When Hazing Crosses the Line at Cornell: Your Rights Under New York Law and the New Federal Stop Campus Hazing Act
If you are reading this at 2 a.m., you are probably the parent of a student who came home different — or the student yourself, sitting alone with something that happened to you that you cannot quite name yet but that you know was wrong. Maybe your son or daughter is in the hospital. Maybe they are not coming home at all. Maybe the university has already called, and the voice on the other end sounded sympathetic and careful and you could not shake the feeling that the person talking to you was protecting the institution before they were protecting your child. We are trial lawyers who fight for people harmed by hazing. We know what hazing does to a body and a mind, and we know the exact legal machinery that holds the institutions behind it accountable. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 — the consultation is free, the call is confidential, and we do not get paid unless we win your case.
The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law in December 2024, changes the national landscape of campus hazing accountability. It amends the Clery Act to require every college and university receiving federal funding to include hazing incidents in their Annual Security Reports and to maintain a public transparency website documenting hazing violations and sanctions. One university — Cornell — has been doing exactly that for twenty years. Its public hazing violations database, launched in 2005, was the first of its kind in the nation. That two-decade record of transparency is both a public good and, for any student harmed by an organization Cornell had already cited, a piece of evidence the university itself created. We currently litigate a $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity — we know how to build these cases because we are building one right now.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act: What the New Federal Law Changes
The Stop Campus Hazing Act, enacted in late 2024, amends the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act — the federal law that already requires universities to report crimes on campus. For the first time, hazing is now part of that mandatory reporting framework. Every institution of higher education that participates in federal financial aid programs must include hazing incidents in its Annual Security Report and maintain a public website or page listing student organization hazing violations and the sanctions imposed. This is not optional. It is a condition of receiving federal funding, which means every college and university in the country must comply.
Here is what this changes for a hazing injury case. Before this law, a university could argue that hazing was an internal student-conduct matter, handled quietly through disciplinary proceedings that produced no public record. Now the law forces a record into existence — a documented, public accounting of which organizations were cited, when, and what was done about it. For a family building a negligence case against a university, that public record is notice evidence: proof that the institution knew specific organizations on its campus had a documented history of hazing and chose either to act or to look away.
Cornell’s twenty-year head start on transparency makes its position unique. Since 2005, the university has published its hazing violations and sanctions online — a record that now stretches across two decades. University administrators have publicly described hazing as “a form of interpersonal violence” and noted that “over 90% of Cornell students are opposed to humiliating or degrading new members.” The university’s own Skorton Center for Health Initiatives has co-authored academic journal articles on a public-health approach to hazing prevention, and the institution has trained nearly 200 resident advisors on recognizing and responding to hazing, enrolled nearly 1,000 students in a hazing education course, and conducted training for nearly 2,500 Greek-life members across its Interfraternity Council, Panhellenic Council, and Multicultural Greek and Fraternal Council chapters.
All of that is genuinely commendable as public health practice. But from a plaintiff’s perspective, it also means something else: Cornell has known, for twenty years, which organizations on its campus haze. It has documented them, published them, trained staff to spot the signs, and built an enforcement infrastructure. When a student is harmed by an organization that appears on that public record — or by one whose conduct was documented in internal disciplinary files the university maintains — the argument that the institution “had no idea” is not available. The university built the system that proves it knew.
New York Hazing Law: The Criminal Foundation for Your Civil Case
New York criminalizes hazing directly. The state’s penal law contains specific hazing statutes — provisions that make it a crime to intentionally or recklessly engage in conduct that creates a substantial risk of physical injury during initiation into a student organization. These criminal statutes matter to a civil case because a violation of a penal statute designed to protect student safety can serve as the foundation for a negligence claim — the argument that the defendant’s conduct was not just careless but was a breach of a safety rule the legislature wrote to prevent exactly this kind of harm.
New York is a pure comparative negligence state (CPLR § 1411), meaning a plaintiff can recover even if they are 99% at fault, though damages are reduced proportionally. New York has no cap on non-economic damages — pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life — making it a high-value jurisdiction for catastrophic injury cases.
That last point matters enormously in a hazing case because the defense’s primary weapon is “assumption of risk” — the argument that the student chose to participate and therefore accepted the consequences. In New York, that argument does not end the case. Under pure comparative negligence, even if a jury found a student partially responsible for their own injuries, the recovery is reduced but never eliminated. And we will have a great deal to say about whether “consent” obtained through peer pressure, sleep deprivation, social isolation, and the implicit threat of social exile is consent at all.
New York courts have generally rejected the “in loco parentis” doctrine — the idea that a university stands in the place of a parent and owes an automatic, comprehensive duty of supervision to adult students. This means a hazing plaintiff must prove the university had actual or constructive notice of the specific danger: that it knew or should have known this organization was a risk. This is where Cornell’s twenty-year transparency record becomes powerful evidence. The university’s own website is a public admission that it tracks which organizations violate hazing rules. If the organization that harmed your student appears on that record, the notice element is met by the institution’s own hand.
Who Is Liable: The Institutional Stack Behind Every Hazing Incident
A hazing case is never just about the individual students who carried out the acts. Behind every hazing incident stands a stack of institutions, each with its own duty, its own insurance, and its own defense lawyers. Identifying every layer is the difference between a case that produces meaningful accountability and one that quietly dies in a settlement with a judgment-proof local entity.
The University. Cornell University — or any institution where hazing occurs — owes a duty of reasonable care to its students to monitor and supervise organizations it recognizes, particularly those with a documented history of hazing violations. The university controls recognition, funding, housing, and disciplinary authority over Greek organizations. When it grants an organization the privilege of operating on its campus and the organization harms a student, the university’s failure to supervise becomes a central claim. Cornell’s 20-year transparency record — the very thing the university celebrates — is also evidence that it knew which organizations posed risks. The question becomes not whether it knew, but what it did with that knowledge.
The National Fraternity or Sorority Organization. National Greek organizations — the headquarters entities that charter local chapters, collect dues, set risk-management policies, and claim to oversee chapter conduct — face vicarious liability for the actions of their local chapters and direct liability for negligent oversight of chapter culture. These national organizations often carry specialized insurance through carriers that serve the Greek-life market. They are the deepest pocket in many hazing cases, and they are the entity most likely to have written policies that were ignored — policies that can be introduced as evidence of the standard the organization itself recognized but failed to enforce.
Chapter Officers and Individual Perpetrators. The students who planned and carried out the hazing are direct participants. They may face criminal liability under New York’s hazing statutes, and they are civilly liable for the harm they caused. Individual students often carry limited assets, but their conduct — and their communications — are the evidence that builds the case against the institutions above them.
Property Owners and Alumni Housing Corporations. Many fraternity and sorority houses are owned or controlled by alumni corporations that are legally separate from the local chapter and the national organization. If the hazing occurred in off-campus housing controlled by an alumni corporation, that entity faces premises liability for failing to maintain a safe environment where dangerous rituals were known to occur.
The hazing practice page on our site walks through these defendant categories in more detail. The key is that a hazing case must identify every layer from the start — naming only the local chapter is the most common mistake, and it is the one the institutions are counting on you to make.
The Evidence Clock: What Disappears and How Fast
Hazing evidence is uniquely fragile. The acts happen in private spaces, among people who are sworn to secrecy, documented in communications that are designed to disappear. Every category of evidence that matters in a hazing case is on a clock — and the clock starts the moment the incident occurs.
University Disciplinary Files. The Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards at Cornell — or its equivalent at any university — maintains disciplinary records for organizations found responsible for hazing. These records prove the university had notice of prior dangerous behavior by the specific organization. But university records are subject to retention schedules, and “administrative errors” can result in the quiet disappearance of exactly the files that matter most. The preservation letter we send the day you call is designed to freeze these records before they cycle out.
Social Media and Group Chats. The planning and mandatory nature of hazing activities are often documented in Signal threads, Snapchat groups, Instagram direct messages, and chapter group chats. These communications prove that the hazing was organized, expected, and mandatory — not a spontaneous mistake. They are also the evidence that dies fastest. Snapchat deletes by design. Signal messages can be set to auto-delete. Group chats can be wiped in seconds. The moment a hazing incident becomes public, the first thing chapter members do is delete the evidence. This is why speed matters more than anything else in the first 72 hours.
Hospital Toxicology and Medical Records. If the student was taken to the hospital — for alcohol poisoning, a head injury, hypothermia, or any hazing-related medical event — the medical records establish the physical severity of the harm. Blood-alcohol concentration levels, toxicology panels, imaging studies, and treatment notes create an objective, contemporaneous record of what happened to the student’s body. These records are relatively stable but must be subpoenaed promptly through proper medical-records channels.
Internal University Emails. Emails among university administrators about specific organizations — discussing whether to investigate, whether to suspend, whether to shut down a chapter — are the documents that prove “conscious disregard.” If administrators were debating whether a fraternity was too dangerous to keep on campus before your student was harmed, those emails show the institution knew the risk and chose not to act. These are high-stakes documents for punitive damages, and they are exactly the kind of records that can be subject to “retention schedules” that let the university legally destroy them. The litigation hold letter must demand preservation of all electronic communications about the organization, not just the formal disciplinary file.
Each of these evidence categories has a different shelf life. Some — like Snapchat messages — can be gone within hours. Others — like university disciplinary files — can survive for years but are vulnerable to “administrative errors.” The fastest-dying source drives the urgency. The preservation letter goes out before the funeral, not after the insurance company calls.
The Medicine of Hazing: What Happens to the Body and Mind
Hazing injuries are not limited to the dramatic deaths that make the news. The harm runs from the catastrophic to the invisible, and the invisible injuries are the ones the defense will fight hardest to dismiss.
Alcohol Poisoning and Acute Intoxication. Forced or coerced alcohol consumption remains the most common hazing mechanism that sends students to the emergency room. A blood-alcohol concentration above 0.30 is life-threatening — the respiratory system can depress to the point of stopping, and aspiration of vomit while unconscious can be fatal. The medical record from the ER — the BAC level, the toxicology panel, the treatment timeline — is objective proof of the severity of what was done. The defense will argue the student “chose to drink.” The counter is the environment: a pledge surrounded by brothers, told this is what it takes to earn membership, with no safe exit and no one watching for danger.
Traumatic Brain Injury. Hazing rituals involving blows to the body or head, falls during exhaustion exercises, or “line breaks” where pledges are shoved or struck can produce traumatic brain injury. A “mild” TBI — the label doctors use when a patient can still answer questions — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan. More than a third of patients scored at the top of the “mild” range on the Glasgow Coma Scale have life-threatening bleeding inside the skull. Diffuse axonal injury — the microscopic tearing of the brain’s wiring caused by rapid rotational forces — is invisible on standard imaging but can produce lasting cognitive, emotional, and executive dysfunction. The family sees it before any scan does: the student who cannot remember a sibling’s name, who cannot follow a conversation, whose personality has shifted. Our brain injury practice page addresses the full diagnostic and proof framework.
Psychological Trauma. Hazing is, by the university’s own definition, “a form of interpersonal violence.” The psychological injuries — PTSD, major depressive disorder, anxiety, substance use triggered by the trauma — are often the deepest and longest-lasting. A formal diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder requires meeting eight separate diagnostic criteria under the DSM-5, including intrusive symptoms, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and changes in arousal and reactivity lasting more than one month. Tonic immobility — the involuntary “freeze” response where a person physically cannot move or speak during a traumatic event — is a documented, physiological reaction that directly answers the defense’s favorite question: “Why didn’t she just leave?” She couldn’t. The body locked. That is not consent. It is a survival reflex.
Death. When hazing kills — through alcohol poisoning, hypothermia, blunt trauma, water intoxication, or suicide following psychological devastation — the case becomes a wrongful death and survival action. New York allows two parallel claims: a wrongful-death action for the family’s losses (lost financial support, lost companionship, funeral costs) and a survival action for what the decedent endured before death (conscious pain and suffering, medical expenses). Our wrongful death practice page details the full damages framework.
“He Chose to Participate”: Destroying the Defense’s Core Argument
The defense in every hazing case runs the same play: the student voluntarily joined the organization, voluntarily attended the event, and voluntarily participated in the activity. Therefore, the argument goes, the student assumed the risk. This is the single most important fight in a hazing case, and it is a fight we win by putting the psychology of coerced consent in front of the jury.
Here is what the defense does not want the jury to understand. Hazing does not happen in a vacuum. It happens inside a power structure where the new member wants one thing — belonging — and the established members control access to it. The pledge is 18 or 19 years old, away from home for the first time, desperate to find a community, and told by people he admires that what is about to happen is tradition, is brotherhood, is what everyone before him went through. The implicit threat is social death: refuse, and you are out — not just out of the fraternity, but out of the social structure that the fraternity defines.
Consent obtained under that kind of pressure is not legal consent. It is coerced compliance. Forensic psychologists testify about groupthink, about the power dynamics of initiation, about the documented physiological freeze response that makes “she could have walked away” a medical impossibility. The jury needs to hear that a person in a state of acute stress — surrounded, outnumbered, sleep-deprived, possibly intoxicated — does not make free choices. The law of contracts already recognizes that agreements made under duress are void. The same principle applies to a body subjected to hazing.
New York’s pure comparative negligence rule means that even if the defense succeeds in pinning some share of fault on the student, the recovery is reduced — not eliminated. A jury that finds a student 30% at fault still leaves 70% of the damages on the institutions that created the environment, controlled the organization, and failed to enforce their own rules.
The Insurance Tower: Where the Money Actually Sits
Understanding who pays in a hazing case requires mapping the insurance coverage behind each defendant. The institutions do not keep this information public, but the structure is predictable.
The University. A major research university like Cornell typically carries a complex tower of self-insurance, participation in a risk-retention group such as United Educators (which serves hundreds of colleges and universities), and excess layers placed with commercial carriers. The self-insured retention — the amount the university pays out of its own pocket before insurance kicks in — means the university’s own money is on the first layer of any claim. That makes the institution motivated to fight early and fight hard, but it also means the coverage above the retention is real and substantial.
The National Greek Organization. National fraternities and sororities often carry specialized insurance through carriers that serve the Greek-life market. These policies are designed for the specific risks of chapter operations — hazing, alcohol-related injury, sexual assault — and the coverage limits can be significant. The national organization’s insurer will be involved from the earliest stages of the claim and will drive the defense strategy.
The Local Chapter. Local chapters are often undercapitalized student organizations with minimal assets and thin or nonexistent insurance. Suing the chapter alone is a trap — it produces a judgment against an entity that cannot pay. The chapter’s role in the case is evidentiary: its members’ conduct and communications are the proof that builds the case against the institutions above.
The Alumni Housing Corporation. If the hazing occurred in a house owned or controlled by an alumni corporation, that entity carries premises-liability insurance. The alumni corp is a separate defendant with its own coverage — and its own duty to maintain a safe premises, which it breached if it allowed dangerous rituals to occur in a building it controlled.
The Playbook: What the University’s Lawyers Will Try
The institutions and their insurers run a predictable sequence of plays in hazing cases. Each one is designed to minimize the payout and protect the institution’s reputation. Knowing them in advance is the counter.
Play 1: The “Sympathetic” Call from the Greek Life Office. Within days of the incident, someone from the university’s Greek Life office or student affairs will reach out to the family. The voice will be warm, concerned, full of “we’re here to support you.” The purpose is not support. It is to get the family talking — to create a record of statements that can be used later to minimize liability. The family should not speak with university investigators without counsel present. Everything said in those conversations can become evidence in the university’s defense file.
Play 2: The Internal Investigation. The university will announce an internal investigation. It will be conducted by the university’s own Office of Student Conduct or, in serious cases, by an outside firm hired by the university’s insurer. The investigation will produce a report that frames the incident as the conduct of rogue individual students, not as the product of institutional failure. The report will be carefully worded to avoid admissions. The family must understand: this investigation serves the institution, not the student. Independent investigation — through preservation letters, records demands, and eventually discovery — is the only way to get the full record.
Play 3: The Quick Settlement Offer. A check may arrive early, with a release attached, before the full extent of injuries is known — before the MRI results, before the neuropsychological evaluation, before the PTSD diagnosis. The amount will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The defense is betting that the family is overwhelmed, scared, and willing to take what is offered to make it all go away. The counter is simple: never sign anything from the university or its insurer without a lawyer reviewing it. A quick check is a cheap exit for the institution and a permanent waiver of rights for the family.
Play 4: The “Assumption of Risk” Defense. As discussed above, the defense will argue the student chose to participate. This is the primary fight. We counter with the psychology of coerced consent, the power dynamics of Greek life, the documented physiological responses that make “free choice” impossible under the conditions hazing creates, and New York’s pure comparative negligence rule that bars recovery for nothing.
Play 5: The “We Did Everything We Could” Defense. The university will point to its anti-hazing policies, its training programs, its transparency website. The counter is the gap between policy and enforcement. A policy on paper that is not enforced is not a defense — it is evidence of conscious disregard. If the university knew an organization was a risk (because its own transparency website says so) and failed to intervene effectively, the policy becomes proof of the standard it chose not to meet.
What a Hazing Case Is Worth
Case values in New York hazing litigation span a wide range, driven by the severity of the injury, the depth of the defendant’s pockets, and the egregiousness of the institutional failure.
Cases involving minor physical injuries or primarily psychological harm, where the university had limited prior notice of the specific organization’s conduct, tend to resolve in the range of $250,000 to several hundred thousand dollars. These are cases where the harm is real but the institutional negligence is harder to prove and the long-term medical impact is limited.
Cases involving serious physical injuries — a traumatic brain injury requiring ongoing care, a hospitalization for alcohol poisoning with lasting organ damage, a sexual assault during a hazing ritual — carry values in the millions. The life-care plan for a moderate TBI can run into the hundreds of thousands per year; a severe brain injury requiring round-the-clock care can exceed $6 million over a lifetime. When the university had documented prior notice of the organization’s hazing conduct — when its own transparency record shows the chapter was cited before — punitive damages become a real possibility, and the case value rises accordingly.
Cases involving death — whether from alcohol poisoning, physical trauma, hypothermia, or suicide following psychological devastation — are the highest-value cases. A wrongful death of a young person with a full lifetime of earning capacity ahead, combined with a survival action for the conscious pain and suffering the student endured, and the punitive damages that New York’s uncapped non-economic damages framework permits, can reach into the eight-figure range. Cases at this level involve deep-pocketed universities and national Greek organizations, and the conduct is by definition egregious — an institution that knew the danger and let it continue until it killed someone.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We state these ranges so the family knows the realistic territory, not to promise a number.
How We Build the Case
The proof story in a hazing case follows a sequence that begins the day you call and does not end until every responsible institution has answered for what happened.
The first move is the preservation letter — a formal demand sent to the university, the national organization, the local chapter, and any alumni housing corporation, ordering them to preserve all records: disciplinary files, internal emails, surveillance footage, social media communications, housing records, training materials, and prior-incident reports. This letter creates a legal duty to preserve evidence. If the institution destroys records after receiving it, the court can instruct the jury to assume the destroyed evidence would have been unfavorable — a devastating inference in a case that turns on what the university knew and when.
The second move is the records sweep. We subpoena university disciplinary files through the Office of Student Conduct, demand the national organization’s risk-management file for the local chapter, pull the student’s complete medical record from every treating facility, and obtain police reports and any criminal investigative findings. The university’s own transparency website — 20 years of published violations — is a public record we pull and preserve immediately.
The third move is the expert phase. We retain forensic psychologists to evaluate the student and testify about coerced consent and the psychological harm of hazing. We bring in neuropsychologists for cognitive testing when a TBI is suspected. We engage life-care planners to build the lifetime cost of care, and forensic economists to reduce that cost to present value. We work with higher-education safety consultants who can testify about the standard of care a university owes when it knows an organization on its campus has a history of hazing.
The fourth move is discovery — depositions of university administrators, chapter officers, national-organization representatives, and individual perpetrators. The depositions are where the institutional knowledge comes out: who knew what, when they knew it, what they did about it, and why it was not enough. The internal emails we preserved through the litigation hold are the documents that make these depositions effective.
The fifth move is the demand and, if necessary, the trial. By the time discovery is complete, the defense knows what we have. The demand reflects the full measure of the harm — past and future medical care, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and where the facts support it, punitive damages. If the institution will not meet the number, we try the case — and in New York, a jury that hears the full story of institutional knowledge and conscious disregard can return a verdict that changes the culture.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Now
If the hazing incident just happened — or if you just learned about it — the next 72 hours are when the case is won or lost.
Get medical care first. If your student was hospitalized, make sure every symptom is documented. If they were not hospitalized but something seems wrong — headaches, confusion, emotional withdrawal, sleep disturbance, flashbacks — get them evaluated immediately. Delayed symptoms are the standard presentation, not the exception. Mild traumatic brain injury can emerge days after the impact. PTSD symptoms can surface weeks later. The medical record built from day one is the proof that the defense cannot dismiss.
Do not speak with the university’s investigator alone. The Greek Life office, the Office of Student Conduct, the Dean of Students — every one of these offices is part of the institution. They may be kind, they may seem supportive, but their job includes protecting the university from liability. Anything the student or the family says to them can become evidence in the university’s defense file. Decline the interview until you have counsel.
Preserve every communication. Screenshots of group chats, text messages, Snapchat images before they expire, Instagram posts — anything the student received or sent related to the organization or the incident. Chapter members will be deleting evidence in real time. What the student captured on their phone may be the only surviving record.
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no settlement offer, no “behavioral agreement,” no document the university puts in front of you. If someone hands you a form, photograph it and call us. The quickest way a hazing case dies is when a family signs a release before they know the full extent of the harm.
Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. We will tell you immediately whether we can help, what the first steps are, and what the preservation letter needs to say. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you — and point you toward someone who is.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if my student “voluntarily” joined the fraternity or sorority?
Yes. New York follows a pure comparative negligence rule — your student’s decision to join does not bar recovery. It may reduce the damages by the percentage of fault a jury assigns, but it never eliminates the claim. More importantly, “voluntary” participation in an organization is not voluntary consent to be hazed, injured, or killed. The law separates the decision to seek membership from the decision to submit to abuse — and the power dynamics of Greek life, where established members control access to belonging, make true consent impossible under the conditions hazing creates.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in New York?
New York’s statute of limitations for personal injury is three years from the date of the injury, under the state’s general limitations statute. For wrongful death, the deadline is two years from the date of death. If the injured person was a minor at the time, the deadline may be tolled — extended — until they reach adulthood. But do not calculate the deadline yourself. Some hazing injuries, particularly psychological trauma and brain injury, may not be discovered until months or years after the event, and the discovery rule may apply. Call a lawyer immediately so the deadline does not pass while the family is still coping.
Does the new Stop Campus Hazing Act give me a private right to sue?
The Stop Campus Hazing Act does not create a new private cause of action. What it does is require universities to publicly report hazing violations — creating a record that can be used as evidence in a civil negligence case. The Act’s reporting requirements establish a standard of care: if a university fails to report hazing as required, or if its own published record shows it knew an organization was a risk, that failure and that record become evidence of institutional negligence in a traditional tort claim.
Can the university really be held responsible for what students do in a fraternity?
Yes — when the university knew or should have known about the risk. Universities that recognize, fund, house, and supervise student organizations owe a duty of reasonable care to protect students from foreseeable harm within those organizations. Cornell’s own 20-year transparency record — its published database of hazing violations — is a public admission that it tracks which organizations pose risks. If the organization that harmed your student appears on that record, or in the university’s internal disciplinary files, the notice element is met by the institution’s own documentation.
What if the hazing happened off campus?
Off-campus hazing does not eliminate university liability if the university had knowledge of the organization’s conduct and the organizational connection to the university remained. If the fraternity was recognized by the university, if the event was part of the pledge process, and if the university had prior notice of the chapter’s hazing culture, the institution’s duty extends. Additionally, off-campus fraternity houses are often owned or controlled by alumni housing corporations that face independent premises-liability claims for dangerous conditions they allowed on their property.
What is the difference between a wrongful death case and a survival action?
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family and compensates them for what they lost — the financial support the student would have provided, the companionship, the guidance, the funeral costs. A survival action belongs to the estate and carries the claim the student would have had — the conscious pain and suffering they endured before death, the medical expenses, the loss of earnings between injury and death. In New York, both claims can be brought in parallel, and together they represent the full measure of what was taken.
Will my student’s name be public if we file a lawsuit?
In most cases, hazing plaintiffs can file under a pseudonym (Jane Doe or John Doe) to protect the student’s privacy, particularly in cases involving sexual assault, humiliation, or sensitive medical information. Courts routinely grant these requests in hazing cases because the nature of the harm — the intimate details of what was done to the student — creates a privacy interest that outweighs the public’s interest in knowing the plaintiff’s identity. We pursue pseudonym filing in every hazing case unless the family decides otherwise.
How much does it cost to hire a hazing lawyer?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% of the recovery before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win. The consultation is free, and it is available 24 hours a day because hazing does not happen on a schedule. You will never receive a bill from us for legal fees while the case is pending. The only time we are paid is when we recover money for your family.
Why Our Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, as the managing partner of our firm. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the institution is hiding and tell it to a jury. He currently leads our active hazing litigation, a $10 million lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity, and the knowledge we are building in that case informs every intake call we take. Ralph’s full background is available on our site.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the family reading this page. He sat across the table from the lawyers who will be sitting across from your family. Now he sits on your side. He knows how the insurance company values a claim, how it sets reserves in the first 48 hours before the real injuries are diagnosed, and how it uses the recorded statement and the quick settlement to close a case for a fraction of its worth. Lupe’s profile details how that insider knowledge works for you.
We speak Spanish — Hablamos Español — and Lupe conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family prays in Spanish, we will speak to you in the language you think in.
We are a trial firm that takes New York hazing cases — working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not maintain an office in New York and we do not claim a New York license. What we bring is the national hazing litigation experience, the insurance-defense insider knowledge, and the willingness to take a case to trial when the institution will not do the right thing.
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day — not an answering service, but live staff who know what hazing does to a family and know that the call you are making is the hardest one you have ever dialed.
Call now. The evidence is already disappearing. Let us stop the clock before the proof is gone.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential.
