Baltimore, Maryland Fraternity Hazing Lawsuit Lawyer
You are reading this at an hour when most people are asleep. Something happened to you — or to someone you love — inside a fraternity ritual that was never a ritual at all. It was a beating. Maybe you are the one who spent five days in a hospital bed with a hand that was drilled with a corkscrew. Maybe you are the parent who got the phone call from the ER at Coppin State and drove through Baltimore in the dark not knowing what you would find. Either way, you already know the question that brought you here: can anyone actually be held accountable for what happened inside that room? The answer is yes. Maryland law does not protect people who do this. It never has. And the fact that the people who hurt you called it “tradition” is the first lie we are going to dismantle.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Maryland hazing and battery cases, working with local counsel where required, and we have an active hazing lawsuit right now that is teaching us exactly how these organizations operate, defend themselves, and try to silence the people they hurt. Our hazing litigation practice page lays out what we do. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911, and a live human answers it at any hour — not an answering service, not a bot, a person.
What Happened at Coppin State: The $4 Million Kappa Alpha Psi Lawsuit
Here is what the public record already shows. A young man pledged Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity at Coppin State University in Baltimore. Over what the lawsuit describes as several beating sessions, fraternity members struck him with canes. They forced him to do pushups on top of sharp bottle caps. And they drilled a corkscrew into his hand. He spent five days in the hospital. He has now filed a $4 million lawsuit naming both the local chapter and the national organization, claiming battery, false imprisonment, and gross negligence.
This is not an isolated incident. In the same period, a pledge at Bowie State University filed a separate hazing lawsuit against Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, saying he was punched, hit, and slapped. That pledge’s words — “It broke me down. It hurt. It’s something I never felt before” — are the words we hear from every hazing survivor who calls. And the attorney representing that pledge stated the principle that governs every one of these cases: the fraternity has a duty under Maryland law to make the pledge safe.
Coppin State University issued a statement saying it “does not tolerate or condone any incident of hazing or abuse and takes accusations of such seriously.” The university was not named as a defendant in the initial filing. The national branch of Kappa Alpha Psi had no comment.
That silence is not accidental. It is strategy. We will come back to it.
Maryland Law Makes Hazing a Crime — And That Changes Your Civil Case
Maryland did not leave hazing in a gray zone. The state legislature wrote a criminal statute that specifically prohibits it.
Maryland Criminal Law § 3-607 specifically prohibits hazing, defining it as any act that subjects a student to the risk of serious bodily injury for initiation purposes.
In plain English: hazing is illegal in Maryland. It is not a “tradition” or a “rite of passage.” It is a crime that carries up to six months behind bars and a $500 fine. That criminal prohibition is the foundation of your civil case because it does something most people never think about: it destroys the defense’s favorite argument before they ever make it.
Why the criminal statute matters in your civil lawsuit: Maryland follows the doctrine of contributory negligence — a rule that says if the injured person was even slightly at fault, they recover nothing. In a hazing case, the defense will try to use this rule against you. They will say: “He wanted to pledge. He showed up. He stayed. He assumed the risk.” But Maryland courts have long held that a person cannot consent to an illegal act. You cannot consent to being beaten with a cane. You cannot consent to having a corkscrew driven into your hand. You cannot consent to something the legislature has declared a crime. The fact that Maryland Criminal Law § 3-607 makes hazing illegal is the wall that stops the assumption-of-risk defense cold.
The causes of action in a Maryland hazing lawsuit:
Battery — intentional, harmful, and offensive physical contact. Every strike of a cane, every pushup on bottle caps, and every turn of that corkscrew is a separate battery. The fraternity members who did these things committed battery. The question is not whether. The question is who pays for it.
False imprisonment — unlawfully restraining a person so they cannot leave. If the pledge was not free to walk out of the room during those beating sessions — if the door was blocked, if the consequence of leaving was expulsion from the pledge process, if the psychological control was total — that is false imprisonment. Maryland law treats confinement as confinement whether it is achieved with a locked door or with the threat of public humiliation and the destruction of months of work.
Gross negligence — reckless disregard for the safety of another. This is the claim that reaches the national fraternity. It says: you knew or should have known that your chapters were doing this, and you did not stop it. The national organization sets the policies, collects the dues, controls the brand, and bears the responsibility when its chapters treat human beings this way.
The statute of limitations: Maryland gives you three years. Under Maryland’s general personal-injury statute of limitations, a claim for battery must be filed within three years of the date the injury occurred. For a pledge hazed in 2015, that clock is narrow. But for someone hazed yesterday, or last semester, or last year — the window is open. The mistake people make is assuming they have plenty of time, because the evidence dies long before the deadline does.
The damages cap: Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 11-108 imposes a cap on non-economic damages — the pain, the scarring, the psychological trauma. At the time of this 2015 filing, that cap was approximately $800,000. That cap does NOT apply to economic losses like medical bills and lost wages, and it does not necessarily apply to punitive damages where the conduct was intentional. Knowing what the cap touches and what it does not is half the battle in valuing a hazing case honestly.
The Defendant Stack: Why You Name Both the Local Chapter and the National
Here is something a generalist lawyer misses: a fraternity is not one entity. It is a corporate family, and the money sits in different places depending on which family member you name.
The local chapter is usually a small entity — sometimes an unincorporated association, sometimes a local LLC, sometimes a group of individuals with no formal structure at all. The people who swung the canes and drilled the corkscrew are here. They committed the intentional torts. But the local chapter may have almost no assets and almost no insurance. If you sue only the local chapter, you might win a judgment you can never collect.
The national fraternity — in this case, Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. — is the deep pocket. The national organization collects dues from every chapter, controls the branding, sets the anti-hazing policies (at least on paper), and carries insurance. When a local chapter in Baltimore hazes a pledge, the question is whether the national knew about a pattern of hazing in its chapters nationwide and failed to act. That is where gross negligence and negligent supervision attach.
The complaint in the Coppin State case named both. That is the correct architecture. Suing the individuals who committed the battery gives you the intentional torts and the possibility of punitive damages. Suing the national gives you the institutional defendant with the balance sheet and the insurance tower. Failing to name the national is the most common mistake we see in hazing cases that were filed by lawyers who do not do this work.
The individual fraternity members — the ones who held the cane, who scattered the bottle caps, who turned the corkscrew — are each potentially liable for battery, assault, and false imprisonment. In some cases, the individual who committed the worst act is the one with the most to lose personally, which makes them a source of both civil recovery and criminal accountability. The prospect of a civil judgment that follows them personally for the rest of their lives is leverage.
The university — Coppin State was not named in this initial filing, but Maryland law and the university’s own anti-hazing policies create a duty to supervise campus-sanctioned organizations. Whether the university can be joined depends on facts that emerge in discovery: Did the university receive prior reports about this chapter? Did it investigate? Did it look the other way? The possibility of a university defendant is a live question that discovery answers, not one to dismiss at the start.
“You Assumed the Risk” — The Defense’s First Move and Why It Fails in Maryland
If you are reading this and you were the pledge, you already know what the fraternity’s lawyers will say. You have probably already heard it from someone — maybe a friend, maybe a family member, maybe a voice in your own head: “But you chose to pledge. You knew what you were getting into. You could have walked out.”
No. Under Maryland law, that argument fails. Here is why.
One cannot consent to an illegal act. Maryland Criminal Law § 3-607 makes hazing a crime. You cannot consent to a crime being committed against you. The law does not recognize a “consent” defense to battery when the battery itself is the commission of a criminal act. The fraternity cannot say “he agreed to be beaten” because the law has already said: no one can agree to be hazed. The agreement is void.
The psychological coercion of pledging defeats voluntary consent. Even setting aside the criminal statute, the pledging process is designed to create psychological dependency. The pledge has invested months of work, endured weeks of sleep deprivation and humiliation, and been told that walking away means losing everything — the brotherhood, the network, the identity he has been building toward. A person in that position is not making a free and voluntary choice when he “agrees” to be hit with a cane. A forensic psychologist can testify on pledge dynamics — how the process strips away autonomy, how the group pressure makes exit feel impossible, how the structure replicates the dynamics of an abusive relationship. That testimony is how you defeat assumption of risk at trial.
Contributory negligence does not bar recovery when the defendant’s conduct was intentional. Maryland is one of the few states that still follows pure contributory negligence — if you are even one percent at fault, you recover nothing. But this rule applies to negligence claims, not to intentional torts. When a fraternity member picks up a cane and strikes a pledge, that is battery — an intentional tort. The contributory negligence defense does not apply to intentional torts the same way it applies to ordinary negligence. The pledge’s decision to show up does not make him contributorily negligent to his own beating.
This is the fight. It is the central legal battle in every hazing case. We know it is coming, and we know how to win it.
The Evidence That Disappears: Texts, Photos, and the National Fraternity’s Secret Files
Every hazing case is a race against a clock. The legal deadline to sue — three years — is generous. The evidence is not. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Digital communications between fraternity members. This is the single most critical evidence in a hazing case. The texts, group chats, and emails where fraternity members planned the “sessions,” coordinated the beatings, discussed what they were going to do to the pledges, and — most importantly — discussed who had been hurt and whether anyone had talked. These communications prove premeditation. They prove organizational knowledge. They prove the local chapter was not acting in a vacuum. They are also the evidence most likely to be deleted. The day a lawsuit is filed — or the day a pledge goes to the hospital — the group chat gets wiped. The texts get “accidentally” lost. The phone gets “replaced.” A preservation letter, sent the day you call, freezes these records before they can be erased. Every day you wait is a day those messages can disappear forever.
Medical records and clinical photography. The hospital records from the five-day admission are the medical spine of the case. The entry wounds from the corkscrew, the bruise patterns from the cane strikes, the puncture marks from the bottle caps — these are documented by medical professionals who have no stake in the lawsuit. Their photographs and notes are contemporaneous, objective, and devastating. But hospital records are retained on schedules that vary, and the photographic documentation from the ER is not always preserved in the permanent chart. Requesting the full medical record — including the ED photos, the nursing notes, and the wound-care documentation — must happen quickly and specifically.
National fraternity charter records and prior complaints. Here is the evidence that reaches the national organization. Does Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc. have a file of prior hazing complaints against this specific chapter? Against other chapters in Maryland? Against chapters nationwide? Has the national office received reports of hazing at its chapters and failed to act — or acted with a slap on the wrist that let the same members continue? These records are discoverable, but they sit in the national office’s files, and the national office will fight to keep them there. The discovery battle for these records is where the gross-negligence claim lives or dies.
University disciplinary reports. Did Coppin State receive prior complaints about this chapter? Did the university’s student-conduct office investigate hazing allegations and quietly resolve them without public discipline? Prior reports to the university establish foreseeability — proof that the danger was known and nothing was done. University disciplinary records are subject to their own retention schedules and privacy protections, and getting them requires either a subpoena or a FERCA-compliant records request from the injured student.
The corkscrew, the canes, and the bottle caps. The physical instruments of the hazing are evidence. If they still exist, they are the objects that caused the injuries, and they should be preserved — photographed, documented, and if possible collected. If they have been discarded, that destruction is itself evidence of consciousness of guilt.
What a Corkscrew Through the Hand Actually Costs: The Medicine and the Money
The injuries in this case are not abstract. A corkscrew drilled into a hand is a penetrating wound that can sever tendons, damage nerves, introduce deep-tissue infection, and leave permanent functional impairment. Five days in the hospital is not a precautionary stay — it is the kind of admission that happens when doctors are managing infection risk, monitoring for compartment syndrome, or performing surgical debridement and repair.
The hand injury. The hand is the most complex mechanical structure in the body. A penetrating wound from a corkscrew can damage the flexor or extensor tendons — the cables that let you grip, type, write, and play. It can injure the digital nerves that provide sensation. It can seed a deep-space infection in the palm that requires IV antibiotics and surgical drainage. The cost: emergency surgery, hand-surgery consultation, possibly a tendon-repair operation, weeks of occupational therapy, and — if the damage is permanent — a lifetime of reduced grip strength and fine-motor limitation. A hand-injury specialist builds the medical proof; a life-care planner prices the lifetime cost.
The cane injuries. Repeated strikes with a cane produce patterned bruising — contusions that, in the medical record, tell the story of how many times and with how much force. Beyond the bruising, cane strikes to the torso and legs can cause deep-tissue hematomas, rib fractures, and kidney contusions. Five days of acute-care hospitalization suggests the injuries were not merely cosmetic.
The bottle-cap pushups. Pushups performed on sharp bottle caps produce dozens of puncture wounds across the palms and fingers. These are painful, prone to infection, and leave scars that can serve as permanent physical evidence of what was done.
The psychological trauma. This is the injury that lasts longest. A person who is beaten, restrained, and tortured over multiple sessions by people he was trying to earn the approval of develops post-traumatic stress disorder at rates that mirror combat veterans and assault survivors. The DSM-5 diagnosis of PTSD requires exposure to actual or threatened death, serious injury, or sexual violence — hazing meets that threshold. Symptoms include intrusive memories, nightmares, avoidance of anything associated with the fraternity, hypervigilance, sleep disturbance, and negative alterations in mood and cognition. This is a diagnosable, treatable, but often lifelong injury — and it is compensable in Maryland.
The money. The $4 million demand in this lawsuit is a number that reflects the severity of what happened, but it is a demand — not a guarantee, and not a cap on what the case is worth. Here is how a hazing case is actually valued.
Economic damages — the costs you can add up on a spreadsheet — include the five-day hospitalization, the surgical and wound-care costs, the hand therapy, the psychological treatment (which can run for years), and the lost wages or lost earning capacity if the injuries affect the person’s ability to work. These are not capped by Maryland’s non-economic damages cap.
Non-economic damages — the pain, the scarring, the PTSD, the loss of what the person’s life was supposed to be — are subject to Maryland’s cap under § 11-108. At the time of this filing, that cap was approximately $800,000. That number is the ceiling on the pain-and-suffering portion, not on the total recovery.
Punitive damages — the damages designed to punish and deter — are available in Maryland when the defendant acted with actual malice. Battery is an intentional tort. Driving a corkscrew into someone’s hand is intentional. The argument for punitive damages in a hazing case is one of the strongest arguments available in any personal-injury context. The cap on non-economic damages does not necessarily apply to punitive damages.
The honest case-value range, based on the severity of the injuries and the institutional defendant involved, runs from approximately $450,000 on the low end to $1.75 million on the high end — though the specific facts of each case, the medical evidence, and the discovery that emerges from the national fraternity’s files can push that number in either direction.
The insurance problem. Here is the hard truth most lawyers will not tell you: many general-liability insurance policies exclude intentional acts. A CGL policy that covers a fraternity for a slip-and-fall may not cover a fraternity for a battery. The coverage fight — finding the policy that applies, forcing the insurer to pay, reaching the national organization’s assets when the local chapter’s policy excludes intentional conduct — is often the hardest fight in the case. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before joining our side. He knows how insurers set reserves, how they search for exclusions, and how they delay — because he used to do it. His background is the reason we see the coverage traps before the other side does.
How a Hazing Case Is Actually Built: From Preservation Letter to Verdict
Here is the chronological walk of a hazing case, told by someone who has run it.
Week one. The day you call, we send a preservation letter — a written demand that the local chapter, the individual members, and the national fraternity preserve every text, every email, every group chat, every disciplinary record, every charter document, and every piece of physical evidence. That letter creates a legal duty to preserve. If they delete evidence after receiving that letter, a judge can instruct the jury to assume the destroyed evidence would have helped your case. That is called an adverse-inference instruction, and the threat of it is often enough to keep the evidence alive.
Weeks two through four. We pull the medical records — all of them, including the ER photographs, the nursing notes, the surgical reports, and the discharge summary. We retain a medical expert to review the records and prepare a report connecting each injury to the specific act that caused it. We retain a forensic psychologist to evaluate the PTSD and prepare a report on the pledge dynamics that stripped away your ability to consent or leave.
Months one through three. We file the complaint — naming the individuals who committed the battery, the local chapter, and the national fraternity. The defendants answer, and discovery opens.
Months three through nine. Discovery is where the case is won or lost. We serve written interrogatories demanding the national fraternity’s prior hazing complaints, its disciplinary actions against other chapters, its anti-hazing training materials, and its insurance policies. We take depositions — starting with the individual members who committed the acts, moving up to the chapter officers who authorized or knew about them, and reaching the national fraternity’s risk-management officials who are supposed to prevent this from happening at any chapter, anywhere.
The mediation leverage. Long before trial, the national fraternity faces a choice: settle the case quietly, or face a public trial where a jury hears about a corkscrew drilled into a pledge’s hand. The reputational damage of a public hazing trial — the news coverage, the alumni outrage, the donor retreats — is often a greater pressure point than the legal exposure. We approach mediation with the medical evidence, the psychological testimony, and the national’s own prior-incident file. The national organization knows what a jury in Baltimore will do with this evidence. Baltimore City juries have a well-earned reputation for delivering substantial verdicts when presented with evidence of intentional physical abuse and institutional indifference.
Trial. If the case does not settle, we try it. The jury hears from the medical experts who treated the injuries, the forensic psychologist who explains why the pledge could not leave, the fraternity members who are forced to admit what they did under oath, and — if the discovery produced it — the national fraternity’s own records showing it knew hazing was happening in its chapters and did not stop it. The number the jury writes on the verdict form is built from all of that.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter Every Move
If there is one thing Lupe Peña’s years inside an insurance-defense firm taught us, it is this: the other side has a playbook, and it runs on the same plays every time. Here are the moves you should expect — and the counter to each.
Play 1: “He assumed the risk.” The fraternity’s lawyers will argue the pledge chose to be there, chose to stay, and therefore accepted whatever happened. The counter: Maryland law says you cannot consent to a crime. Hazing is a crime under § 3-607. The consent defense dies on the criminal statute. We pair that with expert testimony on pledge dynamics — the psychological coercion that makes “staying” something other than a free choice.
Play 2: “This was an isolated incident by rogue members, not an organizational failure.” The national fraternity will try to frame the local chapter’s conduct as the act of a few bad actors that the national office could not have predicted. The counter: discovery. The national fraternity’s prior-complaint files, its disciplinary records, and its own anti-hazing training materials tell the real story — whether this was an aberration or whether the national office had a pattern it chose not to address. If Kappa Alpha Psi had prior hazing complaints against this chapter or others, the “isolated incident” defense collapses.
Play 3: The quick settlement offer with a release. An adjuster or the fraternity’s lawyer may contact the pledge or the family early — sometimes within days of the hospitalization — with a check and a release form. The amount will look meaningful to a college student or a struggling family. The release will be permanent. The counter: never sign anything, never give a recorded statement, never accept a check from the fraternity or its insurer without a lawyer reading every word. A check that arrives before the medical bills are totaled, before the hand has healed, before the PTSD has been diagnosed, and before the national’s prior-incident file has been opened is a check designed to make the case disappear cheaply. The day you call us is the day we stand between you and that check.
Play 4: “The national didn’t control the local chapter.” The national will argue it is a separate entity that merely licenses the brand and collects dues — that it has no operational control over what happens in a chapter basement at midnight. The counter: the franchise relationship itself — the dues, the branding, the national policies, the training materials, the risk-management oversight — is the control. The national cannot profit from the brand and disclaim responsibility for what the brand does. Our active hazing litigation — a $10 million case against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston — is teaching us in real time how national fraternities structure their defenses and where those defenses crack.
Play 5: The delay game. The insurer stalls, hoping the pledge gives up, moves on, graduates, and lets the case die. The counter: we move fast, we file fast, and we use the court’s discovery deadlines as a leash. Every day the insurer delays is a day closer to trial, and every day closer to trial is a day the national fraternity’s PR problem gets worse.
Your First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Never to Do
If the hazing happened recently — or if you are reading this for someone still in the hospital — here is the practical roadmap for the first three days.
Do this:
Seek medical treatment immediately. The hand that was drilled with a corkscrew needs a hand surgeon, not a campus clinic. The bruising from the canes needs to be documented by a medical professional. The psychological impact needs to be assessed by a mental-health provider. The medical record is the foundation of the case, and a gap between the hazing and the first medical visit is a gap the defense will exploit.
Photograph every injury. The bruising, the puncture marks, the hand. Take multiple photos from multiple angles, with good lighting, and store them somewhere only you control — not on a phone the fraternity has access to, not in a cloud account someone else can see.
Write down everything you remember, in order, while it is fresh. The dates, the times, the locations, the names of who was present, what each person did, what was said. Memory degrades fast, and the defense will exploit every inconsistency between a fresh recollection and a year-old one.
Preserve every digital communication. Every text, every group-chat screenshot, every email. Do not confront the fraternity members — do not send them anything in writing that could be used against you. Just save what already exists.
Call a lawyer. Not tomorrow. Today. The preservation letter is the first weapon, and it only works if it arrives before the evidence is destroyed.
Never do this:
Never give a recorded statement to the fraternity’s lawyer, the fraternity’s insurance adjuster, or the university’s legal office. They are not your friends. They are building a defense.
Never sign a release, a settlement agreement, a confidentiality agreement, or any other document the fraternity or its insurer puts in front of you. Do not sign anything without a lawyer reading it.
Never post about the incident on social media. Not a complaint, not a threat, not a description of what happened. Every post is discoverable, and a single angry post can be framed as evidence of bias, motive, or exaggeration.
Never contact the fraternity members directly. Do not confront them, do not threaten them, do not try to get them to apologize or admit fault on a recording. Let the legal process do that work in a deposition, under oath, where their words carry consequences.
Never assume you have plenty of time. The three-year statute of limitations is a floor, not a strategy. The evidence is on a much shorter clock.
What This Case Is Worth — and What It Is Not
We said it above, and we will say it again because it matters: the $4 million in the headline is a demand. It is the number the plaintiff’s lawyer put in the complaint to signal the severity of the case and to position for negotiation. It is not a prediction, and it is not a guarantee.
The honest range, based on the injuries described and the institutional defendants involved, runs from approximately $450,000 to $1.75 million. That range is driven by several factors: the five-day hospitalization and its associated medical costs, the hand injury and its potential for permanent impairment, the psychological trauma and the cost of long-term treatment, the scarring, the availability of punitive damages given the intentional nature of the conduct, and — critically — what discovery reveals about the national fraternity’s prior knowledge of hazing in its chapters.
Maryland’s non-economic damages cap, approximately $800,000 at the time of this filing, limits the pain-and-suffering portion of the recovery. But economic damages — the medical bills, the therapy costs, the lost wages — are not capped. And punitive damages, which are available for intentional conduct, are not necessarily capped either. The total recovery depends on how those categories stack.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We do not promise a number. We promise a fight — and we promise that the fight will be built on the specific medical evidence, the specific discovery record, and the specific law of Maryland, not on a formula.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for hazing in Maryland?
Yes. Maryland law gives you multiple claims: battery for the physical violence, false imprisonment for the confinement during the sessions, and gross negligence against the national fraternity for failing to supervise its chapters. You can name the individual members who committed the acts, the local chapter, and the national organization. You have three years from the date of the injury to file.
What if I “agreed” to the hazing? Can the fraternity say I consented?
No — not under Maryland law. Hazing is a crime under Maryland Criminal Law § 3-607. You cannot legally consent to a crime being committed against you. The “he chose to pledge” defense fails because the law has already said that no one can agree to be subjected to the risk of serious bodily injury for an initiation. On top of that, the psychological coercion of the pledge process — the months of investment, the group pressure, the impossibility of walking away without losing everything — means that even if consent were legally possible, it was not freely given.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Maryland?
Three years. Maryland’s statute of limitations for personal-injury claims, including battery, runs under Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 5-101. The clock starts on the date the injury occurred — not the date you discovered it was hazing, not the date you left the hospital, the date it happened. Three years sounds like a long time, but the evidence that proves your case — the text messages, the medical photographs, the fraternity’s internal records — can disappear in weeks or months. The deadline is generous. The evidence is not.
Are there damage caps in Maryland hazing cases?
Yes, for non-economic damages. Maryland Code, Courts and Judicial Proceedings § 11-108 caps non-economic damages — pain, suffering, emotional distress, scarring. At the time of the Coppin State filing, the cap was approximately $800,000. Economic damages (medical bills, lost wages, future care) are not capped. Punitive damages, available for intentional misconduct, are not necessarily capped. The cap limits part of your recovery, not all of it.
Can the national fraternity be held responsible for what a local chapter did?
Yes — if you can show the national knew or should have known about hazing in its chapters and failed to prevent it. That is the gross-negligence and negligent-supervision claim. The national fraternity sets the anti-hazing policies, collects dues, controls the brand, and is responsible for overseeing its chapters. If discovery shows the national had prior hazing complaints against this chapter or others and did not act, the national is on the hook — not just the individuals who held the cane.
What if I was hospitalized — does that make the case stronger?
Yes. A five-day hospitalization is powerful evidence of injury severity. It means doctors decided you needed acute inpatient care — not a clinic visit, not a prescription, five days of hospital-level treatment. The hospital records — the admission notes, the surgical reports, the wound-care documentation, the discharge summary — are objective, contemporaneous medical evidence that the defense cannot dismiss as subjective. That hospital record is the medical spine of your case.
Will I have to face the people who hazed me in court?
In most cases, yes — if the case goes to trial. The individual fraternity members who committed the acts will be deposed, and if the case is tried, they may be in the courtroom. But here is what matters: you will not face them alone, and you will not face them unprepared. The deposition and the trial are controlled environments where your lawyer is between you and them, where their answers are under oath, and where lying has consequences. Most hazing cases settle before trial, and many settle before the first deposition — because the fraternity knows what the evidence will show.
How much does a hazing lawyer cost?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The phone call is free. We answer 24/7 — a live human, not a machine. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you and point you toward someone who is. Contact us at any hour.
Why This Firm — and What Your First Call Costs
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi at the University of Houston — a case that is teaching us, in real time, how national fraternities defend themselves, how they try to distance the national from the local, and where their defenses crack. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the story the fraternity does not want told — and how to tell it to a jury.
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 exactly like yours. He knows how insurers set reserves in the first 48 hours, how they search for exclusions in the fine print, and how they use the passage of time to wear a plaintiff down. He sits on your side now. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We take Maryland cases — working with local counsel where required, appearing pro hac vice where the rules demand it, and bringing the same trial-team architecture we bring to every hazing case we handle. We are based in Houston, but hazing does not happen in one state, and the national fraternities that enable it certainly do not. The Kappa Alpha Psi national organization is not in Baltimore. Neither are most of the defendants we have faced. We go where the fight is.
We have recovered more than $50 million for injured clients — including a $5 million brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million amputation settlement, a $2.5 million truck-crash recovery, and a $2 million maritime back-injury settlement. We filed a $10 million hazing lawsuit that is currently active. Every result depended on the facts of that specific case. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we guarantee is this: we will treat your case as if it were the only one, because to you, it is.
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish — not through an interpreter, directly, in the language you think and pray in. If your family speaks Spanish at home, your first call does not have to be in English.
The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win. 1-888-ATTY-911. A live human answers at any hour. The preservation letter goes out the day you call — because the evidence is dying, and the fraternity is counting on you to wait.
Do not wait. Call now.