## Facts

- A 16-year-old German student participated in a U.S. exchange program run by a nonprofit organization and was placed with a Wisconsin host family for a fee.
- Federal regulations and the organization’s standards required regular monitoring, including recurring in-person contact and separate communications with the student, host family, and school.
- The local area representative responsible for monitoring met the student only once in more than four months and did not speak with her privately; phone contacts occurred with a host-family member present.
- The host father raped the student and continued sexual abuse; the student missed substantial school time, and the area representative did not investigate the absences or build trust that would permit disclosure.
- After household conflict, the host mother asked that the student be moved; the student resisted, and law enforcement removed her from the home.
- The student stayed briefly with the area representative, who did not inquire into possible abuse; later, letters were discovered, police investigated, and the host father died by suicide.
- The student suffered serious psychological harm, including post-traumatic stress disorder and self-harm behaviors.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence permitted a finding that negligent monitoring and supervision by the exchange organization was a cause of the student’s injuries under Wisconsin negligence law.
2. Whether the host father’s criminal conduct and subsequent suicide were superseding causes that relieved the organization of liability.
3. Whether the jury could assign comparative fault to the 16-year-old victim consistent with Wisconsin comparative negligence principles and the age-of-consent statute.
4. Whether jury instructions and the trial court’s responses to jury questions required judgment as a matter of law or a new trial.

## Decision

- The court affirmed the judgment for the student.
- The evidence supported findings that the organization, through its area representative, breached monitoring duties required by regulation and program standards.
- The host father’s sexual abuse was not a superseding cause because the risk of such abuse was within the set of harms the monitoring requirement was intended to prevent.
- The comparative fault allocation (59% to the organization, 41% to the student) and the damages award were not set aside.
- The challenged instructions and the trial judge’s handling of jury inquiries, read as a whole, did not constitute reversible error.

## Legal Principles

- Under Wisconsin law, an organization may be liable in negligence for failing to perform supervision and monitoring obligations in a manner that foreseeably results in personal injury, even if the relationship also sounds in contract.
- A nonprofit is not immune from ordinary tort liability; it may be vicariously liable for negligence committed by a volunteer acting as its servant or field agent.
- Third-party criminal misconduct does not break causation as a superseding cause when the defendant’s duty is directed at guarding against that type of misconduct.
- Comparative negligence may permit allocation of fault to an injured party, including a minor, where the fact-finder is properly instructed and the allocation is supported by the trial evidence.

## Conclusion

The Seventh Circuit upheld a negligence verdict against an exchange program for failing to monitor a minor student’s placement in accordance with required safeguards, holding that sexual abuse by a host parent was a foreseeable risk the monitoring duties were meant to address and that the jury’s comparative fault allocation and the trial court’s instructions did not warrant reversal.


Beul v. ASSE Int'l, Inc., 233 F.3d 441 (7th Cir. 2000)