Georgia Fraternity Hazing at Emory University — What the Alpha Tau Omega Sanctions Mean for Your Family
If you are reading this, your son or daughter came home from a fraternity event at Emory University and something was wrong. Maybe they could not remember the night. Maybe a friend drove them to Emory University Hospital with a blood alcohol level that should have killed them. Maybe you got the call at 3 a.m. from a roommate who found them unconscious on the fraternity house floor. Or maybe your child is sitting across from you right now, shaking, trying to tell you what the older members of Alpha Tau Omega made them do on February 4, 2026, and you are realizing that what happened was not a party gone wrong — it was hazing, and someone needs to answer for it.
We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm. We are a trial firm that takes Georgia hazing cases, working with local counsel where required, and we are writing this for one reason: the university has already published its sanctions. Emory placed ATO on disciplinary probation through May 2027 and issued a two-year deferred suspension through May 2028. The university’s own Campus Hazing Transparency Report cited violations of both the Anti-Hazing Policy and the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Policy. That publication is not just a disciplinary action — it is evidence. It is the university’s own admission that hazing occurred, and it is sitting on a public website right now because Georgia law forces it to be there. What your family does with that evidence in the coming weeks — not months, weeks — is what decides whether the people who hurt your child ever face real accountability.
What follows is everything we know about hazing law in Georgia, the specific defendants your case can reach, the evidence that is dying right now while you read this, and what a civil claim against a national fraternity actually looks like from the inside. Nothing here is filler. Every section exists because the family in crisis needs it. We do not get paid unless we win your case, and the consultation is free. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer it 24 hours a day.
What Happened at Emory — and Why the University’s Own Sanctions Are Your Strongest Opening Evidence
On February 4, 2026, an incident occurred at the Alpha Theta chapter of Alpha Tau Omega at Emory University. Emory investigated. On April 23, 2026, the university published its findings in its Campus Hazing Transparency Report, citing ATO for violations of both the University Anti-Hazing Policy and the University Alcohol and Drug Abuse Policy. The sanctions were serious: disciplinary probation through May 31, 2027, a two-year deferred suspension through May 31, 2028, a prohibition on social events with alcohol through December 31, mandatory hazing prevention education for every member by June 4, and mandatory training on hazing prevention and group dynamics for every executive board member by October 7. The chapter must also submit a revised new member education plan by October 7 and — critically — complete “any outstanding prior outcomes” by September 15.
That last detail matters more than any other word in the sanctions. “Outstanding prior outcomes” means ATO had prior disciplinary sanctions that were never fully completed. The chapter had been in trouble before. The university knew it. The national fraternity either knew or should have known. And on February 4, 2026, whatever had been building in that chapter — the culture, the traditions, the escalation — reached the point where the university felt compelled to publish it to the world.
The publication itself is not voluntary. Emory began publishing these reports in July 2021 to comply with Georgia’s Max Gruver Act, which requires public and private institutions of higher education in Georgia to disclose hazing incidents and adjudication outcomes online for at least five years, within 15 days of their adjudication. The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law in December 2024, added a parallel federal requirement: institutions receiving federal funding must include hazing incidents in their Annual Security Reports under the Clery Act. These transparency laws exist because of families like yours — because too many hazing deaths were quietly buried in internal conduct files, and because the public was never told what these organizations actually do to new members.
What this means for your case is something most families do not understand: the university has already done part of your investigation for you. The report is public. The findings are published. The violations are documented. You do not have to prove that hazing happened — Emory University already concluded it did. What you have to prove is who is responsible, what specific harm it caused, and what that harm is worth. That is a very different case from the one most families think they are walking into, and it is a far stronger one.
Emory University sits in the Druid Hills neighborhood of Atlanta, primarily within DeKalb County. DeKalb County is known in the legal community as a relatively plaintiff-friendly venue with a history of significant jury awards in personal injury and premises liability cases. The jury that would decide your case — if it came to trial — would be drawn from this county. The proximity to Emory University Hospital means that if your child was taken there for alcohol poisoning or a physical injury, the medical records are immediate, thorough, and highly documented. That documentation is a forensic trail that can establish blood alcohol concentration, the timeline of ingestion, the severity of the injury, and the medical consequences. But those records require early authorization to obtain, and the hospital operates on its own retention schedule — the window does not stay open forever.
Georgia’s Hazing Laws — What They Prohibit and What They Give You
Georgia has two statutes that work together to give hazing victims and their families real legal power. The first criminalizes hazing. The second forces transparency. Together, they create a framework that no fraternity defense lawyer can easily talk their way around.
Georgia’s Anti-Hazing Statute
Georgia’s anti-hazing law makes hazing a criminal offense. The statute defines hazing as follows:
Any activity which endangers the physical health of a student, regardless of the student’s willingness to participate.
That last phrase — “regardless of the student’s willingness to participate” — is the single most important nine words in Georgia hazing law. It destroys the defense that every fraternity lawyer reaches for first: “your son chose to participate.” Georgia law has already answered that argument. It does not matter whether your child agreed to be hazed. It does not matter whether the chapter told them it was “voluntary.” It does not matter whether they raised their hand and said yes. If the activity endangered their physical health, it was hazing under Georgia law, and it was illegal.
This is the doctrine of negligence per se in its most powerful form: when someone violates a statute designed to protect a class of people, and a member of that class is harmed, the violation itself is evidence of negligence — and in many jurisdictions, it is negligence as a matter of law. The fraternity violated Georgia’s criminal anti-hazing statute. Your child was in the class the statute was designed to protect. The harm was the type the statute was written to prevent. That chain is your liability spine.
The Max Gruver Act — Georgia’s Transparency Mandate
The Max Gruver Act requires institutions of higher education in Georgia to publish hazing incidents and adjudication outcomes online for at least five years, within 15 days of their adjudication. This law was named after Max Gruver, a Louisiana State University student who died in 2017 during a hazing incident that involved being forced to drink excessive amounts of alcohol. Georgia passed its version to ensure that what happened to Max Gruver could never be quietly buried in a conduct file again.
For your case, the Max Gruver Act does two things. First, it forced Emory to publish the ATO sanctions — which means the evidence of what happened is public, permanent for five years, and cannot be quietly removed. Second, it creates a pattern record: Emory’s report also shows that between 2021 and 2025, the university sanctioned chapters of Kappa Sigma, Kappa Alpha Order, Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, and Beta Theta Pi for various incidents involving hazing and policy violations. That pattern is evidence that hazing at Emory’s Greek organizations is not an aberration — it is a known, recurring danger that the university and the national fraternities have been on notice about for years.
Georgia’s Comparative Fault Rule and What It Means for Hazing
Georgia follows a modified comparative negligence rule. A plaintiff can recover damages as long as they are less than 50 percent at fault. Your child’s own conduct — drinking, participating, not walking away — can reduce their recovery, but it cannot eliminate it unless the defense can pin 50 percent or more of the fault on them. And here is the critical intersection with the anti-hazing statute: because Georgia law says hazing is hazing “regardless of the student’s willingness to participate,” the defense’s attempt to assign fault to the victim runs directly into the statute’s own language. The law has already decided that the victim’s participation does not make the activity legal. That is a powerful answer to the comparative-fault attack.
Punitive Damages — When the Cap Comes Off
Georgia generally caps punitive damages at $250,000. But there is an exception that is tailor-made for hazing cases: the cap does not apply when the defendant acted with specific intent to cause harm or was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Hazing almost always involves alcohol — the Emory report cited violations of the Alcohol and Drug Abuse Policy alongside the Anti-Hazing Policy. If the fraternity or its members furnished alcohol to your child as part of the hazing, and that alcohol contributed to the harm, the punitive damages cap may not apply. That changes the entire economics of the case. A jury in DeKalb County told that a fraternity plied a new member with alcohol as part of a hazing ritual and that the conduct was so reckless it warranted punishment damages — with no statutory ceiling — is a very different negotiation from one where the most the family can recover in punitives is $250,000.
Georgia’s Law on Furnishing Alcohol to a Minor
Georgia law also allows parents to recover for the furnishing of alcohol to a minor child. This is a separate legal theory from the hazing claim itself — it targets the act of providing alcohol to someone underage, which is both a civil wrong and a criminal offense in Georgia. If ATO members or officers purchased, provided, or made alcohol available to your underage child, this is an independent cause of action with its own liability and its own damages.
The Statute of Limitations — How Long You Have
Georgia gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. For a hazing incident on February 4, 2026, the clock started that day. Two years sounds like a long time, but it is not — not when the evidence that proves your case is being deleted right now, not when witnesses graduate and scatter, and not when the fraternity’s insurance company has already opened a file and started building its defense. The families who recover the most are the families who call early, because early is when the evidence is still alive and the defendant has not yet locked down its story.
Who Can Be Held Liable — The Defendant Structure in a Fraternity Hazing Case
A fraternity hazing case is not one defendant. It is a stack of defendants, each with different levels of responsibility, different insurance, and different defenses. Naming only the obvious one — the local chapter — leaves money on the table and lets the entities with the deepest pockets walk away. Here is the full map.
Alpha Tau Omega National Fraternity
The national organization — Alpha Tau Omega National Fraternity — licenses the local chapter to use its name, its rituals, its branding, and its new member education program. The national organization sets the standards the chapter must follow. It collects dues. It claims credit for the chapter’s existence and its members’ loyalty. What it does not want to do is accept responsibility when the culture it created and the system it oversaw produces harm. But the legal theory that reaches the national is straightforward: vicarious liability for the actions of the local chapter, and direct liability for failure to enforce its own national health and safety standards. If the national knew — or should have known — that the Alpha Theta chapter was hazing, and it failed to act, that failure is its own negligence, separate from the chapter’s conduct. Discovery in a hazing case against a national fraternity targets one question above all others: what did the national know about prior violations at this chapter, and what did it do about it? The answer, in our experience, is usually that the national had notice and did nothing meaningful — because shutting down a chapter costs the national money in lost dues and lost prestige. That is the “corporate indifference” theory, and it is the spine of every serious hazing case.
The Alpha Theta Chapter of ATO at Emory
The local chapter is the entity that directly orchestrated the hazing. It is the entity whose members designed the “tasks,” bought the alcohol, and decided what the new members would endure. The chapter is directly liable for violating Georgia’s anti-hazing statute and for the harm that followed. But here is the structural reality: the local chapter is often a thinly capitalized entity, sometimes operating through a local housing corporation or alumni association that holds the house and the assets. The chapter’s own insurance may be limited. The real money sits one or two layers up — at the national organization and its insurance tower. The chapter is the defendant you must name to establish the facts; the national is the defendant you must name to actually fund the recovery.
Individual Fraternity Officers and Members
The student who served the alcohol, the pledge educator who designed the hazing, the chapter president who allowed it, the executive board that knew — each carries potential personal liability. In practice, individual students rarely have meaningful personal assets, but they may be covered under the chapter’s or the national’s insurance, and their testimony is often the most powerful evidence in the case. The individual members who hazed your child are also the witnesses who can be deposed under oath about what happened, what the culture was, who ordered it, and who knew. In a criminal context, individuals can be prosecuted under Georgia’s anti-hazing statute — that prosecution is separate from your civil case, but it creates leverage and it creates a record.
Emory University
The university itself may face liability for negligent supervision or premises liability if it had constructive notice of ongoing dangerous behavior in its Greek organizations and failed to act. The Max Gruver Act’s own reporting requirement is, paradoxically, evidence of this notice: the university has been publishing hazing violations since 2021. It sanctioned Kappa Sigma, Kappa Alpha Order, Delta Sigma Theta, and Beta Theta Pi for hazing-related violations between 2021 and 2025. ATO itself had “outstanding prior outcomes” that were not completed. The argument is straightforward: Emory knew hazing was a persistent, documented problem in its Greek system, it had the power to take stronger action, and it did not do enough to protect your child. Whether the university is a practical defendant depends on the specific facts, sovereign immunity considerations for certain institutions, and the strength of the notice evidence — but it is a theory that must be evaluated in every Emory hazing case.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
This is the section that decides whether your case is strong or whether it dies before it starts. Hazing evidence is uniquely perishable. The records that prove what happened to your child are being erased — some of them are being erased right now, while you read this — and the law does not require anyone to save them unless a lawyer has formally demanded it.
Internal Fraternity Communications — GroupMe, Slack, Text Messages
The single most powerful evidence in a hazing case is the chapter’s own internal communications. GroupMe threads where pledge educators assign “tasks.” Text messages where older brothers tell new members what to bring, what to wear, what to drink. Slack channels where the executive board discusses “pledge activities.” Snapchat messages that document the night in real time. These messages contain direct evidence of who organized the hazing, what was planned, who participated, and what the chapter knew.
The urgency here is extreme. Digital evidence is easily deleted or encrypted once sanctions are announced — and the sanctions were announced on April 23, 2026. Every member of ATO now knows the university is looking. The messages are being deleted. Accounts are being locked. GroupMe threads are being “archived.” The preservation letter — a formal demand that the fraternity and its members save every digital record related to the incident and the chapter’s activities — has to go out immediately. Not next week. Not after you “think about it.” The day you call a lawyer is the day that letter goes out, because every day after that is a day the evidence can legally disappear.
The University Investigative File
Emory’s investigation produced witness statements, findings, and the factual basis for the disciplinary probation. This file is the university’s own record of what happened, built from interviews with the people who were there. It is preserved by the university, but obtaining it requires either a subpoena or a FERPA waiver. The FERPA waiver is something your child can sign — it authorizes the university to release educational records, including conduct records, to you or your attorney. Get this done early. The university’s own investigative file is corroborating evidence that an independent fact-finder already concluded hazing occurred, and it is far harder for the fraternity to dispute than the accounts of individual witnesses who may later recant under social pressure.
Security Camera Footage
Emory’s campus and the area around fraternity row have extensive security camera coverage. Footage from fraternity houses, nearby university buildings, and street cameras can confirm the timeline — when your child arrived, who was present, how they looked when they left, and whether they were capable of walking. This footage is HIGH risk for loss. Most university and private security systems overwrite their data within 7 to 30 days. If the incident was February 4, 2026, and the sanctions were published April 23, 2026, weeks have already passed. The footage may already be gone. The preservation demand to Emory’s security office and to any private camera operators in the area must be immediate.
Medical Records and Toxicology Reports
If your child was taken to Emory University Hospital or any other medical facility, the records are crucial. The emergency department documentation, the blood alcohol concentration, the toxicology screen, the neurological exam, the imaging — all of it establishes the physical harm that the hazing caused. Medical records are relatively stable (they are retained on hospital schedules, not the 30-day overwrite of a security camera), but they require early authorization to obtain. HIPAA releases must be signed. Hospital records departments move at their own pace. The sooner the request goes in, the sooner you have the forensic medical trail that connects the hazing to the injury.
The Preservation Letter — Your First Move
Here is what happens the day you call us: we send a litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter to every entity and individual who may hold relevant evidence. That letter goes to the ATO national headquarters, the Alpha Theta chapter, the chapter’s housing corporation if one exists, Emory University’s Office of Community Standards, the Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life, and any third-party vendors (GroupMe’s parent company, the security camera operator, the university’s IT department). The letter puts each recipient on formal notice that evidence must be preserved and that destruction after notice can result in court sanctions, adverse-inference instructions (where the jury is told they may assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says), and separate spoliation claims. This letter is not a courtesy. It is a legal weapon, and it is the single most time-sensitive thing we do.
The Medicine — What Hazing Does to the Body and the Brain
Hazing is not a prank. It is a physical and psychological assault, and the injuries it produces are real, documented, and often permanent. We treat them with the same medical seriousness we would bring to any catastrophic injury case — because that is what they are.
Alcohol Poisoning — The Signature Hazing Injury
The most common hazing mechanism is forced or coerced alcohol consumption. New members are told to drink — sometimes specific quantities, sometimes “until you can’t,” sometimes as part of a “game” or a “tradition” that is designed to push them past their limits. The mechanism of harm is acute ethanol toxicity. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. As blood alcohol concentration rises, the brain’s control of breathing, heart rate, and gag reflex is suppressed. At high enough levels, the person stops breathing, aspirates on their own vomit, or suffers cardiac arrest. A blood alcohol concentration above 0.30 percent is life-threatening; above 0.40 percent, it is potentially fatal. A 140-pound person can reach a lethal blood alcohol concentration in a matter of hours if the consumption rate is high enough — and hazing rituals are specifically designed to make the consumption rate high.
The proof problem the defense exploits: “your child chose to drink.” The answer is that the environment was engineered. The “choice” was between drinking and being humiliated, rejected, or physically threatened. Georgia law has already decided that willingness to participate does not make the activity legal. The toxicology report from the emergency department establishes the dose. The GroupMe messages establish who organized the event and how the alcohol was provided. The witness statements establish the coercion. The medical record establishes the harm. Each piece of evidence closes a door the defense was planning to walk through.
Traumatic Brain Injury From Falls and Blunt Force
Hazing activities frequently involve physical challenges — being pushed, blindfolded and forced to navigate obstacles, made to carry heavy objects while exhausted, or simply falling while intoxicated. A fall from standing height onto a hard floor can produce a traumatic brain injury. The brain does not have to hit the skull for damage to occur — rotational forces can tear the brain’s white-matter connections, producing a diffuse axonal injury that a standard CT scan will miss about 90 percent of the time. The symptoms — headaches, memory loss, personality changes, difficulty concentrating — may not appear for days or weeks, and they are easy for a defense expert to dismiss as “subjective” or “pre-existing.” They are neither. A neuropsychological evaluation, advanced imaging (diffusion tensor imaging or susceptibility-weighted imaging), and the testimony of people who knew your child before the incident are the proof. A “mild” brain injury is not a minor injury — it is an injury that can affect cognition, mood, and employability for the rest of a person’s life. If your child was knocked unconscious, hit their head, or cannot remember parts of the night, this is a medical evaluation that cannot wait. You can learn more about how we handle these injuries on our brain injury practice page.
Psychological Trauma — PTSD From Hazing
Hazing is designed to break a person down — to strip their identity, force compliance through fear, and make them subordinate to the group. That is a textbook trauma exposure. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mood or a label a lawyer picks — it is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria, and a survivor has to meet every one of them. The nightmares, the flashbacks, the avoidance of anything that reminds them of the fraternity, the hypervigilance, the sleep disruption, the inability to concentrate — these are real, diagnosable, and compensable. The defense will call it “adjustment difficulty” or “normal college stress.” It is not. It is a recognized psychiatric injury, and it is proven with clinical evaluation, validated diagnostic instruments, and the testimony of treating clinicians — not with a lawyer’s argument.
The Lifetime Cost — What This Injury Actually Adds Up To
The economic damages in a hazing case can include emergency medical bills, hospitalization costs, ongoing medical treatment, rehabilitation, therapy, medication, and — if the injury affects the student’s ability to continue their education or enter their chosen career — lost earning capacity. A traumatic brain injury can mean a lifetime of reduced cognitive function, missed professional opportunities, and recurring medical needs. A PTSD diagnosis can mean years of therapy, medication, and a disrupted educational trajectory. The non-economic damages cover the physical pain, the mental anguish, the loss of the college experience your child was promised, the damage to their reputation, and the loss of the person they were before that night.
Case value in Georgia hazing cases, based on our analysis of the injury spectrum and the venue, ranges from approximately $150,000 on the low end — for emotional distress or minor injury with clear liability — to $3,500,000 on the high end, for severe physical injury, permanent disability, or wrongful death, bolstered by the statutory violations and the potential for uncapped punitive damages in DeKalb County. These figures are not predictions — they are the range that the evidence, the law, and the venue support when the case is built correctly. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Insurance Reality — Where the Money Actually Is
A fraternity hazing case is not a claim against a student organization with a bake-sale treasury. It is a claim against a national fraternity with a commercial general liability insurance tower, a local chapter that may carry its own coverage, a housing corporation that may have property and liability insurance, and — potentially — a university with its own substantial coverage. The national fraternity’s CGL policy is the primary target. National fraternities carry high-limit liability insurance precisely because they know hazing lawsuits are a predictable risk. The coverage tower may include a self-insured retention (the fraternity’s own money on the first layer), a primary CGL policy, and one or more excess/umbrella layers above that. The total available coverage can be in the millions — but the insurer will fight to keep it.
There is a coverage fight that is specific to hazing cases: many CGL policies contain assault-and-battery exclusions or intentional-acts exclusions that the insurer will invoke to deny coverage. The insurer’s argument is that hazing is an intentional act, not an accident, and therefore excluded. The counter-argument is that the negligence claim is not against the individual who committed the act — it is against the national fraternity and the chapter for failing to supervise, failing to enforce their own rules, and creating the culture that made the harm foreseeable. Whether coverage exists is a live, contested question in every hazing case, and it is one of the first things we evaluate. Do not assume there is coverage. Do not assume there is not. Find out early, because the coverage question shapes the entire settlement strategy.
The Fraternity’s Playbook — What the Defense Will Try and How We Answer
The fraternity’s insurance company and its defense lawyers have a playbook for hazing cases. It is well-rehearsed. Every play has a counter, and the counter starts with knowing the play is coming.
Play 1: “Your Son Voluntarily Participated”
This is the first play out of the box, and Georgia law has already killed it. The anti-hazing statute says hazing is hazing “regardless of the student’s willingness to participate.” The defense will still make the argument — to the jury, to the adjuster, to anyone who will listen — because it works on people who do not know the law. Our answer is the statute itself, read to the jury, with the nine words that destroy the argument emphasized. Your child’s willingness does not matter. What matters is that the activity endangered their physical health, and Georgia has already decided that the victim’s consent is not a defense.
Play 2: The Quick Settlement Check
Within weeks of the incident, someone from the fraternity’s insurance company or its claims administrator may contact your family with a sympathetic voice and a settlement offer. The offer will sound like a lot of money — $25,000, $50,000, maybe even $100,000. It will come with a release that, once signed, extinguishes every claim your family has against every defendant, forever, for an amount that is a fraction of what the case is worth. The medical bills may not yet be fully tallied. The brain injury may not yet be diagnosed. The long-term psychological damage may not yet have manifested. The defense knows this. That is why the check arrives early. The counter is simple: never sign anything from an insurance company without a lawyer reviewing it first. Not ever. Not in a hazing case. The quick check is not generosity. It is procedure.
Play 3: “The National Organization Is Not Responsible for What the Local Chapter Did”
This is the shell-game play. The national fraternity will argue that the Alpha Theta chapter is an independent entity, that the national did not control day-to-day operations, and that the national cannot be held liable for the chapter’s conduct. The counter is control evidence: the national sets the new member education program, the national collects dues, the national has the power to revoke the chapter’s charter, the national publishes health and safety standards that the chapter is required to follow, and — most importantly — the national had notice of prior violations at this chapter and did nothing meaningful. That is not absence of control. That is control exercised negligently. Discovery targets the national’s files: prior incident reports from this chapter, communications between the national and the chapter’s leadership, risk-management audits, and any prior sanctions or warnings. The paper trail is usually there, and it usually shows what the national hoped it would never have to produce.
Play 4: “The University Already Handled It”
The defense will point to Emory’s sanctions — the probation, the deferred suspension, the mandatory training — and argue that the university has already held the fraternity accountable, so a civil lawsuit is unnecessary and punitive. This is a category error. University conduct sanctions are administrative actions that govern the chapter’s relationship with the university. They do not compensate your child. They do not pay medical bills. They do not fund therapy. They do not hold the national organization accountable. They do not produce punitive damages that deter the next chapter at the next university from doing the same thing. The civil justice system is a separate, independent mechanism, and the university’s sanctions do not preclude it. If anything, the published sanctions are evidence that helps your civil case — they are an independent finding that hazing occurred.
Play 5: The Social Media and Surveillance Watch
The fraternity’s defense team will monitor your child’s social media. They will look for photos of them smiling, attending parties, drinking socially, or appearing to “move on” from the incident. They will use those photos to argue the harm was not serious. This is standard practice. The counter is awareness — your child should be advised that everything they post is evidence in a legal case, and that the defense is watching. This is not paranoia. It is the reality of litigation against a defendant with resources and a motive to minimize the harm.
How the Case Is Actually Built — The Proof Story
Here is how a hazing case is built, from the first call to resolution. This is the actual process, not a summary of it.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the national fraternity, the local chapter, Emory University, and every third-party data holder. The FERPA waiver is prepared for your child to sign, authorizing release of the university’s investigative file. Medical records are requested from Emory University Hospital or wherever your child was treated. The HIPAA authorization is executed. If your child has not yet had a complete medical evaluation — including a neurological exam and a psychological assessment — we help arrange one. The toxicology report from the emergency department is obtained. The scene is documented — the fraternity house, the surrounding area, any cameras.
Weeks two through four. The university’s investigative file is obtained. Witness statements are reviewed. The patterns in the file are identified — what did the university find, who did they interview, what did the witnesses say, and does it corroborate or contradict what your child has told you. The GroupMe threads and text messages are preserved — if the preservation letter was sent in time, the data may still exist. If it was not sent in time, we document what was lost and prepare the spoliation argument. The national fraternity’s prior incident history at this chapter is researched — Clery Act reports, prior Max Gruver Act disclosures, any publicly available records of prior sanctions.
Months two through six. The complaint is filed. Discovery begins. We serve interrogatories and document requests on the national fraternity targeting its knowledge of prior hazing at the Alpha Theta chapter, its risk-management policies, its training materials for new member educators, its communications with the chapter, and its insurance coverage. We take depositions — of the chapter president, the pledge educator, the members who were present, the university officials who investigated, and eventually the national fraternity’s risk management director. Under oath, the defense’s story tends to come apart. The “we didn’t know” defense dissolves when the national’s own incident files show prior reports. The “it was voluntary” defense dissolves when the GroupMe messages show the hierarchy and the coercion. The “it wasn’t that serious” defense dissolves when the toxicology report shows a blood alcohol concentration that was two hours from a body bag.
Months six through resolution. The case is built. A life-care planner evaluates your child’s long-term medical and psychological needs and projects the cost across their lifetime. A forensic economist reduces future costs to present value. Expert witnesses — in Greek life safety, in peer-pressure psychology, in trauma medicine — are retained to explain to a jury why students “consent” to hazing and why the harm is real. A demand is made to the fraternity’s insurance carrier. If the carrier will not pay what the case is worth, we try the case in DeKalb County, in front of a jury of your child’s neighbors, and we let them decide what a national fraternity owes a family whose child it failed to protect.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do Right Now
If the incident was recent, the clock is running on evidence that is dying. Here is what matters most in the first days.
Medical first. If your child has not had a complete medical evaluation, get one. Not a “I feel fine” check-in — a full evaluation by a physician who knows what to look for after an alcohol-related event and a possible head injury. Blood work, neurological exam, and — if there is any suggestion of a head impact — imaging. Symptoms lie. A person who “feels fine” the day after a hazing event may have a blood alcohol level that is still falling, a brain bleed that is still developing, or a liver enzyme panel that tells a story of toxicity the person cannot feel. Get the medical record created while the evidence is still in the body.
Do not sign anything. If anyone from the fraternity, the university, or an insurance company has asked you or your child to sign a release, a statement, a waiver, or a “settlement,” do not sign it. Bring it to a lawyer. The document was drafted by someone whose job is to protect the fraternity, not your family.
Do not post. Tell your child: no social media. No photos of yourself out with friends. No captions about “moving on” or “feeling better.” No statements about the incident. Everything posted is evidence the defense will use.
Preserve what you have. Your child’s phone is evidence. Do not delete anything — not texts, not GroupMe messages, not photos, not Snapchats. Screenshots of messages that are already disappearing should be taken immediately. The phone itself should be backed up. Any physical items from the night — clothing, a wristband, a cup — should be bagged and stored.
Call. The preservation letter, the medical records request, the FERPA waiver, the insurance investigation — all of it starts the day you call. We can be reached at 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
What This Firm Actually Is — Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take cases in Georgia, working with local counsel where required. We are not a Georgia office — we are a trial firm that brings its experience to your state’s courthouse when the case demands it.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been a licensed attorney for 27+ years, admitted in Texas in November 1998, and admitted 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 a story the defense does not want told. He is lead counsel in the active $10 million Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit — a case that is, right now, in active litigation against a national fraternity and a major university. That is not a past result. That is a current fight. You can read more about Ralph on his attorney profile page, and you can learn about our active hazing litigation practice on our dedicated hazing page.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. He is a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the other side values a claim, how it sets reserves in the first 48 hours, how it picks IME doctors, and how it uses surveillance and social-media mining to undermine injured people. He now uses that inside knowledge for our clients. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe on his attorney profile page.
Our fee is contingency. We charge 33.33 percent if the case resolves before trial, and 40 percent if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, and we have live staff answering our phones 24 hours a day — not an answering service. When you call 1-888-ATTY-911 at 2 a.m., a person picks up.
If your child did not survive — if what happened on February 4, 2026, or at any fraternity event took your child’s life — then the case changes shape entirely. It becomes a wrongful death claim, and the damages include the full value of the life that was taken. You can learn about how we handle these cases on our wrongful death practice page. The grief is not something we can fix. The accountability is something we can build.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for hazing if my son “volunteered” to participate?
Yes. Georgia law explicitly defines hazing as an activity that endangers a student’s physical health “regardless of the student’s willingness to participate.” The fraternity’s defense that your child chose to participate is not a legal defense to hazing under Georgia statute. The law has already decided that consent does not make the activity legal. Your child’s willingness may be raised by the defense to argue comparative fault, but Georgia’s modified comparative negligence rule allows recovery as long as your child is less than 50 percent at fault — and the anti-hazing statute’s own language undercuts the argument that a student who was coerced, pressured, or manipulated into participating was “at fault” for what happened to them.
Can I sue the national fraternity, or only the local chapter?
You can sue both, and in most serious hazing cases, you should. The local chapter is directly liable for the hazing, but it may have limited assets and limited insurance. The national fraternity is liable on a theory of vicarious liability for the chapter’s conduct and direct liability for its own failure to supervise, failure to enforce its own safety standards, and failure to act on prior notice of hazing at this chapter. The national organization typically carries a commercial general liability insurance tower with limits in the millions. Naming only the local chapter is one of the most common mistakes families make, and it leaves the deepest pocket untouched.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Georgia?
Georgia’s personal injury statute of limitations gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit. For an incident on February 4, 2026, the deadline would be approximately February 4, 2028. If the hazing resulted in a death, the wrongful death statute has its own deadline that also runs from the date of death. Two years sounds like a long time, but the evidence in a hazing case — GroupMe messages, security footage, witness memories — deteriorates rapidly. The families who build the strongest cases are the ones who act in the first weeks, not the last months.
What is the Max Gruver Act and how does it help my case?
The Max Gruver Act is Georgia’s hazing transparency law, codified in the Georgia Code. It requires public and private institutions of higher education in Georgia to publish hazing incidents and adjudication outcomes online for at least five years, within 15 days of their adjudication. It was named after Max Gruver, an LSU student who died in a hazing incident in 2017. For your case, the Max Gruver Act forced Emory University to publish the sanctions against ATO — which means the university’s own finding that hazing occurred is public, permanent, and usable as evidence in your civil case. It also created a public record of prior hazing sanctions against other Emory Greek organizations, which establishes a pattern of hazing that the university and the national fraternities were on notice about.
What if the fraternity’s insurance company already offered us a settlement?
Do not sign it without having a lawyer review it. Insurance companies in hazing cases often move quickly to offer a settlement that sounds significant — $25,000, $50,000, sometimes more — but is a fraction of what the case is worth. The offer comes with a release that extinguishes all claims against all defendants forever. The strategy is to settle before the family understands the full extent of the medical harm, before the toxicology report is analyzed, before the brain injury is diagnosed, and before the national fraternity’s prior-notice file is discovered. The check is not generosity. It is a business decision designed to close the file cheaply. A lawyer can evaluate whether the offer is fair, and in almost every early-offer hazing case, it is not.
Can the university be held liable for hazing at a fraternity it recognized?
Potentially, yes. If the university had notice of a persistent hazing problem in its Greek system — and Emory’s own Max Gruver Act disclosures show it sanctioned multiple chapters for hazing between 2021 and 2025 — then a negligent-supervision or premises-liability theory may apply. The argument is that the university knew the danger, had the authority to take stronger action, and did not do enough to protect students. Whether the university is a practical defendant in your specific case depends on the facts, the institution’s legal status, and the strength of the notice evidence. It must be evaluated in every case, but it is not automatic.
What if my child was expelled or disciplined by the university after the hazing incident?
This is a common and devastating consequence. A student who is hazed may be expelled or disciplined if the university’s conduct process finds they violated alcohol or drug policies — even though they were the victim. This can affect their academic record, their future earning capacity, and their ability to transfer or attend graduate school. The economic damages from a disrupted education are recoverable in a civil case. The loss of the college experience — the years, the degree, the career trajectory that was taken — is a compensable harm. If your child was expelled, the civil case includes the cost of that expulsion as part of the damages calculation.
Are punitive damages available in a hazing case in Georgia?
Yes, and in many hazing cases, the statutory cap on punitive damages does not apply. Georgia generally caps punitive damages at $250,000, but the cap does not apply when the defendant acted with specific intent to cause harm or was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. Because hazing almost always involves alcohol — and because the fraternity’s provision of alcohol to a minor is itself a violation of Georgia law — the cap may not apply, which means a jury in DeKalb County can award punitive damages with no statutory ceiling. This fundamentally changes the settlement leverage and the trial value of the case.
What if the hazing happened months ago — is it too late?
It may not be. Georgia’s two-year statute of limitations runs from the date of the injury, not the date the sanctions were published. If the incident was February 4, 2026, you have until approximately February 4, 2028, to file. But “not too late to file” is not the same as “not too late to preserve evidence.” The longer you wait, the more GroupMe messages are deleted, the more security footage is overwritten, the more witnesses graduate and move away, and the more the fraternity’s story solidifies. The statute of limitations is the outer deadline. The evidence clock is the real deadline, and it is much shorter.
Do I need a Georgia lawyer or can I use a Texas firm?
You need a firm that knows hazing litigation and is willing to take your case in Georgia. We are based in Texas but we take Georgia cases, working with local counsel where the rules require it. The legal theories, the evidence preservation, the discovery strategy, and the trial preparation are the same regardless of where the firm’s primary office is located. What matters is whether the firm has the experience, the resources, and the willingness to fight a national fraternity and its insurance company. We have that. The active $10 million hazing lawsuit we are litigating right now proves it. You can learn more about our current hazing case work on our dedicated page.
What does it cost to talk to you?
Nothing. The consultation is free. We answer the phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If we take your case, the fee is contingency — 33.33 percent if the case resolves before trial, 40 percent if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. There are no hourly charges, no retainer fees, no bills while the case is pending. The call costs nothing. Not calling could cost everything.
The Call
If you are the parent of a student who was hazed at Alpha Tau Omega at Emory University — or at any fraternity or sorority at any Georgia institution — the evidence that proves what happened to your child is dying. The GroupMe messages are being deleted. The security footage is being overwritten. The witnesses are graduating. The fraternity’s insurance company has already opened a file, and its adjuster is already calculating how little it can offer to make your family go away.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The medical records request goes out the day you call. The FERPA waiver is prepared the day you call. Every day before that call is a day the defense is ahead of you, and every day after it is a day we are closing the gap.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Hablamos Español. We answer 24 hours a day — not a machine, a person.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.