeseeable as a matter of law.
The release of liability form
The court addressed the validity of the release of liability agreement (described above) before allowing the case to proceed to trial. It noted that the courts “disfavor broad waivers of negligence liability” and that “unless the intention of the parties is expressed in unmistakable language, an exculpatory clause will not be deemed to insulate a party from liability for his own negligent acts.” A party “cannot shed his ordinary responsibility in the absence of language that expressly provides so.”
When evaluating a release or waiver, “the question is whether an ordinary person of reasonable intelligence would understand that, by signing the agreement, he or she was releasing the defendants from liability for their future negligence … . In general a waiver should refer to negligence, or some close synonym, in order to clearly communicate its message. That is why the [Connecticut Supreme Court] held an exculpatory clause that explicitly used the word ‘negligence’ several times to be sufficiently clear, while it refused to enforce a release that only referred to risks involved in an activity, but which made no reference to the possible negligence of the defendant.” Citing Lewis v. Habitat for Humanity, 2012 WL 386391 (Conn. 2012), the court concluded:
In this case, an average person would not have understood the release to absolve the school of liability for its careless acts. The portion of the waiver that lays out the release’s general scope never references the school’s basic responsibility to use reasonable precautions, and the exception to the waiver appears to carve out negligent or willful conduct by the school from the scope of the waiver.
The general scope is, of course, written quite broadly; it covers “any and all claims” and “acts or omissions of any persons,” and waives “responsibility for” not just “any accident, illness, injury,” but also “any other damage.” But that broad language uses common words to describe breach (“an act or omission”) and harm (“accident, illness, injury”), and never refers to a standard of care (by using a word like “negligence”). An ordinary person might interpret the release to shield the school from most litigation, but would not know that the school intended to eschew the most basic duty each of us has to others—the duty to act with reasonable care, or, when referred to in the negative, not being negligent. This ambiguity is underscored by the clarity with which the release refers to the standard of care taken by others: it waives “any liability, damage, or injury that may be caused by Student’s negligence” and “any liability, damage, or injury caused by the intentional or negligent acts or omissions of any other participant in the Program” (emphasis added). Thus, the release speaks with clarity about the “negligence” of everyone but the school. Indeed, the natural reading of the waiver does not suggest that students are waiving the chance to proceed against the school in the event that [the school] acts carelessly. Just the opposite—in the long, bullet-pointed list of things that could go wrong, it never once mentions that the school itself might be the one to make a mistake.
Because the portion of the release that delineates its basic scope does not appear to waive the school’s liability for its negligence … the release is not enforceable in this case.
The court added that even if the release contained an unambiguous waiver of negligence liability, it would still be void as a matter of public policy: “Even a well drafted exculpatory agreement … that releases an entity from prospective liability for personal injuries sustained as a result of its negligence may violate public policy if certain conditions are met.”
In evaluating the validity of release agreements, the court looked at several factors, including whether the agreement was a “contract of adhesion” that offered no opportunity for negotiation, and whether the release placed students under the control of the school and subject to the risk of the seller’s carelessness. The court concluded:
In this case [the school] presented students with the release months before they left for China. The victim and her parents had no meaningful exit option. If the victim wanted to go to China with the school and enjoy all the advantages of such a trip—a journey in which she could form new friendships with her classmates, and establish long-term relationships with faculty—she had to sign a release that the school argues waived her right to sue it for its failure to take basic precautions to protect her. Thus, the release was still a “take it or leave it” proposition, not “subject to the normal bargaining process,” and one in which the school enjoyed a “decisive bargaining advantage.”
As for the school’s control over risks … the school had no physical control over the environment that posed a risk to the victim; put bluntly, it could not change anything about China, the world’s third largest country, home to the world’s largest population. But it still controlled the victim’s exposure to the risks that China posed. It set the trip’s itinerary. Because it is a boarding school, it largely controlled students’ access to medical professionals and travel medicine information. Once in China, students were under the control of their trip leader. At trial, the trip leader, Chinese teacher Jean Yu, testified that she was a native of the Tianjin region, and that she had extensive knowledge of, and experience traveling to, the places the students visited. She also testified that students were not permitted to venture out into the city without permission and a purpose. Thus unlike Jean Yu, the victim could not run to a store to buy bug repellent on her own, and could not predict the nature of the topography and nature of the places she would encounter … . The school’s employees were in the exclusive position to evaluate the risks the victim encountered on her trip and to ensure that she had the resources to protect herself against those risks … . [As a result] the school’s release of liability is void as a matter of public policy. Munn v. Hotchkiss School, 933 F.Supp.2d 343 (D. Conn. 2013).
The court also noted that “public policy” prevents a defendant with much greater information about the risks of an activity from exempting itself from liability through a release or waiver:
The school knew the trip details, including specifics about where trip participants would visit, but it revealed only a handful of those details to its students and their parents. It is this partial revelation of trip information that forms the basis for the school’s negligence liability … . Public policy bars releasing a defendant, with greater information concerning potential risks, from liability for the defendant’s own negligence. Even if [the school] had revealed all that it knew to parents, however, under Connecticut law, parents cannot waive the risks of participation in school activities on behalf of their minor children when a child’s injury is the result of the defendant’s negligence … .
The trial
After four years of discovery, two settlement conferences, and numerous pre-trial motions, the parties undertook a 10-day jury trial in which 19 witnesses testified. The jury reached the following conclusions:
- the school was negligent in failing to warn the victim of the risk of insect-borne illnesses;
- the school was negligent in failing to ensure that the victim used protective measures to prevent insect-borne infection;
- the victim was infected by an insect-borne disease while visiting Mount Panshan;
- one or more of the school’s negligent acts or omissions was the cause in fact of the victim’s injuries; and
- the victim had not contributed to her injuries.
The jury awarded the victim $450,000 in past economic damages, $9.8 million in future economic damages, and $31.5 million in non-economic damages. The school appealed.
Following the jury’s verdict, the school, rather than filing an appeal, filed a motion for “judgment as a matter of law” pursuant to Rule 50(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which allows for the entry of judgment as a matter of law notwithstanding a jury’s verdict if “(1) there is such a complete absence of evidence supporting the verdict that the jury’s findings could only have been the result of sheer surmise and conjecture, or (2) there is such an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of the party seeking the judgment as a matter of law that reasonable and fair minded persons could not arrive at a verdict against it.” Court’s rarely grant judgments as a matter of law.
In support of its motion, the school made several arguments, including the following:
- the school could not be liable on the basis of negligence for the victim’s injuries;
- the victim and her parents “assumed the risk” of tick-borne illness;
- public policy bars liability in this case; and
- the damages awarded by the jury were excessive.
(1) Negligence
The court noted that to establish negligence “a plaintiff must show that a duty existed, that the breach of that duty caused the plaintiff’s injuries, and that the plaintiff experienced actual harm or injury.” It concluded: “As a matter of law, the school undoubtedly owed the victim, a minor child in its care, a duty to protect her from known threats to her health and safety during the 2007 China summer program trip. Every public school shares this common-sense duty to protect the health and safety of students in its care.”
Even if the school owed the victim a duty of care, a breach of that duty would amount to negligence only if the victim’s injury was foreseeable. “Foreseeability,” the court noted, “encourages those owing a duty to others to take precautions to minimize identifiable risks while limiting tort liability from risks that are so novel or extraordinary that they could not be anticipated.” Foreseeability “does not turn on the narrow question whether the plaintiff’s specific harm was foreseeable to the defendant; it asks ‘would the ordinary person in the defendant’s position, knowing what he knew or should have known, anticipate the harm of the general nature of that suffered was likely to result?”
The court noted that the jury determined that the school knew, or should have known, that the victim could contract an insect-borne disease in China, specifically, on Mount Panshan. It was a pivotal finding. According to the jury, as the students gathered in the parking lot at the base of Mount Panshan, school faculty knew, or should have known, that the students were about to enter an area populated by insects carrying diseases.
The school insisted that the victim’s parents had to establish that the precise injury their daughter sustained, tick-borne encephalitis, was specifically foreseeable, not that the general category of harm to which she was exposed—insect-borne disease—was foreseeable and thus fell within the scope of its duty to students on its China trip.” The court rejected this argument:
A person commits negligence when he imprudently fails to foresee and take precautions against a risk that he should have recognized, and another person suffers an injury as the result of that failure. That injury is the “harm” or risk that the defendant should have foreseen, and, in this case, it occurred the moment a tick bit into the victim’s skin and transmitted a disease that compromised her health. That injury had extreme consequences, so that the total “harm” for which the parents sought compensation is substantial. But the preventable legal injury at issue was the victim’s infection by an insect, not her specific illness. Thus, the jury properly determined that the school had a duty to warn the victim and ensure that she took protective measures to prevent that category of injury described to the jury as “insect-borne disease.” The jury here determined that the school could have foreseen that its conduct might cause injury, even if it could not have anticipated the severity of the harm.
The court then noted that “once the scope of the school’s duty was defined—as an obligation to protect students from insects carrying disease—the jury was provided with ample evidence that the school ignored a predictable risk within the scope of its duty to the victim.” It cited the following evidence of the school’s negligence:
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warned travelers about many insect-borne diseases in China. As witnesses for both sides attested, the CDC is the primary source for assessing travelers’ health risks abroad. Indeed [the school] testified that it based much of the school’s pre-trip advice on the CDC website. At trial, the parents presented two CDC advisories about disease risks in China. The first advisory described health risks in “East Asia.” That advisory warned of malaria in “some areas of China” and that “dengue, filariasis, Japanese encephalitis, leishmaniasis, and plague are diseases carried by insects in this region.” It also counseled travelers to bring “insect repellent containing DEET” and “long-sleeved shirts and long pants” to prevent contracting insect-borne disease. The second advisory outlined risks in China specifically. That webpage advised travelers about risks of Japanese encephalitis, malaria, leishmaniasis, and, most relevant, tick-borne encephalitis; it stated that “tick-borne encephalitis occurs in forested regions in northeastern China.” It then repeated the advice on insect precautions found on the East Asia webpage—travelers should use DEET-based bug repellent and wear long pants and long sleeves when outdoors.
The parents presented evidence that Mount Panshan fell within the category of geographies described in the CDC’s warnings—a forested region in northeastern China. Photographs and video depicted a mountain covered with dense patches of trees and brush.
The court referred to the testimony of an expert witness on behalf of the parents who testified that “the school had reason to know and be wary of insect-borne diseases in the region [because] according to travel medicine reports routinely consulted by doctors and commercial trip planners in 2007, rural China was an endemic region for tick-borne encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, and Lyme disease … . Any competent trip planner would have understood the risk of these diseases; would have warned children in advance of their hike on Mount Panshan that they had to wear DEET-based repellent, long sleeves and long pants; and would have checked for ticks at the conclusion of their excursion.
The court concluded that the school had failed to present sufficient evidence to overcome the jury’s verdict.
(2) Assumption of risk
The school claimed that the parents and their daughter “assumed the risks” of foreign travel, and therefore the school was not liable for the victim’s injuries. The court disagreed, noting that “Connecticut abolished the doctrine of assumption of risk when the state adopted its comparative negligence regime in 1973 … . The Connecticut Supreme Court has not allowed parties to contract into an assumption of risk.”
(3) Public policy
The school argued that even if it had a duty to warn the victim of the risks of insect-borne diseases and advise her of precautions against contracting those illnesses, any liability should be barred on “public policy” grounds. The court agreed that there was a “public policy” exception to liability in some cases, based on the following four factors:
- the normal expectations of the participants in the activity under review;
- the public policy of encouraging participation in the activity, while weighing the safety of the participants;
- the avoidance of increased litigation; and
- the decisions of other jurisdictions.
The court concluded that these factors did not support a “public policy” limitation on the school’s liability.
First, the average participant in a school’s study-abroad program expects that the school will warn and protect her against known and knowable threats to her health and safety.
Second, while public policy encourages international studies generally, the school could not identify
a single statute, regulation, court decision, or government program that prioritizes a student’s exposure to new lands and experiences over her health and safety … . This case is not about the benefits of foreign travel; it is about how much a boarding school, in conducting a school-sponsored trip and program, has to do to protect students from foreseeable medical risks. Here, the jury found that the school knew or should have known of a category of diseases that could harm a student while on the school’s China trip. The underlying public policy question is whether private schools should be excused from a duty to warn and protect students from foreseeable insect-borne diseases when those schools expose students to unfamiliar environments … . Just as youth soccer leagues require players to wear shin guards as a prophylactic against severe leg injuries, it is reasonable that a school require that students take precautions against insect-borne diseases in order to participate in a study-abroad program. It is possible both to expose students to the rich experience of foreign travel and to protect students’ health.
Third, the court concluded that “there is no reason to believe that holding the school liable in this case will increase litigation any more than doing so in any other case where a child’s health is at risk. People are usually sensitive about children becoming injured or hurt. Any case in which a child suffers ignites strong feelings, especially in parents. Whether this case creates a legal barrier to suit or not, parents and guardians will likely continue to sue parties who they believe exposed their children to danger that resulted in harm.”
Fourth, the court concluded that the school “has not and likely cannot point to a jurisdiction that insulates schools from liability for exposing their students to foreseeable and harmful diseases during a school-organized and school-supervised activity.”
The court concluded:
At closing argument, the school presented a parade of horribles, warning that if it were required to pay for the victim’s injuries in this case, schools across the country would shut down all extracurricular activities. Otherwise, “before a child’s soccer team gets off the bus, the coach would have to make sure they have insect repellent, insect-protective clothing in case the ball goes off the field, and they have to go into the woods to get it,” and “before the eighth graders leave Grand Central Station in New York the chaperones would have to ensure bug protection in case [students] ran up against a bush in Central Park.”
The jury rejected that argument. I do, too, because compared to contracting a serious insect-borne disease, the burden upon schools appears minimal: schools would simply remind students to use bug spray and would bring bug spray on trips, the way school staff remind student athletes to put in their mouth guards before they take the football field or advise them to apply sunblock before walking outside on a sunny day. This case is no different from other tort cases, and the imposition of liability will lead to three possible results: some schools may cancel programs, others will offer safer programs, and others will simply buy more insurance. Just as liability for design defects in automobiles has not emptied the nation’s highways, this case will not put a stop to high school extracurricular activities.
(4) Damages
The school asked the court to substantially reduce the jury’s $42 million verdict. The court declined, noting that “when evaluating the totality of the harms that the victim suffers, I cannot say that the jury’s award falls outside the range of reasonable verdicts in this case.”
Conclusions
This case is of direct relevance to every church that sends groups of minors on missions trips to other locations in the United States, or foreign destinations. Here are the most important takeaway points:
1. In general. A decision by a federal district court in Connecticut is not binding on state or federal courts in any other state, and may be reversed on appeal. However, assuming that the ruling is affirmed on appeal, it contains a number of points that are directly relevant to churches.
2. Negligence. The court’s central ruling was that “a person commits negligence when he imprudently fails to foresee and take precautions against a risk that he should have recognized, and another person suffers an injury as the result of that failure.” The court cited the CDC’s advisories warning travelers about many insect-borne diseases in China as evidence of the school’s negligence.
The jury concluded, based on this evidence, that “the school had reason to know and be wary of insect-borne diseases in the region [because] according to travel medicine reports routinely consulted by doctors and commercial trip planners in 2007, rural China was an endemic region for tick-borne encephalitis, Japanese encephalitis, and Lyme disease … . Any competent trip planner would have understood the risk of these diseases; would have warned children in advance of their hike on Mount Panshan that they had to wear DEET-based repellent, long sleeves and long pants; and would have checked for ticks at the conclusion of their excursion.” The school’s failure to take these steps amounted to negligence.
3. Liability releases and waivers. The school attempted to mitigate its risk for injuries occurring on overseas trips by having parents sign a release form releasing the school from liability. The court concluded that the release form did not insulate the school from the victim’s injuries, for the following reasons:
(1) The language of the release did not explicitly release the school from liability for tick-borne diseases. The court noted that “the courts disfavor broad waivers of negligence liability and that unless the intention of the parties is expressed in unmistakable language, an exculpatory clause will not be deemed to insulate a party from liability for his own negligent acts.” A party “cannot shed his ordinary responsibility in the absence of language that expressly provides so.” The court concluded that “an average person would not have understood the release to absolve the school of liability for its careless acts,” and therefore was unenforceable.
(2) Even if a release form explicitly lists all of the risks that may arise, it will be unenforceable if it amounts to a “contract of adhesion.” A contract of adhesion is one in which there is no possibility of negotiation. In this case, the victim and her parents could not have insisted on changes in the school’s release form, and so it was an unenforceable contract of adhesion. The court concluded:
In this case [the school] presented students with the release months before they left for China. The victim and her parents had no meaningful exit option. If the victim wanted to go to China with the school and enjoy all the advantages of such a trip—a journey in which she could form new friendships with her classmates, and establish long-term relationships with faculty—she had to sign a release that the school argues waived her right to sue it for its failure to take basic precautions to protect her. Thus, the release was still a “take it or leave it” proposition, not “subject to the normal bargaining process,” and one in which the school enjoyed a “decisive bargaining advantage.”
(3) Release forms are especially disfavored if one party (in this case the school) retains complete control over the other party (the victim and other students).
(4) “Public policy” prevents one party with much greater information about the risks of an activity from exempting itself from liability through a release or waiver. The court concluded:
The school knew the trip details, including specifics about where trip participants would visit, but it revealed only a handful of those details to its students and their parents. It is this partial revelation of trip information that forms the basis for the school’s negligence liability … . Public policy bars releasing a defendant, with greater information concerning potential risks, from liability for the defendant’s own negligence. Even if [the school] had revealed all that it knew to parents, however, under Connecticut law, parents cannot waive the risks of participation in school activities on behalf of their minor children when a child’s injury is the result of the defendant’s negligence … .
(5) Another point not directly addressed by the court is the fact that minors have no contractual capacity, and so they cannot sign releases and waivers of liability. Their parents can sign a release, but they can only release the school or church from their own injuries. Minor victims can sue, on their own behalf, once they reach the age of majority. This essentially means that a school, charity, or church is strictly liable for any injuries that minors sustain as result of its negligence. A release form signed by minors or their parents generally does not insulate the entity from liability. This is an important point that churches should consider when planning activities, for it militates against involving minors in ultra-hazardous activities.
4. Risk management. The court listed the following steps that the school could have taken to reduce, if not eliminate, the risk of liability based on negligence:
Check the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website, cdc.gov, to see what warnings and recommendations are listed for areas where minors will be traveling.
“Any competent trip planner would have understood the risk of these diseases; would have warned children in advance of their hike on Mount Panshan that they had to wear DEET-based repellent, long sleeves and long pants; and would have checked for ticks at the conclusion of their excursion.”
Other precautions that can reduce a church’s risk of liability when sending groups of minors overseas include the following:
- Be sure that all participants have had the recommended immunizations. Check with a local physician for information.
- Obtain travel insurance in the event that a minor needs to be evacuated back to the United States. Also, in the permission form that parents sign, clearly describe the insurance coverage the church’s insurance policy will provide, and inform parents that any extra coverage is their responsibility.
- In tropical areas, be sure that the group sleeps in accommodations with screened windows and doors.
- Check with your local public health department for additional recommendations on traveling with minors.
- Contact schools and other charities in your community that send groups of minors on trips both in the United States and in foreign countries, and find out what precautions they are taking. Such “benchmarking” helps to establish the use of due care in planning youth trips.
