What Happened to You Was Not Your Fault — and Arizona Law Says So
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. because you or someone you love was a pledge at Arizona State University’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter, you already know what happened. You do not need us to describe it back to you. You lived it. What you may not know is that the State of Arizona wrote a law specifically to tell you that what happened was a crime — not a tradition, not a rite of passage, not something you agreed to. A crime. And that law bears the name of a young man who did not survive his own encounter with this same fraternity at this same university.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Arizona cases, working with local counsel where required, and we are currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity in Texas. We know this fight because we are in it right now, in a different courtroom, against a different fraternity, for a different family. The machinery of accountability is the same. The playbook the defense runs is the same. And the law that protects you is, in some ways, stronger here than anywhere else in the country.
What you are about to read is not a news summary. It is a legal and medical map of what happened at ASU’s SAE chapter between January and April of 2024, what the law says about it, what the evidence looks like, what it is worth, and what to do in the first 72 hours after you decide you are ready to act. Every word is written to one person — the one reading this in pain, wondering whether what was done to them was bad enough to matter. It was. It is. And the law agrees with you.
The ASU SAE Hazing Allegations: What the Lawsuit Describes
Two former pledges filed their lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court in mid-January 2026, naming the ASU SAE chapter, the National SAE organization, and over 50 current and former individual members. The complaint describes a pledging process that was supposed to last four days — the standard set by the National Fraternity itself — but instead ran from January into late April of 2024, a stretch of months during which the pledges were subjected to what the lawsuit calls “several ritualistic ‘tasks’” commonly known as hazing.
The specific allegations are severe. Pledges were forced to consume extremely spicy cheeseballs rated at 2.2 million Scoville Heat Units — a level of capsaicin concentration that can cause tissue damage, severe gastrointestinal distress, and, in extreme cases, airway compromise. They were paddled. They were forced to perform physical exercise while fraternity members poured alcohol on them. They were compelled to purchase and use drugs including marijuana and cocaine. And on what the suit calls “Election Night,” pledges were taken to a bathroom where they were waterboarded:
the suit alleges that several pledges were “water boarded” after being taken to a bathroom, where they allegedly had “their mouths covered with a rag, and water poured on the rag.”
That is not hazing in the colloquial sense. That is a torture technique. It is the same technique that has been classified as torture by international human rights bodies, and it was allegedly inflicted on young men who wanted nothing more than to belong to a brotherhood that was, in reality, destroying them.
The complaint also describes a policy in which pledges were required to show their made bed every morning — unless a female was present, in which case the pledge had to secretly record her and send the video to other fraternity members. The women recorded were not informed they were being filmed, nor that the recordings would be disseminated. This is not merely hazing. It is a separate civil wrong — invasion of privacy — and it may carry criminal exposure under Arizona’s voyeurism laws. It also speaks to the predatory culture of the chapter, a culture that the National organization was responsible for detecting and stopping.
And then there was the vodka. According to the lawsuit, pledges “collectively consumed approximately 10.5 liters of vodka” at a single event. The event culminated in multiple pledges requiring emergency medical care, including one pledge who became “completely motionless and unresponsive from alcohol consumption.” That phrase — completely motionless and unresponsive — is the clinical description of someone approaching a lethal blood alcohol concentration. That young man was not hung over. He was dying, and someone had to call for help before he stopped breathing.
The harms the plaintiffs describe are the harms we see in hazing cases: substance abuse issues that began during the pledging process and continued after, physical bodily damage from paddling and forced consumption, and educational setbacks so severe that one plaintiff was “compelled to withdraw from Arizona State University” due to “severely compromised grades and attendance.” The financial harms were not incidental — pledges were forced to purchase alcohol at nine separate events, buy drugs, and submit to “arbitrary monetary fines” and confiscation of personal belongings imposed by the chapter’s financial treasurer.
The ASU SAE chapter was suspended by the University in October 2025, following a separate September 2025 lawsuit alleging distribution of a non-consensual explicit video. Students residing at the chapter house within the Greek Leadership Village were relocated to other on-campus housing. The University stated that the new allegations were being investigated.
Arizona’s Jack’s Law: The Anti-Hazing Statute That Bears a Dead Student’s Name
Arizona did not always have an anti-hazing law. It has one now because a young man named Jack Culolias went to an SAE event at ASU and never came home. He was found dead after going missing from that event. His cause of death was an accidental drowning. The law that followed was enacted in 2022 and named after him.
Arizona’s anti-hazing statute, known as “Jack’s Law” (enacted 2022 and named for deceased SAE pledge Jack Culolias), provides both criminal penalties and civil remedies for hazing victims.
This is the foundation of everything that follows. Jack’s Law does two things that matter to you. First, it criminalizes hazing — meaning the conduct described in the lawsuit is not merely a civil wrong but a violation of Arizona criminal law. Second, it establishes a statutory basis for civil liability, which means a plaintiff can argue that the defendants’ violation of the anti-hazing statute is negligence per se — a doctrine that allows a jury to treat the violation of a safety statute as proof of negligence, without needing to separately prove that the defendant failed to exercise reasonable care.
The criminalization of hazing also does something else that is quietly powerful: it dismantles the assumption-of-risk defense. Fraternities love to argue that pledges “chose” to participate, that they “could have left at any time,” that they “knew what they were getting into.” But you cannot assume the risk of conduct the legislature has made a crime. The law has already spoken: this conduct is not a voluntary activity. It is an offense. And the power dynamics of pledging — the desire for belonging, the group pressure, the structured hierarchy of authority — make true voluntary consent impossible. That is why the law was written. That is why Jack’s Law exists.
Arizona also follows a pure comparative negligence framework. This means that even if a jury were to find that a plaintiff bore some share of responsibility for what happened, that share reduces but never eliminates the recovery. If a jury found a plaintiff 20 percent at fault, the recovery would be reduced by 20 percent — but the plaintiff would still recover 80 percent of the damages. And in a hazing case, the statutory criminalization of the conduct makes it extraordinarily difficult for a defendant to assign meaningful fault to the pledge, because the law has already determined that the pledge is the victim, not a participant.
Arizona’s Strongest Advantage: No Damage Caps
Arizona is one of the few states where the legislature is constitutionally prohibited from capping damages for personal injury. The Arizona Constitution bars legislative caps on personal injury damages, which means both compensatory and punitive damages are uncapped in this jurisdiction. This is not a technicality. It is the single most powerful structural advantage an injured person has in Arizona, and it changes the entire economics of a hazing case.
In states with damage caps, a fraternity’s insurer can calculate its maximum exposure to the penny and settle accordingly. In Arizona, there is no ceiling. A jury that hears evidence of waterboarding, near-fatal alcohol poisoning, forced drug use, and the secret recording of unwitting women can return a verdict that reflects the full measure of the harm — and no statute can cut that number down.
Punitive damages are available in Arizona upon a showing of “aggravating circumstances” — which the law defines to include gross negligence, reckless indifference, or intentional misconduct. The allegations in this lawsuit — waterboarding, forced consumption of 10.5 liters of vodka, coerced drug use, and the non-consensual recording of women — do not merely meet this standard. They were written into the standard. Arizona’s punitive damages framework was designed for exactly this kind of conduct: deliberate, repeated, and indifferent to human life.
The Deadline: Arizona’s Two-Year Statute of Limitations
Arizona’s statute of limitations for personal injury is generally two years from the date of the injury. The mid-January 2026 filing of this lawsuit aligns with the two-year anniversary of the earliest alleged incidents in January 2024 — which means the plaintiffs’ attorney filed right at the deadline for the earliest events. This is not a coincidence. It is a warning.
If you experienced hazing at ASU or any Arizona university, the clock on your right to sue is already running. For incidents that occurred in the spring of 2024, the two-year window is closing now. For incidents that occurred later, you may have more time — but the evidence is dying faster than the deadline. The statute of limitations is the hard outer wall. The evidence clock is the real emergency, and it runs much faster.
There is a critical exception to understand: the discovery rule. In some cases, the clock does not start on the date the injury occurred but on the date the plaintiff discovered, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury and its cause. For hazing victims who developed substance abuse disorders or psychological injuries that manifested over time, the discovery rule may extend the filing window. This is a question that must be answered by an attorney familiar with Arizona’s specific accrual rules — and it must be answered early, because getting it wrong ends the case.
If the harm occurred in university-owned housing — and the Greek Leadership Village is university-owned — there may be a potential claim against Arizona State University or the Arizona Board of Regents. But claims against government entities in Arizona are subject to notice-of-claim requirements under the Arizona tort claims act, which operate on their own separate and often shorter deadlines. These are procedural traps that can extinguish a meritorious claim before it ever reaches a courtroom. If you believe the university bears responsibility, the notice-of-claim clock may already be running, and it is shorter than the two-year statute of limitations.
The Pattern at ASU’s SAE Chapter: From 2013 Ban to the Present
The history of SAE at ASU is not a history of isolated incidents. It is a pattern — and a pattern is the engine for punitive damages because it proves notice, recurrence, and institutional indifference.
SAE was banned from ASU’s campus in 2013 due to several incidents. The fraternity later returned. Then, in 2012 — before the ban — Jack Culolias, a former SAE pledge, went missing from an SAE event. His body was found later. His cause of death was an accidental drowning. The law that bears his name was enacted a full decade later, in 2022, because the legislature concluded that what happened to Jack was not an accident but a foreseeable consequence of a culture that no one intervened to stop.
Then came September 2025, when a separate lawsuit was filed against the ASU SAE chapter alleging the distribution of a non-consensual explicit video. The University suspended the chapter in October 2025. And now, in January 2026, two former pledges have come forward with allegations that span January through April of 2024 — waterboarding, near-fatal alcohol poisoning, forced drug use, and the secret recording of women.
This is not a timeline of bad luck. It is a timeline of institutional failure. Each incident was a warning that was not heard, or was heard and not acted upon, or was acted upon with a suspension that came too late for the people who were already hurt. The National SAE organization knew — or should have known — that its ASU chapter had a documented history of misconduct. The University knew — or should have known — that a fraternity it had once banned for misconduct was operating in university-owned housing. And the individual members who participated in the 2024 hazing knew — or should have known — that they were engaging in conduct that Arizona had criminalized two years earlier.
For a jury, this pattern is not background color. It is the road map to punitive damages. It proves that the harm was foreseeable, that the defendants had repeated opportunities to intervene, and that they failed catastrophically each time.
Who Can Be Held Liable: The Defendant Structure in a Fraternity Hazing Case
A fraternity hazing case is never one defendant. It is a stack of defendants, each with a different role, a different insurance policy, and a different argument for why it should not have to pay. Understanding this stack is the difference between a case that recovers real money and one that collects a judgment against a broke college student.
The ASU SAE Chapter (local entity): This is the organization that directly conducted the hazing. It is responsible for the culture, the events, the forced consumption, the paddling, and the waterboarding. But a local chapter is often a thinly capitalized entity — it may have limited assets and limited insurance. The chapter’s own insurance policy, if it exists, is the first layer. But it is rarely the last word.
The National SAE Fraternity: This is the deep-pocket defendant. The National organization collects dues from every chapter, sets the rules every chapter must follow, and — critically — established a four-day pledging standard that the ASU chapter allegedly ignored for months. The National organization’s failure to enforce its own standard, against a chapter with a documented history of misconduct including a prior campus ban and a pledge’s death, is the engine for both negligent supervision liability and punitive damages. The National organization has nationwide assets, insurance coverage, and a brand to protect — which is exactly why it is the defendant that matters most.
The 50+ individual members: Each individual who participated in the hazing — who poured the alcohol, who wielded the paddle, who held the rag, who collected the fines, who demanded the drugs — faces individual liability for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. These are likely college students with limited assets, but their individual liability is real, and their testimony, under oath, is how the case against the National organization is built.
The chapter financial treasurer: The lawsuit specifically names the treasurer for imposing “arbitrary monetary fines” and confiscating personal belongings. This is a distinct form of financial coercion that may support separate claims and that evidences the systematic, organized nature of the abuse.
Arizona State University and the Arizona Board of Regents (potential): The Greek Leadership Village is university-owned, on-campus housing. This places residential oversight and premises management squarely within ASU’s operational control. The University had documented knowledge of SAE’s history of misconduct — the 2013 ban, the death of Jack Culolias, the September 2025 video lawsuit. This creates a notice argument: the University knew this fraternity was dangerous, it knew the chapter was operating in its own housing, and it may have failed to supervise the activities occurring on its own premises. Claims against the University are subject to the notice-of-claim requirements of the Arizona tort claims act, which operate on shorter deadlines than the standard two-year statute of limitations. This is a threshold question that must be evaluated immediately.
Negligent Supervision: When the National Organization Fails Its Own Rules
The negligent supervision claim against the National SAE Fraternity is the heart of this case, and it is built on a single devastating fact: the National organization had a four-day pledging standard, and the ASU chapter ignored it for four months.
That standard is not a suggestion. It is the National organization’s own governance document — the rule it wrote, published, and was responsible for enforcing. When a local chapter violates that standard for months, in a chapter with a documented history of misconduct, the question is not whether the National organization was negligent. The question is how it was possible for the National organization not to know.
The discovery process in a negligent supervision case against a national fraternity should prioritize the National organization’s oversight records: communications between national staff and the ASU chapter, prior disciplinary actions, risk management files, chapter visitation reports, and — most critically — the implementation (or lack thereof) of the four-day pledging standard. If the National organization never checked whether its own rule was being followed, that failure is not mere negligence. It is the predicate for punitive damages, because it demonstrates a reckless indifference to the safety of every pledge under its authority.
The National organization’s own risk management files and insurance policies are also discoverable. These documents establish what the organization knew about the risks of hazing, what protocols it had in place to prevent it, and whether those protocols were actually implemented or merely existed on paper. In our experience, the gap between what a national fraternity says it does and what it actually does is where the case is won.
The Medical Reality of What Hazing Does to the Body
What was allegedly done to these pledges is not a series of pranks that went too far. Each act has a specific medical mechanism, a specific diagnostic profile, and a specific long-term cost. Understanding the medicine is understanding the damages.
Waterboarding: When a rag is placed over the mouth and water is poured onto it, the fabric saturates and creates a barrier that restricts airflow. The body’s instinctive response is to gasp — which pulls water into the airway. The sensation is that of drowning, because the body is, in fact, drowning at the airway level. The physiological effects include respiratory distress, potential aspiration of water into the lungs, and — critically — psychological trauma consistent with near-drowning experiences. The psychological impact of waterboarding is severe and long-lasting: it is classified as a form of torture by international bodies, and survivors experience post-traumatic stress, panic disorders, and an enduring fear of suffocation. This is not a hazing injury that heals in a week. This is a trauma injury that can shape a person’s nervous system for years.
The 10.5 liters of vodka: This is a mass alcohol poisoning event. To put the number in perspective: a standard bottle of vodka is 750 milliliters. Ten and a half liters is fourteen bottles. At 40 percent alcohol by volume, that is approximately 4.2 liters of pure ethanol consumed collectively by a group of pledges — a quantity that, depending on the number of pledges and the time frame, can produce blood alcohol concentrations in the lethal range. A blood alcohol concentration above 0.30 percent is life-threatening. Above 0.40 percent, it is potentially fatal. The pledge who became “completely motionless and unresponsive” was at or near this range. Acute alcohol poisoning can cause respiratory depression — the brain simply stops telling the body to breathe — aspiration of vomit, hypothermia, cardiac arrhythmia, and death. Even after survival, severe alcohol poisoning can cause permanent neurological consequences, organ damage, and a trajectory toward substance use disorder.
Paddling: Paddling produces soft-tissue injury, contusions, and hematomas. Depending on the force and location, it can cause deep tissue damage, muscle breakdown (rhabdomyolysis, which can lead to kidney injury), and permanent scarring. The physical marks may fade, but the psychological impact of being struck by a group of older men who hold power over you does not.
Forced drug use: Compelled consumption of marijuana and cocaine carries its own medical risks — cardiac effects from cocaine, respiratory effects from marijuana, and the risk of addiction. But the deeper harm is the psychological conditioning: pledges were taught that their bodies were not their own, that refusal was not an option, and that substance use was the price of belonging. This is the mechanism by which hazing creates substance abuse disorders. It is not a coincidence that the plaintiffs report developing substance abuse issues. It is the foreseeable, medically documented consequence of forced consumption under coercive conditions.
The psychological injuries: The development of substance abuse disorders, post-traumatic stress, anxiety, depression, and the emotional devastation of forced participation in the non-consensual recording of women — these are not “soft” damages. They are diagnosable, treatable, and permanent injuries with lifetime costs. A forensic psychologist specializing in hazing trauma can document these injuries through validated clinical instruments. A life-care planner can project the cost of years of therapy, substance abuse treatment, and ongoing mental health care. And a jury can be taught to see what the defense tries to make invisible.
Evidence Preservation: The Records That Disappear
The evidence in a fraternity hazing case is the most perishable evidence in any case we handle. Every record that matters is on a clock, and most of those clocks have already been running for two years.
GLV security camera footage: The Greek Leadership Village is a university-owned housing complex with security cameras. The footage from January through April of 2024 would show who was present at the chapter house during hazing events, movement patterns, the timing of the alcohol poisoning emergency, and whether university staff were aware of activity. But campus security systems typically overwrite on rolling cycles measured in days to weeks. The footage from early 2024 is almost certainly already gone — overwritten by the routine operation of the system itself. This is the single most destructive evidence loss in the case, and it is the reason a preservation demand must go out the day you call, not the day you decide to file.
Text messages and group chats between SAE members: These messages prove knowledge, planning, coordination, and the culture of hazing. They show who had notice of the misconduct and who participated. But messages are deleted, apps have data retention policies that purge old content, and devices are replaced. A litigation hold and forensic phone imaging are required to freeze this evidence before it disappears.
Medical records from emergency treatment: The records from the emergency department that treated the unresponsive pledge document the severity of the alcohol poisoning, the physical injuries from paddling and waterboarding, and the medical response. These records are relatively stable but require HIPAA authorization to obtain, and they must be pulled before they are archived or purged per hospital retention policies.
Videos and photographs from pledging events: These directly prove the hazing occurred, document specific acts, and may show individual member participation. But social media takedowns, platform data retention limits, and simple deletion threaten this evidence. Forensic recovery may be needed.
National SAE chapter oversight and supervision records: Communications between national staff and the ASU chapter, prior disciplinary actions, risk management files, and the implementation of the four-day pledging standard. These may be altered or destroyed without a litigation hold. The National organization’s headquarters records must be preserved immediately.
University disciplinary records and prior complaint files: These prove the pattern of misconduct, prior notice to the University, and the history of SAE violations at ASU. They are relatively stable but subject to personnel turnover, document retention policies, and FERPA complications. Public records requests and subpoenas may be required.
Financial records — bank statements, Venmo, Cash App, Zelle: These prove coerced expenditures on alcohol and drugs, the collection of arbitrary fines by the treasurer, and the quantification of financial damages. They vary by platform retention policy. Preservation letters to financial institutions are required.
Witness statements from other pledges and members: These prove the scope, duration, and pattern of hazing. They establish who knew what and when. But students graduate, transfer, memories fade, loyalties shift, and social pressure may discourage cooperation. Depositions should be scheduled promptly while memories are fresh and before the fraternity’s own legal team has a chance to shape the narrative.
National SAE insurance policies and risk management files: These establish the coverage available for hazing claims, the risk management protocols that were allegedly ignored, and the prior claims history. They must be obtained through discovery before policy renewal or document destruction cycles.
The preservation letter is the single most important first step. It goes to every defendant and every third-party record holder — the University, the National organization, the camera vendor, the social media platforms, the financial apps. It tells them, in writing, that they must not destroy anything. And if they destroy it after receiving that letter, the law answers: a jury can be told to assume the lost evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. That is the adverse-inference instruction, and it is the leverage that a preservation letter creates the moment it is sent.
What a Hazing Case Is Worth in Arizona
The value of a hazing case in Arizona is driven by three factors: the severity of the conduct, the depth of the defendant’s pockets, and the absence of any statutory cap on damages.
The severity here is extraordinary. Waterboarding is not a hazing ritual — it is a torture technique. A near-fatal alcohol poisoning is not a party that went too far — it is a medical emergency that could have ended in a death notification to a family. Forced drug use, paddling, and the secret recording of women are not traditions — they are crimes and civil wrongs that compound upon each other to paint a picture of a chapter that had abandoned any pretense of brotherhood.
The defendant structure includes the National SAE Fraternity — a deep-pocket defendant with nationwide assets and insurance coverage. The documented history of prior misconduct at this specific chapter — the 2013 campus ban, the death of Jack Culolias, the September 2025 non-consensual video lawsuit — dramatically amplifies both compensatory and punitive value by establishing a pattern of institutional indifference over more than a decade.
Based on the severity of the alleged conduct, the available defendants, and Arizona’s uncapped damages framework, the case value range we assess for conduct of this nature is from approximately $1,000,000 on the low end to $10,000,000 or more on the high end. The waterboarding allegation alone, if proven at trial, could drive a verdict toward the upper end of that range — because an Arizona jury that hears evidence of a fraternity waterboarding its pledges, in a state with no damage caps and a punitive damages standard that the conduct was designed to meet, is a jury that can return a number that reflects the full horror of what happened.
The deflators are real and must be stated honestly. The case is in its early procedural posture — the allegations are untested. The individual member defendants are likely college students with limited assets. And the comparative fault argument, though significantly undermined by the statutory criminalization of hazing, will still be raised. But these deflators are offset by the National organization’s deep pockets, the documented pattern of prior misconduct, and Arizona’s plaintiff-friendly damages framework.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we can tell you is that the structural conditions for a significant recovery exist here in a way they do not in most states: the conduct is egregious, the defendant has money, the law criminalizes the behavior, the caps are absent, and the punitive standard is met.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook in Hazing Cases
The defense in a fraternity hazing case is not run by the fraternity members. It is run by the National organization’s insurance carrier and its defense lawyers — professionals who have handled hazing claims before and who know exactly what plays to run. Here are the plays you will see, and here is how each one is countered.
Play 1: “The pledge voluntarily participated.” This is the oldest and most common defense in hazing cases. The fraternity will argue that the plaintiff chose to pledge, chose to participate, and could have left at any time. The counter is Jack’s Law itself: Arizona has criminalized hazing, and you cannot voluntarily assume the risk of criminal conduct. The power dynamics of pledging — the desire for belonging, the structured hierarchy, the group pressure — make true voluntary consent a legal fiction. A hazing expert can explain to a jury how the coercive power dynamics of pledging negate voluntary participation, and the statute has already made the policy judgment that the conduct is not a voluntary activity.
Play 2: “The National organization didn’t know.” The National fraternity will argue that it had no knowledge of the local chapter’s conduct and therefore cannot be liable for negligent supervision. The counter is the four-day pledging standard that was ignored for four months — in a chapter with a documented history of misconduct including a prior campus ban and a pledge’s death. The National organization’s own governance documents establish the standard it failed to enforce. Its oversight records — communications, visitation reports, risk management files — will show what it knew and when. And the pattern of prior incidents provides the notice that the National organization cannot honestly deny.
Play 3: “The quick settlement check.” Before the full extent of the injuries is known — before the substance abuse treatment costs are quantified, before the psychological injuries are fully diagnosed, before the life-care plan is built — the insurer may offer a fast settlement that looks large to a college student but is a fraction of the case’s real value. The release attached to that check will extinguish every claim, including punitive damages, forever. The counter is simple: do not sign anything, do not accept any check, and do not give any recorded statement until you have spoken to an attorney who understands the full value of what was taken from you.
Play 4: “The recorded statement request.” Within days of the lawsuit being filed — or even before — someone friendly will call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording that is engineered to be quoted against you. The counter is to decline the recorded statement. You are not required to give one. Anything you say can and will be used to minimize your claim, to create inconsistencies that the defense will exploit at trial, and to shape a narrative that protects the fraternity, not you.
Play 5: “The social media surveillance.” The defense will monitor the plaintiffs’ social media accounts for any post that can be used to minimize the injury — a photo at a party, a smiling picture, a trip. The counter is to assume you are being watched. Do not post about the case, your injuries, your recovery, or your social life. Assume every post will be shown to a jury and interpreted in the worst possible light.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If you or someone you love experienced hazing at ASU or any Arizona university, the steps you take in the first 72 hours after you decide to act can determine whether the case is winnable.
Hour 1: Get medical care. If you are experiencing physical symptoms, psychological distress, or substance abuse issues related to hazing, go to a doctor or a counselor now. Not next week. Now. The medical record is the foundation of the damages case, and a gap between the hazing and the first treatment is a gap the defense will exploit. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 988 — the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — immediately. Your safety comes first. The case comes second.
Hours 2-24: Document everything you remember. Write down every detail you can recall — dates, locations, who was present, what was said, what was done to you, what you were forced to do. Do this while your memory is fresh. Do not share this document with anyone except your attorney. Photograph any physical evidence — scars, bruising, anything that documents the physical harm.
Hours 24-48: Do not sign anything. Do not give any recorded statement. Do not post on social media. If the fraternity, its insurer, or its attorney contacts you, decline to speak. If you have already received a settlement offer or a release, do not sign it. If you have already given a statement, do not give another one. Everything you say and everything you sign will be used to minimize your claim.
Hours 48-72: Call a lawyer. The preservation letter — the document that tells every defendant and every record holder to freeze the evidence — goes out the day you call. Every day you wait is a day the evidence continues to disappear. The statute of limitations is the hard outer wall, but the evidence clock is the real emergency. Security footage is overwritten. Text messages are deleted. Witnesses graduate and transfer. Memories fade. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And if you are more comfortable speaking in Spanish, we serve your family fully in Spanish — without an interpreter, without a barrier, without a filter.
Why This Firm: Hazing Cases Are Not New to Us
We are not a firm that discovered hazing cases when this lawsuit made the news. We are currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston, filed in Harris County, Texas, in November 2025. That case involves a different fraternity at a different university in a different state. But the machinery is the same — the same defendant structure, the same insurance playbook, the same evidence clocks, the same fight to hold a national organization accountable for what its local chapter did to young people who wanted nothing more than to belong.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed and practicing law for 27+ years, including in federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — which means he knows how to find the story the documents tell, and he knows how to tell it to a jury. He is lead counsel on the Bermudez hazing case. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. He built this firm to take on the fights that other firms do not have the stomach for. Ralph’s full background is here.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. Before he joined this firm, he spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you. He knows how claims are valued, how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, and how surveillance is deployed — because he used to do it. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Lupe’s full background is here.
We are a Houston-based firm that takes cases in Arizona, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not claim an office in Arizona. We do not claim an Arizona bar admission. What we claim is this: we know how to build a hazing case, we know how to try one, and we know how to stand between a young person who was hurt and the institution that failed them. Our hazing practice page describes the full scope of what we handle — fraternity and sorority hazing, corps of cadets, marching band, spirit group, and K-12 hazing cases.
If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you. If there is a better firm for your specific situation, we will say so. But if you want a team that is already in this fight — that has already done the work, filed the papers, taken the depositions, and built the case against a national fraternity — then call us. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And the fee is contingency — 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
You can reach us at our contact page or by calling 1-888-ATTY-911. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. Someone will answer. Someone will listen. And someone will know what to do next.
Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for hazing in Arizona?
Yes. Arizona’s Jack’s Law provides both criminal penalties and civil remedies for hazing victims, and the standard civil causes of action — negligence, gross negligence, negligent supervision, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress — are all available against the local chapter, the National organization, and the individual members who participated. The fact that Arizona has criminalized hazing strengthens the civil case because it allows a plaintiff to argue negligence per se — that the defendants violated a safety statute designed to protect pledges, and that violation is itself proof of negligence.
What is Jack’s Law and how does it protect hazing victims?
Jack’s Law is Arizona’s anti-hazing statute, enacted in 2022 and named after Jack Culolias, a former SAE pledge at ASU who was found dead after going missing from an SAE event. The law criminalizes hazing and establishes a statutory basis for civil liability. It matters to your case in two ways: first, it means the conduct you experienced was a crime, not a tradition — which destroys the fraternity’s ability to argue that you voluntarily assumed the risk. Second, it provides a negligence-per-se foundation, allowing a jury to treat the statutory violation as proof of negligence without requiring you to separately prove that the defendant failed to exercise reasonable care.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Arizona?
Arizona’s statute of limitations for personal injury is generally two years from the date of the injury. The lawsuit filed in mid-January 2026 was filed right at the two-year anniversary of the earliest alleged incidents in January 2024, which means the window for the earliest events is closing now. If your hazing occurred later in the spring of 2024, you may have more time — but the discovery rule may extend the clock if your injuries manifested over time. If you believe the university bears responsibility, separate and shorter notice-of-claim deadlines under the Arizona tort claims act may apply. The only safe assumption is that the deadline is real and running. Call an attorney now.
What if I was partly at fault because I chose to pledge?
Arizona follows a pure comparative negligence rule, which means your own share of fault reduces but never eliminates your recovery. If a jury found you 20 percent at fault, you would still recover 80 percent of your damages. But in a hazing case, the statutory criminalization of the conduct makes it extraordinarily difficult for a defendant to assign meaningful fault to the pledge — because the law has already determined that the pledge is the victim. The power dynamics of pledging, the group pressure, and the structured hierarchy of authority all negate the idea of true voluntary participation. The defense will try this argument. The law gives you the answer to it.
Can the national fraternity organization be held liable?
Yes — and this is often where the real recovery lives. The National SAE Fraternity had a four-day pledging standard that the ASU chapter allegedly ignored for four months. The National organization had documented knowledge of prior misconduct at this specific chapter, including a 2013 campus ban and the death of a pledge. Its failure to enforce its own standards, monitor its own chapter, and protect its own pledges is the basis for a negligent supervision claim — and the National organization has nationwide assets and insurance coverage that the local chapter does not. The discovery process targets the National organization’s oversight records, communications with the local chapter, and risk management files to prove what it knew and when.
What damages can I recover in a hazing case?
In Arizona, with no statutory cap on personal injury damages, you can recover the full range of compensatory damages: past and future medical expenses, substance abuse treatment costs, lost tuition, lost earning capacity from educational withdrawal, pain and suffering, emotional distress, and the cost of ongoing mental health care. You can also seek punitive damages, which are available in Arizona upon a showing of aggravating circumstances — gross negligence, reckless indifference, or intentional misconduct. The alleged waterboarding, forced drug use, and near-fatal alcohol poisoning readily satisfy this standard. Punitive damages in Arizona are uncapped, which means a jury can return a number that reflects the full measure of the defendants’ indifference to your safety.
Is it too late if the hazing happened over a year ago?
It may not be. The two-year statute of limitations runs from the date of injury, and the discovery rule may extend the clock if your injuries — such as substance abuse disorders or psychological trauma — manifested over time rather than immediately. But you should not assume you have time. The evidence is dying faster than the deadline. Security footage is overwritten in weeks. Text messages are deleted. Witnesses graduate and transfer. The statute of limitations is the hard outer wall, but the evidence clock is the real emergency. Call an attorney now, while both the deadline and the evidence are still alive.
What should I do if I am still experiencing effects from hazing?
Get medical care immediately. If you are experiencing substance abuse issues, contact a treatment provider or the SAMHSA National Helpline at 1-800-662-4357. If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 988 immediately. Your health and safety come before any legal case. But do not wait to get treatment until you have spoken to a lawyer — the medical record is the foundation of the damages case, and a gap between the hazing and the first treatment is a gap the defense will exploit. Get treated. Get documented. Then call.
Can the university be held responsible for hazing in its housing?
Potentially, yes. The Greek Leadership Village is university-owned, on-campus housing, which places premises management and residential oversight within ASU’s operational control. The University had documented knowledge of SAE’s history of misconduct — the 2013 ban, the death of Jack Culolias, the September 2025 video lawsuit. This creates a notice argument: the University knew this fraternity was dangerous and may have failed to supervise activities occurring in its own housing. However, claims against Arizona State University and the Arizona Board of Regents are subject to the notice-of-claim requirements of the Arizona tort claims act, which operate on shorter deadlines than the standard two-year statute of limitations. This is a threshold question that must be evaluated immediately by an attorney familiar with Arizona’s government-tort-claims procedures.
What if I was one of the women secretly recorded?
You may have separate civil claims for invasion of privacy and potential criminal exposure for the defendants under Arizona’s voyeurism laws. The non-consensual recording and dissemination of intimate images is a distinct civil wrong, and the fact that it was done as part of a fraternity policy — with pledges required to record and transmit the videos — evidences the predatory culture of the chapter. You may also have rights under Title IX if the recording occurred in a university housing context. Contact an attorney to discuss your specific situation and the claims available to you.
What does it cost to hire a hazing lawyer?
Our firm works on contingency. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery if the case settles before trial, and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. You do not pay anything out of pocket. We advance the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witness fees, the deposition costs — and those costs are reimbursed from the recovery. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the financial barrier to hiring us is zero. The only thing you need to bring is your story.
How do I start?
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service. Someone will answer. The consultation is free and confidential. We will listen to what happened to you, explain your rights under Arizona law, and tell you honestly whether we believe you have a case. If we do, the preservation letter goes out that week — the document that tells every defendant and every record holder to freeze the evidence before it disappears. If we do not, or if another firm is better suited to your situation, we will tell you that too. The call costs nothing. The conversation is protected. And the decision about what to do next is always yours.
Learn more about our firm or contact us directly. We are here.