Pennsylvania College Hazing Death: A Coach, a Known Condition, and a Freshman Who Never Came Home
You sent your son to college on a football scholarship. He was eighteen years old, a thousand miles from home, in a small Pennsylvania town along the Susquehanna River where he was supposed to be learning pharmacy and playing the sport he loved. The next call you got was from a hospital. Then, two days later, the call no parent is built to receive.
Now you are reading this at two in the morning because you just learned that the coach who ordered the workout that killed your child has been charged with crimes — and you want to know if there is anything left for your family to do. There is. But the window is closing faster than anyone has told you, and the people who owe you answers are counting on you not knowing that.
We are Attorney911. We handle wrongful death cases and hazing death lawsuits, and right now we are going to tell you everything we know about what happened to a young man at a Pennsylvania university, what the law allows his family to do about it, and why the deadline to act may be measured in days. This page is legal information, not legal advice — but it is the information a family in your position needs before another day passes.
What Happened: A First Practice, a Coach Who Knew, and a Death Two Days Later
On July 10, 2024, an eighteen-year-old freshman reported for his first football practice at a private university in Lewisburg, Union County, Pennsylvania. He had been recruited to play on the offensive and defensive lines. He had a medical condition the coaching staff knew about — sickle cell trait — and the strength and conditioning coach had received university training on exactly what that condition meant during strenuous exercise.
That coach ordered the freshman and other players to perform one hundred up-downs and several full-body plank drills. Prosecutors would later describe these as extraneous calisthenics — exercises that other coaches had already warned were unsafe and not appropriate for training. The freshman was visibly struggling. The coach was the only adult in the training room. He did not call for help until the young man lost consciousness.
The freshman was taken to a local hospital. He died two days later, on July 12, 2024. An autopsy determined that his death was caused by a combination of the exercises he was subjected to, his sickle cell trait, his body weight, and exertional rhabdomyolysis.
Nearly two years later, on July 6, 2026, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office charged the coach with felony aggravated hazing, along with misdemeanor counts of involuntary manslaughter, reckless endangerment, and hazing — charges enabled by a law Pennsylvania passed after another young man died at a fraternity in 2017.
“This is an extraordinary tragedy, worsened by the fact that C.J.’s death was preventable.”
That is what the Attorney General said. The state’s top prosecutor looked at the evidence and called this death preventable. That word — preventable — is the one that should keep the people responsible awake at night, and it is the one that gives a family the foundation for a civil case that exists entirely separate from the criminal charges.
The Medical Mechanism: Sickle Cell Trait, Exertional Rhabdomyolysis, and Why the NCAA Wrote Rules to Stop Exactly This
Here is what happens inside the body when a person with sickle cell trait is pushed to maximal exertion without the modifications the NCAA spent years writing into its rulebook. This is the machinery of harm — not “it was dangerous,” but the specific biological cascade that turns a workout into a death sentence.
Sickle cell trait is an inherited genetic condition. You carry one copy of the sickle cell gene. In everyday life, it is generally harmless — most people who have it never know. But under certain conditions — extreme physical exertion, dehydration, low oxygen, heat — the red blood cells carrying the trait can change shape. They sickle. They become rigid and crescent-shaped instead of soft and round. And when they sickle, they stop flowing.
Inside a muscle being worked to its limit, those sickled cells pile up in the tiny blood vessels. The muscle tissue downstream stops receiving oxygen. It begins to die. That is the first mechanism — ischemia, the same thing that happens in a heart attack, but in the muscle tissue of a young athlete who is still moving, still trying to do the next up-down, because his coach told him to.
When muscle tissue dies from ischemia, it breaks open. That is exertional rhabdomyolysis. The contents of the dying muscle cells — a protein called myoglobin, potassium, creatine kinase — pour into the bloodstream. Myoglobin is the one that destroys the kidneys. It clogs the filtering tubules, chemically burns the renal tissue, and the kidneys begin to shut down. Potassium is the one that stops the heart. In high enough concentrations, it disrupts the electrical rhythm of the cardiac muscle and can cause fatal arrhythmia. This is not a theory. This is a documented, well-studied, and entirely predictable cascade that sports medicine has understood for decades.
The NCAA knows this. That is why the NCAA mandates sickle cell trait screening for every Division I student-athlete and requires institutions to implement conditioning modifications for athletes who test positive. Those modifications include gradual acclimatization — not one hundred up-downs on the first day. Adequate hydration. Rest intervals. And the single most important rule: immediate cessation of activity at the first signs of distress. Not when the athlete passes out. When he starts struggling.
The CDC recognizes the same danger. Sickle cell trait, while generally benign, can trigger catastrophic complications including exertional rhabdomyolysis under conditions of extreme physical exertion, dehydration, and hypoxia — the precise conditions created by one hundred up-downs and sustained plank drills imposed on a first-day freshman.
The generalist lawyer files a complaint that says “the workout was too hard.” The lawyer who knows this medicine files a complaint that traces the sickling, the ischemia, the rhabdomyolysis, the myoglobin flood, the renal failure, and the cardiac risk — and then connects every step to a specific NCAA protocol that was supposed to prevent it and was ignored. That is the difference between a case that settles for a fraction of its value and a case that forces a university to answer for every choice it made.
Pennsylvania’s Anti-Hazing Law: The Timothy J. Piazza Act and What It Gives Families
In 2017, a young man named Timothy Piazza died at a Penn State fraternity after a hazing ritual involving alcohol consumption. His family’s grief became a campaign. In 2018, Pennsylvania enacted the Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law, which strengthened criminal penalties — creating the felony charge of aggravated hazing when the conduct results in serious bodily injury or death — and created civil remedies for hazing victims and their families.
The law does not limit itself to fraternities. It explicitly covers athletic programs. The one hundred up-downs and sustained plank drills imposed on a first-day freshman — exercises that other coaches warned were unsafe — satisfy the statutory definition of hazing as intentional, knowing, or reckless acts that endanger another for initiation or affiliation. A football program’s first practice, where a freshman is expected to prove himself to a coaching staff, is exactly the context the law was written to reach.
Pennsylvania also gives families two separate civil claims after a death caused by someone else’s wrongdoing:
Wrongful death — a statutory action for the benefit of surviving family members (parents and any siblings) that compensates the family for what they lost: the financial support, the companionship, the guidance, the society of a son described as a loving brother and friend to many who was beginning his adult life.
Survival action — a separate statutory claim brought by the estate for what the young man himself endured before death: the conscious pain and suffering during the exercises, the visible struggle, the collapse, and the two-day hospitalization before he died. That two-day period — when he was alive, in a hospital, with his body failing — is a significant element of damages that a careful lawyer builds with medical testimony and the medical record.
Both claims exist alongside the criminal case. The criminal charges filed by the Attorney General are a parallel-track asset: any conviction or guilty plea creates powerful evidence in the civil case, and the AG’s public filings serve as a liability roadmap. But the civil case is the family’s case — it is not the government’s case, and the government does not recover damages for the family. Only a civil wrongful death and survival action does that.
Who Is Responsible: The Coach, the University, and the People Who Were Supposed to Be Watching
A case like this has more than one defendant, and naming every one of them is the difference between a partial recovery and a full one.
The coach — the individual who ordered the exercises, who knew about the sickle cell trait, who had received university training on the condition’s dangers, who was warned by other coaches that the exercises were unsafe, who was the only adult in the room, and who did not call for help until the young man lost consciousness. He is the direct actor. He faces criminal charges. He faces civil liability for negligence, for hazing, and for reckless conduct that supports punitive damages.
The university — a private liberal arts institution in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with a Division I football program competing in the Patriot League. Because it is private, it is not cloaked in sovereign immunity the way a state university would be. It can be sued directly. It has insurance coverage. It has a substantial endowment. It employed the coach. It provided the SCT training. It owed an independent duty to every student-athlete to maintain a safe athletic environment. It is liable for the coach’s conduct under respondeat superior — the legal principle that an employer is responsible for what its employee does within the scope of employment — and it is directly liable for its own failures: negligent hiring, negligent supervision, negligent training, and negligent retention of a coach whose methods other coaches had already flagged as dangerous.
The athletic department and head football coach — the people with oversight authority on the day it happened. Other coaches reportedly warned that the exercises were unsafe. Who heard those warnings? Who had the authority to stop the workout? Who was supposed to be in that training room and was not? These are discovery targets — the people whose knowledge and inaction may make them individually liable and whose testimony will map the institutional failure.
The university’s insurance carriers — institutional liability insurance, excess and umbrella coverage, and any directors-and-officers policies covering athletic program operations. The coverage tower is what stands behind the university’s obligation to pay. Confirming which policies exist, in what order they pay, and what the self-insured retention is — that is part of the work.
Pennsylvania follows a modified comparative negligence rule — the 51 percent bar. What that means is that your son’s share of fault, if any is alleged, reduces the recovery but does not bar it unless it exceeds 50 percent. An eighteen-year-old freshman following a coach’s orders on his first day of practice is not 51 percent at fault for his own death. But the defense will try to pin percentage points on him anyway, because every point is money. We will be ready for that.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist, Who Holds Them, and What May Already Be Gone
This is the section that decides whether a case can be won. The evidence in a college athletic hazing death case is specific, and much of it is already on a destruction clock that started running the day your son died.
Training room surveillance footage from July 10, 2024. This is the single most important piece of visual evidence — it would show the exercises performed, the visible distress, the number and identity of coaches present, and the timeline of when emergency aid was summoned. Surveillance systems typically overwrite on a thirty-to-ninety-day cycle. Footage from July 2024 is almost certainly already lost unless it was preserved by the Attorney General’s investigation or the university’s own internal review. Confirm whether the AG’s office or the university secured it. If it is gone, the case does not die — but the proof shifts to witness testimony, the autopsy, and the documentary record.
The coach’s sickle cell trait training records and certification materials. These prove that institutional knowledge was transferred to the coach — that he was taught the risks and the required modifications. Personnel records can be purged or reorganized during coaching transitions. A preservation letter must go out immediately.
University athletic department policies, SCT protocols, and NCAA compliance documentation. These establish the standard of care the university was obligated to follow. Institutions revise policies after a death — the original July 2024 versions must be preserved by written demand before they are quietly updated and the old versions disappear.
Internal communications — emails, texts, Slack and Teams messages among coaching staff and athletic administration. These may reveal knowledge of SCT risks, prior complaints about the coach’s training methods, discussions about the exercises’ safety, and post-incident communications that suggest damage control. Email retention policies may auto-delete after six to twelve months. A litigation hold must issue immediately to prevent routine destruction.
Witness statements from teammates present during the July 10 practice. These corroborate the visible struggle, the number of exercises, the coach’s response or lack thereof, and whether other coaches were present or absent. Student-athletes transfer, graduate, or become less cooperative over time. Statements should be taken promptly while memories are fresh and before civil litigation creates reluctance.
The young man’s pre-participation medical examination and sickle cell trait screening results. These confirm the university and coaching staff had documented knowledge of his SCT status and that appropriate protocols should have been triggered. Medical records are generally preserved, but the chain of communication from medical staff to coaching staff must be traced through personnel files and athletic department records.
The autopsy report and toxicology findings. Already completed. Already secured by the AG’s office. This locks in the specific causation — exertional rhabdomyolysis with sickle cell trait as a contributing factor. Obtain it through discovery or a public records request.
The coach’s personnel file — hiring records, performance evaluations, prior complaints or disciplinary actions. This may reveal a pattern of dangerous training methods, prior athlete injuries, or institutional knowledge of misconduct. It supports negligent retention and punitive damages theories. Personnel files are often reorganized when employees depart. Preserve it now.
University athletic training staff schedules and assignment records for July 10, 2024. These establish who was present, who was supposed to be present, and whether the absence of medical personnel during maximal exertion training was itself a policy violation. Scheduling records may be routinely discarded after one year.
When a defendant lets required evidence die after notice, the law answers. An adverse-inference instruction allows the jury to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says. Sanctions are available. The leverage begins the moment the preservation letter is on file. But the letter has to go out — and the longer a family waits, the more the evidence quietly disappears on schedule.
What a Life Is Worth: Damages in a College Hazing Wrongful Death
The question of what a case is worth is not a question of sentiment. It is a question of arithmetic — arithmetic built from medical bills, funeral costs, lost earning capacity, the value of a life, and the punishment of conduct that was knowing and reckless.
Economic damages include the medical expenses for the two-day hospitalization, funeral and burial costs, and the present value of lost future earning capacity. This young man was eighteen years old, on a scholarship, and intended to pursue a career as a pharmacist — a profession with well-documented lifetime earnings exceeding several million dollars. A forensic economist takes the expected worklife, the expected earnings trajectory, the fringe benefits, and reduces it all to present value. That number alone is substantial.
Non-economic damages in the wrongful death action compensate the family for what they lost: the companionship, the guidance, the society, the emotional support of a son who was described as loving, who was a brother and a friend to many, who was beginning his adult life. These are the losses no receipt can measure and no defense lawyer can devalue with a spreadsheet.
The survival action captures the conscious pain and suffering the young man endured — the visible struggle during the exercises, the escalating physical distress as his muscles began to die, the collapse, and the two-day hospitalization before death. Forensic medical testimony can quantify this suffering. It is a separate claim from the wrongful death action, and it represents a significant component of the total recovery.
Punitive damages are strongly supported by the knowing-disregard evidence. The coach received SCT training. Other coaches warned the exercises were unsafe. He was the only adult in the room. He delayed calling for help until the young man lost consciousness. That is not negligence — that is conscious disregard for a known, life-threatening risk. Pennsylvania does not impose statutory caps on compensatory damages in wrongful death or personal injury actions against private defendants. The university is private. There is no cap between the family and the full measure of what a jury decides this life and this suffering were worth.
Based on the factors in this case — the criminal charges as a liability anchor, the private university’s deep pocket and lack of sovereign immunity, Pennsylvania’s absence of damage caps, the young victim’s full life expectancy and documented career aspirations, the strong knowing-disregard evidence supporting punitives, and the two-day conscious suffering period — the case value range runs from approximately $5,000,000 on the low end (an early settlement incorporating comparative-fault arguments and the conservatism of a rural Union County jury pool) to $25,000,000 or more on the high end (a full verdict with punitive damages, particularly if institutional cover-up or policy violations are discovered in litigation). Actual recovery may exceed this range if punitive damages are awarded separately.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is built on its own evidence, its own defendant, and its own jury. But the factors that drive value in this case — a young life, a known risk, a trained coach who ignored it, and a private university with no immunity shield — are the factors that drive significant recoveries.
The Insurance Playbook: What the University’s Lawyers Will Try
The university’s insurance carrier and its defense lawyers have a playbook. It is not personal. It is procedure. Here are the plays they will run and the counter to each one.
Play 1: “He assumed the risk of playing football.” The defense will argue that football is inherently dangerous and that any athlete who suits up accepts the risk of injury. The counter: sickle cell trait is a specific, known, and individually documented risk that the NCAA created protocols for. The protocols were ignored. An eighteen-year-old freshman following a coach’s orders on his first day does not assume the risk of a coach’s reckless disregard for a medical condition the coach was trained to protect him from.
Play 2: “He should have stopped.” The defense will try to pin comparative fault on the young man — he could have quit, he could have sat down, he should have known his own limits. The counter: he was an eighteen-year-old freshman on his first day, trying to earn a spot, following the instructions of the only adult in the room — an adult who had been trained on his condition and who had the authority to stop the workout and chose not to. The power dynamic between a first-day freshman and a strength coach makes “he should have stopped” a defense that blames the victim for the coach’s failure.
Play 3: “The sickle cell trait caused the death, not us.” The defense will point to the genetics — SCT was a contributing factor, per the autopsy. The counter: SCT was a known factor. The university screened for it. The coach was trained on it. The NCAA wrote protocols for it. The SCT did not kill this young man — exercises that no SCT-positive athlete should have been subjected to, ordered by a coach who knew better, killed him. The defendant takes the victim as found. A pre-existing condition that made the harm worse does not reduce liability — it may enlarge it.
Play 4: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive quickly, with a release attached, before the family understands the full medical picture, before the NCAA compliance documentation is obtained, before the institutional knowledge is discovered through litigation. The counter: the first offer is always a fraction of the case’s real value. A $5,000,000 case does not open at $5,000,000. It opens at a number designed to make a grieving family feel relief and sign a release before they know what they are giving up.
Play 5: Social media and surveillance. The insurance company will monitor the family’s social media. A photo of a family member smiling at a memorial service can be cropped and presented as evidence that the grief is not as deep as the claim suggests. The counter: do not post about the case, the investigation, the settlement, or the grief. Let the lawyers do the talking.
Play 6: Delay aimed at the statute of limitations. The insurer may string out negotiations, request extensions, offer mediation — all designed to run the clock past the filing deadline. The counter: the statute of limitations is a hard wall. A lawsuit filed one day late is dead forever, no matter how strong the evidence is. Do not let the insurer run out the clock.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like this is constructed, from the first call to the number at the end.
Week one. The preservation demand goes out — freezing the training records, the SCT protocols, the NCAA compliance documentation, the internal communications, the personnel file, the scheduling records, and any remaining surveillance footage. The autopsy report is obtained through the AG’s office or a public records request. The personal representative is appointed — the one person Pennsylvania law authorizes to bring the family’s wrongful death case. We handle that appointment.
Discovery. The institutional knowledge becomes the target. SCT training records. NCAA compliance documentation. Internal communications among coaching staff. Prior complaints about the coach’s training methods. The goal is to prove this was not an isolated error but a foreseeable consequence of ignored warnings — that other coaches told him the exercises were unsafe and he did them anyway, that the university trained him on SCT and failed to enforce the protocols, that the institutional culture permitted the disregard that killed this young man.
Expert witnesses. A board-certified sports medicine physician establishes the standard of care for SCT athletes — what the NCAA requires, what the university’s own protocols said, and how the coach’s orders deviated from both. A forensic pathologist presents the rhabdomyolysis mechanism — the sickling, the ischemia, the muscle breakdown, the organ failure — and connects it to the specific exercises ordered. An athletic training standards expert testifies about NCAA and institutional obligations. A forensic economist quantifies the lost earning capacity of a prospective pharmacist.
The criminal case as parallel track. The AG’s prosecution is a powerful asset. Any conviction or guilty plea creates collateral estoppel or at minimum devastating impeachment evidence in the civil case. Discovery is coordinated to avoid interfering with the criminal proceeding while using the AG’s public filings as a liability roadmap. The criminal charges neutralize any venue disadvantage — a jury in rural Union County that might be conservative toward a civil plaintiff will have already read that the state’s top prosecutor charged the coach with a felony.
Venue strategy. The family has a choice. Filing in the Union County Court of Common Pleas in Lewisburg puts the case before a local jury. Filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Williamsport Division, may be possible if the family’s Florida residence creates complete diversity with the Pennsylvania defendants — and federal court may offer a more predictable jury pool. Both options have strategic tradeoffs, and the decision is made on the specific facts of the case and the defendant’s posture.
The number at the end. The number is built from all of it — the preserved evidence, the expert testimony, the discovery that proved institutional knowledge, the depositions where the people in charge explain their choices under oath, and the medical record that traces the damage from the first up-down to the final heartbeat. That number is not a guess. It is the product of a case built piece by piece until the other side can see that a jury will hear every fact and draw the only conclusion the facts support.
The First Steps: What to Do Now, and the Deadline You May Not Know About
Pennsylvania generally applies a two-year statute of limitations to wrongful death actions, measured from the date of death. In this case, that date was July 12, 2024. Two years from that date is July 12, 2026. The criminal charges were filed on July 6, 2026 — six days before that deadline.
This is not a suggestion to hurry. This is a fact: if a wrongful death lawsuit is not filed before the statute of limitations expires, the case is over forever. No extension. No exception for grief. No exception for waiting to see how the criminal case turns out. The clock does not stop because the family is still processing the loss. The clock does not stop because the Attorney General is prosecuting the coach. The clock runs, and when it runs out, the right to hold anyone civilly accountable dies with it.
There may be tolling provisions that could extend the deadline in certain circumstances — but whether any apply depends on the specific facts and the current state of Pennsylvania law. Confirm the deadline and any applicable tolling with Pennsylvania counsel immediately. Do not assume you have more time. Do not assume the clock has been paused. The single most important thing a family in this position can do is pick up the phone and call a lawyer who can confirm the deadline and, if necessary, file before it passes.
Here is what to do — and what not to do — in the first days:
Do obtain the autopsy report and the AG’s public filings. These are the foundation documents.
Do send preservation letters to the university, the athletic department, and the coach — demanding that all training records, SCT protocols, NCAA compliance documentation, internal communications, personnel files, and scheduling records be frozen. The day you call a lawyer is the day that letter goes out.
Do identify witnesses — teammates who were present, other coaches who warned the exercises were unsafe, athletic training staff who may have been absent. Memories fade. People transfer. Statements taken now are stronger than statements taken next year.
Do not sign anything from the university or its insurer. A release presented as a “settlement” or a “goodwill gesture” is designed to extinguish the family’s right to sue. Do not sign it without a lawyer reading every word.
Do not give a recorded statement to the university’s investigator or its insurance company. Anything said can and will be used to reduce the value of the case.
Do not post about the case, the investigation, or the grief on social media. The insurance company is watching.
Do not wait. Every day that passes is a day closer to the deadline and a day further from the evidence.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we sue the university even though the coach was criminally charged?
Yes. The criminal case and the civil case are two separate proceedings with two separate purposes. The criminal case — brought by the Attorney General — seeks to punish the coach for violating Pennsylvania’s criminal laws. The civil case — brought by the family — seeks to compensate the family for what they lost and to hold the university, the coach, and anyone else responsible accountable in dollars. A criminal conviction strengthens the civil case, but the civil case does not depend on a criminal conviction. The family can file a civil wrongful death and survival action regardless of what happens in the criminal prosecution.
How long do we have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania generally applies a two-year statute of limitations to wrongful death actions, measured from the date of death. In this case, the date of death was July 12, 2024, which means the two-year deadline is July 12, 2026. There may be tolling provisions that could extend the deadline in certain circumstances, but whether any apply depends on the specific facts and the current state of Pennsylvania law. Do not assume you have more time. Confirm the deadline with Pennsylvania counsel immediately.
Was it our son’s fault because he had sickle cell trait?
No. Sickle cell trait is a genetic condition he was born with. It is not something he chose, concealed, or caused. The university screened for it. The coach was trained on it. The NCAA wrote protocols for it. The protocols exist precisely because athletes with SCT can participate safely when the right modifications are made — gradual acclimatization, hydration, rest intervals, and immediate cessation at the first sign of distress. An eighteen-year-old freshman following a coach’s orders on his first day of practice is not at fault for his coach’s failure to follow the protocols that were designed to protect him. Pennsylvania’s comparative negligence rule reduces recovery by the plaintiff’s percentage of fault, but it does not bar recovery unless the plaintiff’s fault exceeds fifty percent — and no jury is going to find a first-day freshman more at fault than the trained adult who ordered the workout and refused to call for help.
What is exertional rhabdomyolysis and how does it cause death?
Exertional rhabdomyolysis is the rapid breakdown of muscle tissue caused by extreme physical exertion. When muscle cells are worked beyond their capacity — especially in an athlete with sickle cell trait, where sickled red blood cells block blood flow to the muscle — the cells die and release their contents into the bloodstream. Myoglobin, a muscle protein, clogs and damages the kidneys, potentially causing acute kidney failure. Potassium, released from dying muscle cells, can disrupt the heart’s electrical rhythm and cause fatal cardiac arrhythmia. This is a known, documented, and predictable medical cascade that sports medicine has studied for decades. It is exactly what the NCAA’s sickle cell trait protocols were written to prevent.
What is the Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law?
The Timothy J. Piazza Anti-Hazing Law is a Pennsylvania statute enacted in 2018 in response to the 2017 hazing death of Timothy Piazza, a student at Penn State University. The law strengthened criminal penalties for hazing — creating the felony charge of aggravated hazing when the conduct results in serious bodily injury or death — and it explicitly covers athletic programs, not just Greek organizations. It also created civil remedies for hazing victims and their families. The law is the legal foundation for both the criminal charges filed against the coach in this case and any civil hazing claim the family may bring.
Does the university have insurance that would cover this?
As a private institution, the university is not shielded by sovereign immunity and can be sued directly. It carries institutional liability insurance, and there may be excess and umbrella coverage as well as directors-and-officers policies covering athletic program operations. The specific coverage tower — the primary layer, the excess layers, and any self-insured retention — is confirmed through discovery. The university’s substantial endowment means that even beyond insurance, the institution has the resources to pay a significant judgment. The coverage is there. Finding it is part of the work.
What if our son signed a waiver or medical release before joining the team?
A waiver does not protect a defendant from liability for reckless or intentional conduct. A release that asks a student-athlete to assume the risk of ordinary negligence in sports participation may be enforceable in some contexts — but no waiver protects a coach who knowingly ordered exercises that were contraindicated for a documented medical condition, who ignored warnings from other coaches, and who delayed calling for help until the athlete lost consciousness. Reckless and willful misconduct is not waived by a pre-participation form. A parent cannot bind a child to a release of a wrongful death claim in many jurisdictions. And a release presented in a language the signer does not read, or formed in a glitching electronic flow with no real audit trail, faces fair-notice and formation problems. Do not let a piece of paper signed at orientation talk you out of pursuing accountability.
How much is a college hazing wrongful death case worth?
Based on the specific factors in this case — the criminal charges as a liability anchor, the private university’s lack of sovereign immunity, Pennsylvania’s absence of damage caps, the young victim’s full life expectancy and documented career aspirations as a prospective pharmacist, the strong knowing-disregard evidence supporting punitive damages, and the two-day conscious suffering period — the case value range runs from approximately $5,000,000 to $25,000,000 or more. The low end assumes an early settlement incorporating comparative-fault arguments and a conservative rural venue. The high end reflects a full verdict with punitive damages. Actual recovery may exceed this range if punitive damages are awarded separately or if institutional cover-up or policy violations are discovered in litigation. Every case is different, and these figures are based on the known facts of this specific incident.
Will the criminal case affect our civil case?
Yes — in the family’s favor. The criminal prosecution by the Attorney General’s Office is a powerful parallel-track asset. Any conviction or guilty plea creates collateral estoppel or at minimum devastating impeachment evidence in the civil case. The AG’s public filings serve as a liability roadmap — they lay out the facts the state has already assembled, which the family’s civil case can build on. Discovery in the civil case should be coordinated to avoid interfering with the criminal proceeding, but the civil case does not have to wait for the criminal case to finish. The two proceed on separate tracks, and the criminal charges strengthen the civil case at every stage.
What evidence do we need to preserve?
The most critical records include: training room surveillance footage from July 10, 2024 (which may already be lost unless preserved by the AG’s investigation); the coach’s SCT training records and certification materials; the university’s athletic department policies, SCT protocols, and NCAA compliance documentation; internal communications among coaching staff and athletic administration; witness statements from teammates; the young man’s pre-participation medical examination and SCT screening results; the autopsy report (already completed and secured by the AG’s office); the coach’s personnel file; and athletic training staff schedules and assignment records for July 10, 2024. A preservation letter demanding all of these records be frozen must go out immediately — the day you call a lawyer is the day that letter is sent.
Can we file in federal court instead of a local Pennsylvania court?
Potentially, yes. If the family resides in Florida and the defendants are Pennsylvania entities, complete diversity of citizenship may exist, which would allow filing in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Williamsport Division. Federal court may offer a more predictable jury pool than a rural Union County state court. The decision between state and federal court involves strategic tradeoffs — the local knowledge of a state court jury versus the procedural predictability of federal court — and should be made on the specific facts of the case. The criminal charges filed by the AG neutralize much of the venue concern, because the felony charges provide a powerful liability anchor that transcends local tendencies.
What does it cost to hire a lawyer for a hazing wrongful death case?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 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 it goes to trial. The first consultation is free. We absorb the costs of building the case — the experts, the records, the depositions — and those costs are repaid from the recovery if we win. If we do not win, you owe us nothing. That is not a marketing line. It is the structure that makes it possible for any family, regardless of resources, to take on a university and its insurance company.
Why Attorney911: Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes wrongful death and hazing cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the evidence tells and present it to a jury in language they cannot forget. He is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity — a case we are currently litigating — which means the intersection of hazing law, institutional liability, and the suffering of a young person is not theoretical for this firm. It is a case file on our desk right now.
Lupe Peña 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 the families who call us. He sat in those rooms. He knows how claims are priced, how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, and how delay tactics are deployed. Now he sits on your side of the table. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — because a family that prays in Spanish deserves a lawyer who speaks it.
We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take cases in Pennsylvania through local counsel and pro hac vice admission — the formal process that allows an out-of-state attorney to appear in a Pennsylvania court alongside a licensed Pennsylvania attorney. We do not claim an office in Pennsylvania. We do not claim a Pennsylvania bar admission. What we bring is the experience, the resources, and the willingness to fight a university and its insurance company that a family in crisis needs — and the network to pair that with local Pennsylvania counsel who knows the courthouse in Lewisburg.
If we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you. If the deadline has passed, we will tell you that too, and we will tell you whether any tolling provision might still apply. What we will not do is tell you what you want to hear instead of what you need to know.
The call is free. The consultation is free. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not through an answering service, but through live staff who can take your call at any hour. Hablamos Español.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911 — or contact us. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the first step — the one that starts the clock working for you instead of against you — is the call. And in a case where the statute of limitations may be measured in days, that call cannot wait until morning.