Baton Rouge Fraternity Hazing Death: What the Law Allows When a Ritual Kills a Student
You are reading this at the hour when the house is quiet and the weight is loudest. Your son, your brother, your grandson — a scholar, a musician, a young man with a life in front of him — went to a fraternity event and never came home. The police have made arrests. A grand jury has indicted. The university has expelled the chapter. And you are sitting at a kitchen table with a folder of papers you do not understand, being circled by people who sound sympathetic and are not. We are going to tell you, in plain language, what happened to your family under Louisiana law, what the other side is already doing, and what the first steps are. This is what we do. This is what we know. And the call is free.
Louisiana has one of the shortest deadlines in the country to file a wrongful death case — one year. That clock is already running. It started the day your loved one died. The evidence that proves what happened is already disappearing on its own schedule — cell phone data that the district attorney is downloading right now, hospital surveillance that overwrites itself in weeks, fraternity documents that can be quietly purged. The day you call is the day that clock starts working for you instead of against you. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day.
What Louisiana Law Says About a Hazing Death
Louisiana treats hazing as a crime. The state’s anti-hazing statute — the Max Gruver Act, enacted after another Louisiana student died in a fraternity ritual — makes hazing a felony when it results in serious bodily injury or death. That criminal statute is also a civil weapon: when someone violates a criminal law designed to protect people, and that violation causes harm, the civil lawsuit can use the violation as proof of negligence. Lawyers call this negligence per se. In plain English: they broke a law written to prevent exactly this, and your family paid the price.
The grand jury in East Baton Rouge Parish has indicted five people in connection with this death. The indictments charge manslaughter, principal to felony hazing, and obstruction of justice. Those are criminal charges, and the district attorney is pursuing them. But the criminal case does not pay your family. The criminal case does not replace the income your son would have earned, or the companionship he would have given, or the years of life that were taken. That is what the civil wrongful death lawsuit is for — and it runs on its own track, with its own deadline, separate from whatever the prosecutor does.
“Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress.”
That is the federal civil rights framework. But for your family in Baton Rouge, the operative law is Louisiana’s own: the wrongful death action under Louisiana Civil Code Article 2315.2, which lets certain beneficiaries recover for the loss of a person killed by the fault of others, and the survival action under Article 2315.1, which carries forward the claim the decedent himself would have had — including the pain, the terror, and the suffering he experienced between the injury and death. Both are available. Both have the same one-year prescriptive deadline. And both can be brought together in the same lawsuit.
The Max Gruver Act: Louisiana’s Anti-Hazing Law and What It Means for Your Case
The Max Gruver Act is Louisiana’s criminal anti-hazing statute, codified in the Louisiana Revised Statutes. It was named for Max Gruver, an LSU freshman who died in 2017 during a fraternity hazing ritual. The law criminalized hazing and increased penalties — felony hazing when it results in serious bodily injury or death. This is the statute that the grand jury used to bring felony hazing charges in this case.
For your civil case, the Max Gruver Act is more than a criminal statute. It is the standard of care. When the fraternity members punched your loved one in the chest as part of an induction ritual, they violated a criminal law written specifically to stop this exact conduct. In a civil lawsuit, that violation can be used as evidence of negligence — or, in some circumstances, as negligence per se, meaning the violation itself establishes the breach of duty. The defense cannot argue that hazing is “just what fraternities do” when the state legislature has made it a felony.
The Max Gruver Act also mandates reporting requirements. The law requires organizations to report hazing. When fraternity members changed your loved one’s clothes, fabricated a cover story, and dropped him at a hospital instead of calling 911, they did not just fail to help — they violated the spirit of a law written to ensure that hazing injuries are reported and addressed, not concealed.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: The Defendant Structure
A hazing death is never just one person’s failure. The law recognizes a web of responsibility, and a complete lawsuit names every party whose choices contributed to the loss. Here is the map of who can be held accountable in a case like this, under Louisiana law.
The indicted individuals are the first layer. The grand jury has indicted five people. The charges include manslaughter for the individual accused of punching your loved one in the chest, principal to felony hazing for those who participated in the ritual, and obstruction of justice for those who allegedly took steps to cover up what happened. In a civil lawsuit, each of these individuals can be named as a defendant. Their criminal indictments are public record, and the conduct alleged in those indictments — the punching, the hazing, the cover-up — is the same conduct the civil case will address.
The national fraternity — Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. — is the deepest pocket and the hardest target. The national organization sets the policies, collects the dues, controls the brand, and is responsible for supervising its chapters. Its defense will be the “rogue member” argument: these individuals acted outside the scope of sanctioned fraternity activities, and the national bears no responsibility. That is the defense we expect, and it is the defense we prepare for from day one. The counter runs through discovery: Did the national know about hazing in this chapter before? Had there been prior complaints? What did the national’s own risk management policy say about hazing, and was it enforced? Was the ritual that killed your loved one a known tradition that the national tolerated or failed to detect? These are the questions that, answered honestly under oath, connect the national to the culture that produced this death.
The Beta Sigma Chapter officers — the local leadership at Southern University — are a separate layer. They had a duty to ensure a safe environment and compliance with both university policy and national fraternity policy. When pledges are being punched in the chest at an off-campus event, the chapter leadership either knew, should have known, or created the conditions that made it possible.
The property owner of the off-campus site where the hazing occurred may carry premises liability. Allowing dangerous and illegal activities on the property — activities that resulted in a death — is a failure of the duty a property owner owes to people on the land.
The university itself — Southern University — expelled the chapter and removed its physical markers from campus. The university’s Code of Student Conduct provides the internal regulatory standards that were breached. Whether the university itself can be named as a defendant depends on complex questions of institutional duty and governmental immunity that require careful legal analysis specific to Louisiana law.
The Medicine: What Happens When a Chest Punch Stops a Heart
Behind every hazing death is a specific mechanism of injury, and understanding that mechanism is how the case is proven. The forensic pathologist is one of the most important experts in this case, because the defense will try to argue that the punch did not cause the death — that something else, a pre-existing condition, a coincidence, an unrelated medical event, was the real cause.
When a young person is struck in the chest and collapses, the medical literature recognizes several possible mechanisms. One is commotio cordis — a recognized phenomenon in which a blunt blow to the chest at a precise moment in the heart’s electrical cycle triggers ventricular fibrillation, causing immediate cardiac arrest. Commotio cordis does not require extreme force. It requires timing — the blow must land during a narrow window of the cardiac cycle, approximately 10 to 30 milliseconds before the peak of the T-wave on an electrocardiogram. It is documented in sports medicine, particularly in baseball, hockey, and lacrosse, where chest impacts from projectiles or body checks have caused sudden death in young athletes with no underlying heart condition.
The critical fact about commotio cordis is that it is survivable — but only with immediate intervention. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation within the first few minutes can restore a normal heart rhythm. Every minute without treatment reduces the survival probability by roughly 10 percent. After even a few minutes without CPR, the window closes.
That is what makes the abandonment in this case so devastating, and so central to the civil liability. According to public statements from the family’s legal proceedings, the fraternity members did not call 911. They did not perform CPR. They did not summon emergency medical services. Instead, they changed your loved one’s clothes, fabricated a cover story, and dropped him at a hospital. Those lost minutes — the time spent concealing the truth instead of saving a life — may have been the difference between a survivable injury and a fatal one. The forensic pathologist will testify to this. The Greek Life safety expert will testify to the organizational failures. And the timeline, reconstructed from cell phone data and hospital surveillance, will show exactly how many minutes were stolen.
The autopsy and toxicology reports will confirm the mechanism of death and exclude other causes. The defense will exploit any ambiguity — a pre-existing condition, a substance in the toxicology screen, anything that lets them argue the death was not caused by the punch. The counter is the mechanism itself: a young person struck in the chest during a ritual who collapsed immediately. The temporal relationship between the blow and the collapse is the evidence, and the autopsy either confirms the cardiac mechanism or identifies another cause that the defense will try to use.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Disappears
Every piece of evidence in a hazing death case is on a timer. Some of those timers are short. The single most important thing a family can do — today, not next month — is make sure a lawyer sends the letters that freeze the evidence before it legally disappears.
Cell phone data. The district attorney has already mentioned that phones are being downloaded. Those downloads contain text messages, group chats, call logs, and location data that prove the cover-up conspiracy and identify every person who was present. Cell phone forensic evidence is the backbone of the obstruction-of-justice charges, and it is equally critical to the civil case. But phone data can be lost — wiped devices, deleted messages, overwritten backups. The preservation demand to every individual who was present, and to every phone carrier involved, has to go out immediately. The DA’s criminal investigation is downloading these now, but the civil case needs its own preservation chain.
Hospital surveillance footage. The hospital where your loved one was dropped off almost certainly has surveillance cameras — at the entrance, in the emergency department, in the parking areas. That footage captures the defendants arriving, the condition of the victim when he was brought in, and the demeanor of the people who brought him. This footage corroborates the abandonment theory: it shows whether they carried him, dropped him, walked away, or stayed. Hospital surveillance systems overwrite on a rolling cycle — commonly 30 days, sometimes less. If no one has demanded that this footage be preserved, it may already be gone. A preservation letter to the hospital’s risk management department, sent the week you call, is what freezes it.
Autopsy and toxicology reports. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office will complete the autopsy and toxicology analysis. These reports confirm the mechanism of death — whether it was commotio cordis, blunt cardiac injury, or another cause — and exclude alternative explanations. Public records requests for autopsy reports must be timed with the criminal proceedings, because the coroner’s findings may be part of the active criminal case. We coordinate with the timing of the criminal investigation to obtain these reports when they become available, and we retain an independent forensic pathologist to review them and testify.
Fraternity charter documents, ritual manuals, and internal records. This is the evidence that connects the national fraternity to the culture that produced this death. The ritual that killed your loved one — was it a known tradition? Had it been practiced before? Did the national organization’s policies address it? Had any prior complaints been filed? These documents are held by the fraternity itself, and they are at risk of being “lost” or purged — especially after a high-profile incident that puts the organization on notice that litigation is coming. A litigation hold letter to Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., demanding preservation of all chapter records, risk management files, prior hazing complaints, disciplinary histories, and communications about the Beta Sigma Chapter, has to go out before anyone has the opportunity to clean house.
The off-campus property. If the hazing occurred at a residence or rented venue, that property may hold physical evidence — and the property owner’s insurance may be a source of recovery. Photographs of the scene, the layout, the conditions, and any evidence of the ritual need to be documented before the property is cleaned or altered.
The pattern across all of these is the same: the evidence that proves the case is the evidence that disappears first. The preservation letter is the single fastest, most important action a lawyer takes. It goes out the day you call.
What the Case Is Worth: Damages in a Louisiana Hazing Death
Louisiana wrongful death and survival law allows recovery for both economic and non-economic losses. Understanding what each category includes is how a family knows whether a settlement offer is fair or a fraction of what the case is worth.
Economic damages are the objectively calculable losses. In a hazing death, these include funeral and burial expenses, the costs of any medical care provided between the injury and death, and — critically — the loss of the decedent’s future earning capacity. Your loved one was a 20-year-old scholar and a leader in the Southern University Marching Band. He had decades of productive life ahead. A forensic economist projects what he would have earned — based on his education, his career trajectory, his field of study — and reduces that figure to present value. That number alone can be substantial for a young person with a college education and leadership experience.
Non-economic damages are the human losses that no receipt can measure. Under Louisiana’s wrongful death statute, the designated beneficiaries — typically the parents, and then the siblings or other statutory beneficiaries — can recover for their grief, their loss of companionship, and the loss of the relationship. Under the survival action, the estate can recover for the pain, suffering, and terror the decedent experienced between the injury and death. In this case, the survival action is particularly significant: your loved one was conscious, was punched, collapsed, and may have been aware — for minutes or longer — that something was terribly wrong. The fraternity members then changed his clothes and fabricated a story instead of helping him. The pre-death terror and suffering, proven through the timeline and the medical evidence, is a substantial component of non-economic damages.
The abandonment factor. The decision to change clothes, make up a story, and drop a dying person at a hospital instead of calling 911 is what separates this case from an ordinary negligence claim. It elevates the conduct from recklessness to something a jury can see as a conscious choice to prioritize self-protection over a human life. That choice creates jury anger. Jury anger drives verdicts. In our analysis, the abandonment factor is what pushes the case value toward the high end of the range.
Case value range. Based on the factors specific to this case — the illegal hazing ritual, the physical violence, the cover-up and abandonment, the young age and bright future of the decedent, the institutional defendant with significant assets, and the jurisdiction in East Baton Rouge Parish — the case value range is approximately $3,000,000 on the low end to $12,000,000 or more on the high end. The high end is driven by the abandonment, the profile of the victim, and the presence of a national fraternity organization with insurance and assets. No lawyer can promise a specific outcome, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But understanding the range is how a family evaluates whether a settlement offer is real justice or a fraction of what the case is worth.
Louisiana generally does not allow punitive damages in most civil tort cases. However, the egregious nature of the conduct here — the illegal hazing, the physical violence, and especially the obstruction and abandonment — may provide unique avenues for enhanced recovery or create powerful settlement leverage. The defense knows that a Baton Rouge jury hearing the facts of this case — a 20-year-old band member punched in the chest during an illegal ritual, then abandoned at a hospital by the people who did it — is a jury that will be angry. That anger has a dollar value in settlement negotiations, even if it is not formally labeled as punitive damages.
The Insurance and Coverage Reality
A national fraternity organization like Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. carries insurance — typically a commercial general liability policy, possibly with excess layers above it. The exact coverage limits are not public, and they are one of the first things discovery demands. But the structure matters: a national fraternity’s insurance tower can be the primary source of recovery for a family, because the individual defendants — college students — almost certainly do not have personal assets sufficient to satisfy a multi-million dollar judgment.
The individual defendants may have some coverage under their parents’ homeowners policies, but those policies frequently exclude intentional acts and criminal conduct. Hazing, which is a felony under the Max Gruver Act, may trigger those exclusions. This is why naming the national fraternity is so important — the national is the defendant with the assets and the insurance to make a recovery meaningful.
The property owner of the off-campus site where the hazing occurred may carry premises liability insurance. If the property was a residence, the homeowners policy may provide some coverage, though again, intentional or criminal conduct exclusions may apply. If the property was a commercial rental, the commercial general liability policy is a potential source.
The coverage analysis in a hazing case is complex, because the intentional and criminal nature of the conduct may trigger exclusions in standard policies. This is where Lupe Peña’s experience matters — he spent years inside the insurance-defense industry, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the exclusions work, how the carriers think, and where the coverage fights will be. He uses that knowledge for your family now.
The Defense Playbook: What the Fraternity’s Lawyers Will Try
The national fraternity’s legal team will deploy a series of plays designed to minimize the organization’s exposure and shift blame to the individuals. We have seen these plays before. Here is what to expect, and here is the counter to each one.
Play 1: The “rogue member” defense. The national fraternity will argue that the indicted individuals acted outside the scope of any sanctioned fraternity activity, that hazing is prohibited by national policy, and that the national organization cannot be held responsible for the criminal acts of a few students. The counter is discovery: we demand the national’s prior knowledge of hazing in this chapter, prior complaints, internal investigations, the enforcement record of its own risk management policy, and the history of the ritual that killed your loved one. If hazing was a known tradition and the national did not detect or stop it, the “rogue” label does not stick.
Play 2: The “assumption of risk” defense. The defense will argue that your loved one chose to join the fraternity and voluntarily participated in the pledging process, thereby assuming the risk of whatever happened. The counter is that hazing is a felony under Louisiana law. A person cannot legally assume the risk of an illegal act. More fundamentally, the power imbalance in a pledging ritual is inherent — the pledges are subordinate, seeking admission, and subject to coercion that the fraternity members control. “He chose to be there” is not consent to be punched in the chest until his heart stops.
Play 3: The “comparative fault” defense. Louisiana follows a pure comparative fault system, meaning the defense will try to assign a percentage of fault to the victim — he participated, he did not leave, he did not refuse. The counter is that a pledge in a hazing ritual is not a free agent, and the illegal nature of the conduct makes the comparative fault argument both legally weak and morally repugnant to a Baton Rouge jury. Every percentage point the defense tries to pin on the victim is a dollar amount, and that is exactly why they fight for it.
Play 4: The “empty chair” defense. The national will point at the indicted individuals and say “sue them, not us.” The indicted individuals will point at each other and at the national. The defense strategy is to leave the deepest-pocketed defendant — the national fraternity — sitting in an empty chair, unconnected to the harm. The counter is to build the discovery record that ties the national’s policies, knowledge, and supervision failures directly to the culture that produced this death. The national set the rules, collected the dues, and licensed the brand. When the brand kills someone, the brand answers for it.
Play 5: The quick settlement offer. At some point — possibly early, possibly after the criminal case resolves — the fraternity’s insurance carrier may extend a settlement offer. That offer will be designed to close the case before the family has a lawyer, before the full extent of the damages is known, and before the discovery that connects the national to the harm is complete. The first offer is almost always a fraction of the case’s actual value. This is why having a lawyer who knows what the case is worth — not what the adjuster says it is worth — is the difference between a check that covers funeral expenses and a recovery that reflects a life.
The Proof Story: How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a hazing wrongful death case is built, from the day a family calls to the day a number is put on the table.
Week one. The preservation letters go out — to the national fraternity, to each indicted individual, to the hospital, to the property owner, to every phone carrier. These letters demand that evidence be frozen: all surveillance footage, all cell phone data, all fraternity records, all chapter communications, all risk management files, all prior hazing complaints. The letters create a legal duty to preserve. If evidence disappears after that letter, the jury can be told to assume the missing evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says it was.
The investigation phase. We obtain the autopsy and toxicology reports, when available, and retain an independent forensic pathologist to review them and testify. We pull the police reports, the grand jury transcripts where available, and the court filings. We request the hospital records — the emergency department notes, the resuscitation attempts, the time of arrival, the condition when your loved one was brought in. We pull the hospital surveillance footage before it overwrites. We obtain the cell phone downloads — or we coordinate with the criminal investigation to ensure the data is preserved for the civil case.
The discovery phase. Once the lawsuit is filed in the 19th Judicial District Court for East Baton Rouge Parish, discovery begins. We serve written questions and document demands on the national fraternity: What did the national know about hazing in the Beta Sigma Chapter? When did it know? What did its risk management policy say? Was it enforced? Had there been prior complaints? What was the ritual that killed your loved one, and was it a known tradition? We depose the indicted individuals under oath. We depose the fraternity officers. We depose the national’s risk management director. Under oath, the answers either connect the national to the harm or reveal the gaps that prove the national’s supervision was a fiction.
The expert phase. The forensic pathologist testifies to the mechanism of death and the pre-death suffering. The Greek Life safety expert testifies to the breakdown of organizational supervision — what a national fraternity should have done to prevent hazing, what Omega Psi Phi’s own policies required, and how those policies were not enforced. The forensic economist testifies to the lifetime earning capacity lost. The life care planner, if applicable, testifies to the cost of any medical care provided between injury and death. Each expert is chosen for their ability to explain complex concepts to a Baton Rouge jury in language that resonates.
The resolution phase. The case may settle — when the defense sees the discovery record, the expert testimony, and the strength of the liability case, the calculus changes. Or it may go to trial — and a Baton Rouge jury, drawn from a community that knows Southern University, that values its HBCU culture, and that understands the devastation of losing a young scholar to an illegal ritual, is a jury that can deliver a verdict that reflects the full measure of the loss.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are reading this in the days or weeks after your loved one’s death, the most important steps are the ones you can take right now.
Do not sign anything. The fraternity’s insurance carrier, or a representative of the fraternity, may contact your family. They may express sympathy. They may offer to help with funeral expenses. They may ask you to sign a release or accept a check. Do not sign anything. Do not accept any money. Do not give a recorded statement. Everything you say to them can be used against your case. The first person who calls you who sounds friendly and is not on your side is the adjuster.
Do not post on social media. The defense will monitor your family’s social media accounts. Photos, posts, check-ins, statements about how you are feeling — all of it can be taken out of context and used to minimize the harm. Grief does not look the same on everyone, and a defense lawyer will use a smiling photo from a memorial service to argue the family is “moving on.” Protect your privacy.
Do not talk to the fraternity. Any communication from the fraternity, its members, its alumni, or its legal representatives should go through a lawyer. They are not calling to help you. They are calling to gather information that protects them.
Do preserve what you can. If your loved one’s phone is in your possession, do not delete anything. If you have texts, emails, or communications from the fraternity or its members, save them. If you have photographs of your loved one, of the memorial, of anything related to the case, keep them. These are evidence.
Do call a lawyer. This is the single most important step. The preservation letters go out the day you call. The evidence clock stops working against you and starts working for you. The coverage analysis begins. The defendant-structure map is built. The one-year prescriptive deadline is calendared. The call is free, and you will speak to a live person, not an answering service.
How Fees Work
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery if the case resolves before trial, and 40 percent if it goes to trial. You pay nothing out of pocket. The consultation is free. The first conversation costs nothing, and you will leave it knowing more about your rights than you knew before — whether or not you hire us. If we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you. But if we are, the fight starts the day you call.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Louisiana?
One year. Louisiana has one of the shortest prescriptive periods in the country for wrongful death claims. Under Louisiana law, the deadline to file is typically one year from the date of death. There are limited circumstances that can affect the calculation — such as the minority of a beneficiary — but the general rule is one year, and missing it is an absolute bar to recovery. This deadline is the single most important reason to call a lawyer immediately.
Can we sue the national fraternity, not just the local members?
Yes. The national fraternity — Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. — can be named as a defendant, but the case against the national requires proving that the national’s own failures contributed to the death. This is the “rogue member” defense, and the counter runs through discovery: the national’s prior knowledge of hazing, its risk management policies, its enforcement record, and the history of the ritual. The national has the deepest pockets and the most insurance. Connecting the national to the culture that produced this death is one of the central jobs of the case.
What is the difference between the criminal case and the civil wrongful death case?
They are separate proceedings with different purposes. The criminal case, run by the district attorney, seeks to punish the offenders — prison, fines, probation. The civil wrongful death case, run by your family’s lawyer, seeks to compensate the family for the losses caused by the death — funeral expenses, lost earning capacity, grief, loss of companionship, and the decedent’s pre-death suffering. The criminal case does not pay your family. The civil case does. They run on parallel tracks, and the civil case has its own one-year deadline that is not paused by the criminal case.
What if the defense says my loved one “assumed the risk” by joining the fraternity?
This is the defense’s favorite argument, and it fails for two reasons. First, hazing is a felony under Louisiana’s Max Gruver Act. A person cannot legally assume the risk of an illegal act. Second, the power imbalance in a pledging ritual is inherent — pledges are subordinate, seeking admission, and subject to the control of the active members. “He chose to be there” is not consent to be struck in the chest until the heart stops. A Baton Rouge jury will understand this.
How much is a hazing wrongful death case worth?
No lawyer can promise a specific outcome. Based on the factors in this case — the illegal hazing, the physical violence, the cover-up and abandonment, the young age and bright future of the decedent, the institutional defendant, and the Baton Rouge jurisdiction — the case value range is approximately $3,000,000 to $12,000,000 or more. The abandonment factor — changing clothes, fabricating a story, and dropping a dying student at a hospital instead of calling 911 — is what drives the case toward the high end, because it creates jury anger. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Will the case go to trial or settle?
Some hazing cases settle when the defense sees the strength of the discovery record and the liability evidence. Others go to trial, because the defense refuses to offer a number that reflects the full value of the loss. Every case is prepared for trial from day one — not because we want a trial, but because the best way to get a fair settlement is to be ready to win in front of a jury. The decision to settle or try the case is always the family’s decision, made with full information about the risks and the value.
What if the fraternity’s insurance excludes hazing or intentional acts?
Many commercial general liability policies contain exclusions for intentional acts, assault and battery, and criminal conduct. Hazing, which is a felony under the Max Gruver Act, may trigger those exclusions. However, coverage analysis in a hazing case is complex — there may be excess policies, there may be different theories of liability that trigger different coverage, and the national fraternity may have assets beyond insurance. This is where having a lawyer who knows the insurance industry from the inside — who understands how carriers think, how exclusions work, and where the coverage fights will be — makes a real difference.
Can the family file a lawsuit while the criminal case is still going on?
Yes. The civil and criminal cases run on separate tracks. The criminal case is prosecuted by the district attorney. The civil case is pursued by the family’s lawyer. The civil case has its own one-year prescriptive deadline that is not paused by the criminal case. In some circumstances, the civil case may benefit from waiting for certain criminal proceedings to conclude — for example, obtaining autopsy reports or grand jury transcripts — but the one-year deadline is unforgiving, and the preservation letters should go out immediately regardless of where the criminal case stands.
What about the other people who were hazed the same night?
The grand jury indicted all five suspects for misdemeanor hazing charges for other people who were hazed the same night as your loved one. Those other victims may have their own claims. Their experiences corroborate the pattern — this was not a one-time event but a ritual that affected multiple pledges. Their testimony, where available and with their cooperation, strengthens the case by showing that the conduct was systemic, not isolated.
Who We Are and Why This Case Matters to Us
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Louisiana cases, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where the rules require it. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we have spent more than 24 years in courtrooms — including federal court — fighting for families who lost someone to someone else’s choices.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has 27 years of licensed practice, admitted to the Texas Bar in 1998 and to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells and how to tell it to a jury. Ralph is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity and the University of Houston — a case that involves the same kind of institutional failure, the same kind of organizational culture, and the same kind of family devastation you are living through right now. That case is ongoing. What it teaches us — about how fraternity defenses work, how discovery cracks them open, and how a jury responds to the truth — we bring to every hazing case we take.
Read more about Ralph Manginello and his practice.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims like yours. He knows how the carriers set reserves in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement calls are engineered to get you to say the wrong thing, and how the valuation software discounts injuries it cannot see. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He uses the knowledge he gained inside the insurance industry for your family now.
Read more about Lupe Peña and his background.
We are not the biggest firm. We are not the loudest. We are the firm that knows how hazing cases work because we are litigating one right now. The wrongful death cases we handle are built on the same architecture: identify every defendant, freeze every piece of evidence, prove the mechanism, and build the number from the ground up. The hazing lawsuit we are currently litigating — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi — is a live case with real stakes, and the lessons we are learning in that fight are lessons that can serve your family in this one.
If your family has been affected by hazing, we have a dedicated hazing practice page with more information about how these cases work.
What the First Call Feels Like
The first call is free. You will speak to a live person, 24 hours a day, not an answering service. You will tell us what happened. We will listen. We will explain what the law allows, what the deadline is, and what the first steps are. You will not be pressured. You will not be sold. You will leave that call knowing more about your rights than you did before — and if you decide we are the right firm for your family, the fight starts that day.
The preservation letters go out. The evidence clock stops. The defendant map is built. The one-year deadline is calendared. The medicine is analyzed. The coverage is traced. The number is built from the ground up — not from what the adjuster says the case is worth, but from what the evidence, the experts, and the law say it is worth.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.