A Father’s Phone Rang at 12:30 a.m. and Never Stopped Ringing
It was the first weekend of November. Your son, or your daughter’s friend, or the kid you said goodnight to on Friday, was at a birthday party at a house in Bath Township — one of those Summit County streets where the lots are wide, the trees are old, and the houses have always been homes, not venues. By the time the gunfire stopped, an 18-year-old was dead, shot eight times. Nine others, most of them teenagers, were wounded. Thirteen different 911 calls came in that night. The dispatchers heard the same word over and over: shooting. And a voice on one of those recordings, as the township’s police chief later confirmed, simply said: “blood everywhere.”
If you are reading this in the days, weeks, or months after that night, you are not here for a news summary. You are here because the person you raised, or loved, or simply cannot stop thinking about, was taken from you in a way the law is designed to address — and the people who profited from the house where it happened are not facing anything yet. We built this page for you. The Ohio legal system, used the way we use it, gives you tools. The first tool is understanding what just happened, and what the law actually lets you do about it.
At Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, we represent families in catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases across Ohio and the country, including matters involving short-term-rental premises liability, negligent security, and the corporate responsibility of online platforms. We have spent more than two decades building a record of standing between grieving families and the well-funded defense teams that show up within days. This page explains the law in Ohio as it applies to what happened in Bath Township, the evidence we move to freeze in the first 72 hours, the playbook the property owner and the platform’s insurance carriers are running right now, the realistic value of a case like this, and what it looks like to put our firm on it. We work on contingency — you pay nothing up front and nothing unless we recover for you.
Call us anytime, day or night, at 1-888-ATTY-911. Your consultation is free. If we take the case, you pay no fee unless we win.
Who Can Be Sued, and on What Theories
The criminal charges against the shooters do one job — they hold the people who pulled the triggers accountable to the State. The civil system does a different job, and the people it reaches are often different people. In a Bath Township case, the families we represent have distinct civil claims against multiple defendants, each with its own insurance tower and its own defense strategy. We separate them by name and by theory, because each one has to be investigated and pursued on its own track.
The Homeowner
The owner of a short-term rental owes the people on the property the same duty a hotel owes its guests — a duty of reasonable care to protect them from foreseeable harm. The Ohio Supreme Court and intermediate appellate courts have repeatedly held that a landowner or business operator is not excused from that duty simply because the actual physical harm was caused by a third party’s criminal act, if that kind of criminal act was foreseeable and security was inadequate. The two theories we build first against the owner are:
Negligent security. A $1.2 million, five-bedroom house with a movie theater, advertised to a national audience as a short-term rental, located in a residential neighborhood where the township does not permit such rentals, in a township with a documented prior Airbnb shooting — this is not an unforeseeable venue. We will seek the owner’s communications, screening of prior bookings, any prior complaints or incidents, the property’s security features (lighting, cameras, locks, occupancy limits, security personnel), and the marketing she used to attract the booking.
Negligent hosting and negligent entrustment. Hosting a 250–300 person event in a residential neighborhood, where the homeowner’s own property-management structure invites the kind of mass gathering that produced a prior shooting, is itself a foreseeable harm-causing act. The Ohio doctrine of negligent entrustment — providing a tool, instrumentality, or premises to someone the owner knows or should know will use it in a manner creating an unreasonable risk — fits this fact pattern squarely.
The Online Platform
Airbnb, like any online platform that books short-term rentals and processes payment, can be reached under several theories despite its reliance on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. The Section 230 shield protects platforms from being treated as the publisher of third-party content. It does not protect a platform from liability for its own conduct — its own booking decisions, its own marketing, its own representations about safety, its own failure to enforce its own policies, and its own payment processing. Federal courts across the country, applying 18 U.S.C. § 1595 and a growing body of state-law precedent, have allowed claims to proceed against online platforms where the platform’s own conduct — not the conduct of a third-party user — caused or contributed to the harm. We investigate the booking process end-to-end: the listing language, the safety representations, the host’s verification, the platform’s knowledge of prior complaints about the property, the platform’s knowledge of the township’s zoning prohibition, and the platform’s own internal policies on mass gatherings.
The Event Organizers
In a case like this, the people who organized, marketed, and profited from the gathering are separate defendants. We identify them through the social-media flyers, the digital ticketing records, the phone metadata, the text-message traffic, and the host’s own communications. Each organizer carries their own liability, and each is an avenue to additional insurance coverage.
The Shooters (Civil Track)
The criminal defendants can also be pursued civilly. A wrongful-death judgment against the shooters, even if their personal assets are limited, locks in a finding of liability that the insurance carriers for the property and the platform have to contend with when allocating fault and contribution.
The Evidence That Disappears First
The first 72 hours after a mass shooting determine whether a civil case has teeth. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, the host’s text messages, the platform’s internal records, the social-media flyers, and the property-management communications are each on their own destruction clock. We move on the same day we are retained.
The platform’s booking and communication records. Airbnb’s records of the booking — the listing as it appeared the night of the event, the host’s communications with the renter, any prior complaints about the property, the platform’s own internal flags, the host’s verification documents, the payment trail — are the spine of the case against the platform. We send a litigation-hold demand to the platform the same day. The platform’s stated retention window for granular booking telemetry is not statutorily fixed — it is an internal policy that we pin down through discovery, but the safe move is to demand preservation before the next refresh cycle.
The host’s personal and business records. Texts, emails, banking records, the deed showing the recent transfer of the home, the property-management agreement if any, the prior booking history, and any communications with the event organizers. The recent inter-spousal transfer of the home — from a husband entering federal prison for a fraud conviction to a wife with no apparent local presence — is itself an event the defense will want to characterize as routine. We collect the financial records behind that transfer, because a transfer to a non-spouse third party, or to a spouse at a time when liability is foreseeable, can be challenged as a fraudulent conveyance under Ohio law.
The social-media flyers and ticketing records. The party that produced 250 to 300 attendees was advertised. We pull the original Instagram posts, the TikTok clips, the Snapchat stories, the group chats, and any digital-ticketing trail. Each is dated, each identifies an organizer, and each establishes the scale of the event the host and the platform agreed to facilitate.
The township’s zoning and enforcement records. Bath Township’s zoning code prohibits commercial short-term rentals in residential zones. The records of the township’s prior enforcement, the planning and zoning department’s communications with the host, the platform’s prior communications with the township, and any prior complaints about short-term rental activity in the neighborhood are all records we move to obtain through a public records request and, if necessary, a subpoena.
The police records. The 911 recordings, the dispatch logs, the incident reports, the witness canvass reports, the body-worn camera footage, and the criminal investigative file (subject to any protective order). Ohio’s public records law provides access to most of these records, and we work alongside the criminal investigation to obtain what we need without interfering with it.
The surveillance and physical evidence. Any doorbell or driveway cameras on neighboring homes, the home’s own security system if one existed, the physical premises (shell casings, projectiles, bloodstain patterns, the condition of the locks and lighting at the time of the shooting). The home itself is a piece of evidence. We move to preserve it before it is cleaned, repaired, or sold.
The medical records. The autopsy report for the deceased, the trauma records for the wounded, the psychiatric records documenting the PTSD and acute stress disorder that the survivors are already beginning to experience. These records drive both the liability case and the damages case.
The defense’s first move, almost always, is to suggest that the records are incomplete or unavailable. We do not let the defense create its own record. We send the preservation letters, we file the motions, and we document every refusal.
What This Case Is Worth
We do not promise outcomes, and we do not publish settlement or verdict figures from other cases as if they predict what yours will be. What we can do is explain the components of damages in an Ohio wrongful-death case, identify the factors that drive the number up, and give you the range that experienced Ohio wrongful-death practitioners recognize as realistic for a fact pattern like this one.
In a Bath Township case, the components of damages are these:
Economic damages. The lifetime economic loss to the family from the death of an 18-year-old is calculated by a forensic economist using federal worklife tables, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employer-costs-for-employee-compensation data, the consumer expenditure survey (to account for the personal-consumption deduction that applies in death cases but not in survival cases), and the decedent’s expected earnings trajectory. The federal data on wages and benefits shows that for a typical private-sector worker, benefits run roughly 30% of total compensation on top of wages. For an 18-year-old with a full working life ahead, that number multiplies dramatically. In a case where the decedent was a wage earner, this component alone routinely reaches seven figures. For a non-wage-earner, the household-services replacement-cost analysis — what it would cost to hire out the cooking, cleaning, childcare, transportation, and household management the decedent would have provided — produces a substantial number using federal time-use data.
Non-economic damages. Loss of society, loss of companionship, loss of consortium, loss of parental guidance (for the survivors who were minors and lost a peer or, in the most devastating scenario, a sibling or a child), and the mental anguish of the survivors. In Ohio, the wrongful-death statute expressly authorizes recovery for loss of society and loss of services, and these damages are not subject to the statutory caps that apply in ordinary tort cases.
Punitive damages. Where the defendant’s conduct shows conscious disregard for a substantial and unjustifiable risk of harm, Ohio permits a jury to award punitive damages. Renting a residential home in violation of local zoning, accepting payment for a large party after a documented prior shooting at the same kind of event in the same township, and failing to provide meaningful security are the kind of facts a jury can use to find conscious disregard.
The realistic range. Based on the case value framework in our internal analysis — which is grounded in the documented severity of the harm, the strength of the liability evidence, the number of separate defendants and insurance towers available, and the venue (Summit County, Ohio) — the case value range is $2.5 million to $15 million or more. The range is wide because the exact number depends on factors we cannot know until the investigation is complete: the decedent’s and the wounded’s specific earnings trajectories, the medical and psychiatric prognoses, the number of solid insurance towers available, and the comparative-fault posture.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
How Our Firm Is Built for This Case
Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — has been taking catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases since July 18, 2001. We are a trial firm built around the recognition that the people who cause catastrophic harm are usually well-funded, well-defended, and well-prepared, and that the only way to level the playing field is to be more prepared than they are.
Ralph P. Manginello is our managing partner. He has been licensed in Texas since November 6, 1998 — more than 27 years at the bar — and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, including its Bankruptcy Court. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in 1998 and his B.A. in Journalism and Public Relations from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of the State Bar of Texas, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Pro Bono College of the State Bar of Texas, the Trial Lawyers Achievement Association (Million Dollar Member), and the National Association of Italian Lawyers. Before law school, Ralph was a journalist, and the discipline of finding the truth and telling it in plain words is the discipline he brings to the courtroom today.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney at the firm. He is a former insurance-defense attorney — he spent years on the other side of the bar, in the rooms where insurance carriers and their software value claims and decide how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the families we now represent. He knows the playbook before it is run, because he used to help run it. He is admitted to practice in Texas and the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He earned his J.D. from South Texas College of Law Houston in May 2012 and his B.B.A. in International Business from Saint Mary’s University in San Antonio in 2005. He is bilingual — he conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Hablamos Español.
The combination of Ralph’s 27-plus years of trial work and Lupe’s inside knowledge of how insurance carriers value and defend cases is the firm’s strategic edge. We do not learn the playbook from the other side at trial. We learned it before we ever picked our side.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who can bring a wrongful-death case in Ohio for someone killed in the Bath Township Airbnb shooting?
Under Ohio Revised Code § 2125.01, the personal representative of the deceased’s estate brings the action on behalf of the surviving spouse, children, parents, and other next of kin. The statute is designed to compensate the family for loss of support, loss of services, loss of society, and loss of prospective household assistance. We typically work with the family to open an estate and have a personal representative appointed within the first weeks of the case so the statute of limitations is protected and the case is filed by the right person.
What is the statute of limitations for a Bath Township Airbnb shooting wrongful-death case?
Two years from the date of death under Ohio law. The date of death for purposes of the Ohio wrongful-death statute of limitations is the date the victim died, not the date of the shooting. If the victim died on November 2, 2025, the deadline to file a wrongful-death action is November 2, 2027, subject to the narrow set of tolling doctrines recognized in Ohio (minority, incapacity, and the discovery rule in limited circumstances). For the wounded survivors, the personal-injury statute of limitations is also two years from the date of injury. We do not let the clock do the defense’s work.
Can we sue the owner of the house even though she was not the shooter?
Yes. The owner of a short-term rental owes the people on the property the duty of reasonable care to protect them from foreseeable harm. The owner’s alleged conduct — renting the home in violation of Bath Township’s zoning, accepting payment for a large party in a jurisdiction with a documented prior Airbnb shooting, and failing to provide meaningful security — is the kind of conduct Ohio law treats as supporting a negligent-security and negligent-entrustment claim. The fact that the actual shooter is being criminally prosecuted does not absolve the owner of civil responsibility for creating the foreseeable risk that produced the harm.
Can we sue Airbnb, the online platform that processed the booking?
Yes, on a developed theory that the platform’s own conduct — not the host’s conduct and not the content of a third-party listing — caused or contributed to the harm. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protects platforms from being treated as the publisher of third-party content, but it does not protect a platform from liability for its own booking decisions, its own marketing, its own representations about safety, its own host screening, its own payment processing, and its own failure to enforce its own policies. We do not sue the platform for what the host did; we sue the platform for what the platform did. Federal courts across the country have allowed similar claims to proceed against online platforms on analogous theories, and we investigate the platform’s own conduct end-to-end.
What is the case worth?
Based on our internal case-value framework, a Bath Township fact pattern supports a range of $2.5 million to $15 million or more, depending on the specific earnings trajectory of the decedent, the medical and psychiatric prognosis for the wounded, the number and quality of insurance towers available, the comparative-fault posture, and the venue. We do not promise a number. We build the case to make the number as large as the facts and the law allow, and we put our own fee at risk to do it. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What about the people who organized the party? Can we sue them?
Yes. The event organizers — the people who marketed, promoted, and profited from the gathering — are separate defendants. They carry their own liability, and each is an additional avenue to insurance coverage. We identify them through the social-media flyers, the digital-ticketing records, the text messages, the platform’s communications, and the host’s communications.
What if the defense argues the shooter is the only one at fault?
The defense will make that argument. Ohio law does not support it on these facts. The doctrine of intervening cause requires that the intervening criminal act be unforeseeable. A mass shooting at a large, unsupervised party in a Bath Township short-term rental, in a township with a documented prior Airbnb shooting, is not unforeseeable. It is exactly the kind of harm the property owner and the platform had a duty to prevent. The criminal prosecution and the civil case are not mutually exclusive; they serve different purposes and reach different parties. The civil case is the only one that can compensate the family for the loss of a child, a sibling, a friend, a future.
What if my loved one was a minor and attended the party without my permission?
The defense may try to argue that the parents’ comparative fault is increased because they did not know where their child was. Ohio’s comparative-fault law does not allow a parent’s ordinary parenting decisions to be transformed into a legal fault allocation against a wrongful-death claim. The property owner and the platform are not excused from their duty of care because a teenager attended a party without parental knowledge. The harm — death by gunfire — was caused by the failure of the property owner and the platform to prevent the foreseeable risk, not by the parents’ failure to predict that an Airbnb in Bath Township would become a shooting scene.
Do I have to pay anything up front to hire your firm?
No. We work on contingency. Our fee is a percentage of what we recover for you. If we do not recover, you pay no fee. The consultation is free. The case evaluation is free. The casework, the expert witnesses, the depositions, the trial — all of it is on us, with the fee coming out of the recovery. We have been doing this for more than 20 years, and we put our own money behind every case we accept.
How long will this take?
Cases like this take months to years. The first 72 hours are the most intense — preservation, evidence, intake, expert retention. The pre-suit investigation typically runs three to six months. The litigation phase, if the case does not resolve in the pre-suit demand, runs 12 to 24 months. Trial adds another 6 to 12 months. Most cases resolve before trial, but the cases that resolve for the right number are the cases the defense knows we are ready to try. We do not settle cases for less than they are worth to make the defense’s life easier.
Will I have to go to court?
You will not have to testify at a deposition or a trial unless the case proceeds to that stage. Most cases resolve before trial. If the case does proceed to trial, we prepare you. We sit with you. We walk you through the questions before they are asked in the courtroom. You will not be surprised by anything that happens to you in a deposition or on the witness stand. Our job is to make sure of that.
What if the deceased or the wounded did not have health insurance or was undocumented?
It does not matter. The wrongful-death and personal-injury claims belong to the family and the survivor, not to an insurance carrier. The damages are the same regardless of the victim’s or family’s insurance status. The compensation is for the loss, not for the bills. And the immigration status of the victim or the family has no bearing on the right to recover under Ohio law.
What about the township — can we sue the township for failing to enforce its own zoning?
That is a more complicated question, and it depends on the specific facts. Ohio political subdivisions enjoy qualified immunity for discretionary acts, but they do not enjoy immunity for ministerial duties or for conduct that is so clearly outside the scope of their authority that no reasonable official could have believed the conduct was lawful. We investigate the township’s prior enforcement, its communications with the property owner and the platform, and the public-records trail. We do not name the township as a defendant reflexively; we name the township as a defendant only when the facts support it.
Can we still bring a case even if criminal charges have been filed against the shooters?
Yes. The criminal case and the civil case are independent. The criminal case is brought by the State of Ohio and seeks punishment; the civil case is brought by the family and seeks compensation. The civil case has its own statute of limitations, its own discovery rules, its own burden of proof (a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond a reasonable doubt), and its own remedies. The criminal case may produce evidence helpful to the civil case, and we work alongside the criminal investigation to obtain what we need without interfering with the prosecution.
How do I get started?
You call us. We answer 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including weekends and holidays. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The case evaluation is free. There is no obligation. If we take the case, you pay no fee unless we recover for you. We speak English and Hablamos Español. We have been doing this since 2001, and we are ready to do it for you.
This page is legal information prepared by Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC — and is not a substitute for legal advice. The information above reflects Ohio law and the publicly available facts of the incident as of the date of publication. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The hiring of a lawyer is an important decision that should not be based solely upon advertisements. This attorney advertisement is sponsored by Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Principal office: 1177 West Loop S, Suite 1600, Houston, TX 77027.