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A Luzerne County jury on Wednesday awarded a $7.8 million verdict to the family of Justin King, a Montgomery County resident and Bloomsburg University student who died in a 2019 fall after a night of drinking at a fraternity rush party.

The fraternity, Kappa Sigma, and dozens of individual defendants previously reached confidential settlements with King’s mother, Carol King, who brought the complaint in 2021, said the family’s lawyers Helen Lawless, Benjamin Present, and Mark Fuchs of the Kline & Specter law firm.

But the sorority, Alpha Sigma Tau, whose members’ house was used for the event, chose to go to court, and now it faces paying $3.5 million, including delay damages, the lawyers said.

“I’m pretty happy about the verdict from the standpoint of its holding the national organization responsible for the actions of what happened,” said Carol King, of Gilbertsville in Montgomery County. “There is no bringing him back, and I will always have a hole in my heart for him. But this gets me closer to doing what I wanted to do, which is find some sort of justice for Justin.”

The sorority in a statement said it was disappointed that it was held partially liable for King’s death.

“We fundamentally disagree with this outcome and believe it both wrongly holds innocent parties responsible for circumstances beyond their control and establishes a deeply concerning precedent that violates settled Pennsylvania law,” Jordan Feldhaus, CEO of the sorority, said in a statement.

The sorority is considering its legal options, Feldhaus said.

King filed the lawsuit against the fraternity, sorority, and 36 of their members, alleging that they plied her son, then an 18-year-old freshman at Bloomsburg — now part of Commonwealth University — with liquor as part of an initiation process.

He was given liquor, including a mixture with vodka known as “jungle juice” or “blackout water,” participated in a “crate race” — a game involving large amounts of alcohol consumption over little time — and later fell down a 75-foot embankment, where he was found the next morning, according to the wrongful-death lawsuit. King had a .22 blood alcohol content, which is nearly three times the legal limit, his lawyers said.

Bloomsburg was not sued.

“They took action in this case, unlike the national sorority office,” said Lawless, one of King’s lawyers.

Bloomsburg permanently revoked the fraternity’s recognition, and the chapter was later expelled from the campus. The sorority was suspended for four years.

Police had not filed charges in the case, and Columbia County Coroner Jeremy Reese had ruled King’s death accidental.

The verdict assigned 35% of the fault for the death to the sorority, 35% to the fraternity, 24% to King, and 1% each to six fraternity members, King’s lawyers said.

That means the sorority would be responsible for $2.73 million, but the delayed damages raise that to more than $3.5 million, King’s lawyers said.

“The jury’s award makes clear that national Greek organizations cannot turn a blind eye to rampant drinking and policy violations on college campuses,” King’s lawyers said. “It speaks volumes that the six individual fraternity members each received only 1% of the causal fault. The jury understood where the culture at Bloomsburg came from, and they understood this case was about corporate responsibility.”

Carol King said she understood the jury’s decision to assign some of the fault to her son.

“He was drinking,” she said.

King had been at Bloomsburg only three weeks before attending the Sept. 13, 2019, party. He had been recruited to join the fraternity through a flier distributed in freshman dorms.

The lawsuit contended that the defendants violated the anti-hazing law enacted after the 2017 death of Tim Piazza, a Pennsylvania State University student who died after attending a booze-fueled fraternity party where he fell down stairs.

The sorority, according to King’s lawyers, was found liable for negligence as well as for violating the Anti-Hazing Statute.

Since her son’s death, Carol King, a retired corporate human resources director, said she has been speaking out about hazing to raise awareness and pursuing the legal action in her son’s case.

“It was never about the money,” she said. “It was about them taking responsibility,”

The University of Pennsylvania will institute another round of budget cuts in response to Trump administration actions that threaten future funding and revenues, and because of rising legal and insurance expenses.

That is even though officials said finances look better than they anticipated a year ago, though they did not provide specific numbers.

Penn’s schools and centers have been directed to cut 4% from certain expenses in the next fiscal year and keep in place financial cutbacks instituted last year, including a staff hiring freeze and freezes on midyear adjustments in staff salaries. Schools and centers also were asked last year to cut 5% of certain expenses, and the new 4% reduction would be on top of this.

The university did not detail which expenses would be cut, but it is likely that discretionary funds for things like travel and entertainment would be targeted.

Penn leaders cited changes in student loan programs and visa policies, an increase in the endowment tax, and potential losses in research funding as reasons for continued financial restraint. Legal, insurance, and employee-benefit expenses also are rising faster than revenues, said Mark F. Dingfield, executive vice president, and John L. Jackson Jr., provost.

“Taken together, these conditions reinforce our responsibility to continue careful financial management to stabilize our finances for the long term,” the leaders wrote. “It is important to note that this planning effort is just that — an effort to plan deliberately and collaboratively against a changing financial landscape.”

Penn, which is the city’s largest private employer, with about 53,000 employees across the university and its health system, is expected to set tuition and fees and discuss its budget at board of trustee meetings in March.

Penn’s legal expenses have increased as the university responds to the Trump administration’s demands and investigations, including an ongoing Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit seeking in effect personal contact information for Jewish faculty and staff. And the school faced additional costs related to a data breach in November.

School officials noted that Penn has not enacted some of the deeper cuts instituted by its peer schools. Columbia University in May laid off 180 people following the loss of government research grants. Stanford said in August it would lay off more than 360 staff as part of budget cuts. Duke also instituted voluntary buyouts and layoffs last year. And Brown University, amid a $30 million deficit last year, planned for dozens of layoffs.

But Penn said it had to take steps to prepare for the ongoing impact of federal policies.

The tax on Penn’s endowment earnings will rise to 4% in 2027, up from the 1.4% the school has been paying since 2022. In 2024, Penn — which has a $24.8 billion endowment — paid $10.4 million in endowment tax. The increase is not as steep as the 14% to 21% that federal lawmakers had included in earlier budget versions, but it will still financially impact the school. The tax is applied to net investment income.

Penn also stands to lose about $250 million if President Donald Trump’s cap on indirect cost reimbursement from the National Institutes of Health, currently the subject of litigation, is allowed to proceed.

Concerns, too, remain about Trump’s policies regarding international students. In the last year, the administration for a period paused student visa interviews, sought to bar international students from Harvard, and promised to “aggressively” scrutinize Chinese students over whether they will be permitted to study here.

It is unclear what long-term impact those policies may have on international enrollment. International student enrollment at U.S. colleges declined 1% from fall 2024 to fall 2025, according to the Institute of International Education. The number of international graduate students declined 12%.

Penn also is bracing for the effects of the federal government’s decision, among other policy changes, to place new caps on loans that graduate students can take out.