The 70 Warnings Nobody Acted On — Pullman, Whitman County, Washington Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death Lawyers
You are reading this at the worst moment of your life, or someone else’s. Your son is gone, or your daughter is in the ICU, or you are a parent who just learned that the institution you trusted with your child knew about the danger and said nothing. You may have just read that the United States Senate passed the Stop Campus Hazing Act unanimously — a law the family of a 19-year-old Washington State University freshman helped push through Congress after their son died from acute alcohol poisoning at a fraternity hazing event in Pullman in November 2019. That law is a victory for the future. It does not touch what happened to your family. What happened to your family is the past — and the only tool the law gives you for the past is a lawsuit.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We take Washington wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, working with local counsel where required. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston — that is being litigated right now in Harris County, Texas. He is not a lawyer who reads about hazing cases. He is a lawyer who is trying one. Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — before he crossed to this side of the table. He speaks fluent Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Here is what we know about what happened in Pullman, and what it means for your family under Washington law. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting us is free and confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
Can You Sue a Fraternity for a Hazing Death in Washington?
Yes. In Washington, the family of a person killed by fraternity hazing can bring a wrongful death lawsuit against every entity whose negligence contributed to the death — the national fraternity organization, the local chapter, the university, and the individuals who directly facilitated the hazing. The fact that your loved one consumed alcohol voluntarily does not erase the case. Washington follows a pure comparative negligence rule, which means the victim’s estate can recover even if the victim was substantially at fault, with the recovery reduced by the victim’s percentage of fault. That rule is the single most important reason a hazing death in Washington is a viable lawsuit and not a lost cause.
The defense will try to make this case about a 19-year-old’s choice to drink. Our job is to make it about the institution’s choice to ignore 70 warnings. The law supports that pivot. Washington’s anti-hazing statute defines hazing and prohibits it, establishing a standard of care that universities and fraternities are required to meet. When a university and a national fraternity have been called to the same chapter house nearly 70 times in six years — by police, by university authorities, and by the fraternity’s own national leadership — and a student dies in the exact way those interventions predicted, the question is not why the student drank. The question is why nobody stopped it.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Fraternity Hazing Death?
A hazing death is rarely one defendant’s fault. It is a stack of failures, and each layer is a separate entity with its own insurance, its own lawyers, and its own incentive to point at the others. Identifying every layer is the first thing we do, because naming only the obvious defendant — the local chapter — leaves the deepest pockets untouched.
The National Fraternity Organization. Alpha Tau Omega’s national structure — like every national fraternity — maintains charters, sets safety policies, publishes risk-management manuals, collects insurance assessments from local chapters, and sends representatives to inspect chapters. The national organization knew, or should have known, about the 70 prior interventions at this chapter. Its failure to revoke the charter, mandate corrective action, or impose meaningful supervision after decades of documented misconduct is the corporate negligence claim. The national fraternity typically carries the largest insurance tower — primary and excess liability layers that can reach $10 million or more. That is where the real recovery lives.
Washington State University. The university owed its student a duty of care that included reasonable oversight of the organizations it recognized and permitted to operate on its campus. When WSU’s own authorities intervened at that chapter house nearly 70 times over six years, the university had actual knowledge of a dangerous condition on its campus. Its failure to warn students and parents of that danger, to suspend the chapter, or to impose meaningful oversight is a separate negligence claim. Litigating against a state university in Whitman County carries specific challenges — the university is the economic and social backbone of Pullman, and the local jury pool has deep ties to WSU. We evaluate whether a motion for change of venue to King County is necessary to secure a neutral panel.
The Local Chapter and Its Officers. The Alpha Tau Omega local chapter — its officers, its pledge educator, its members who organized and attended the “Big Brother” night — are directly liable for the hazing itself. Providing hard liquor to a 19-year-old in a ritualized setting is furnishing alcohol to a minor under Washington law. The coercion inherent in a “Big Brother” ritual — where a new member is pressured to consume dangerous quantities of alcohol to prove loyalty or earn acceptance — is the mechanism of harm. Local chapter officers may carry their own insurance or may be personally exposed.
The Individual “Big Brother.” The specific member assigned to your son on the night he died — the person who handed him the bottle, who monitored his consumption, who watched him deteriorate and did not call 911 — bears direct responsibility. That person’s conduct is the most visible to a jury, and the defense will try to isolate liability there to protect the larger entities. Our strategy is the reverse: we use the individual’s conduct to prove the institution’s failure.
The 70 Prior Interventions: Why “Notice” Is the Whole Case
“Hazing thrives in darkness and has for generations. The Stop Campus Hazing Act brings hazing out of the shadows and into the light.”
That is what Sam Martinez’s mother said about the law she helped pass. She also said this about what happened before the law:
“When my son Sam wanted to join a fraternity at Washington State University, I searched hard for information and found nothing. But then, months later, after he died, we learned that authorities from Washington State, from his fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, and local police had intervened at that chapter house nearly 70 times for a range of misconduct violations, including hazing, in the six years before Sam died. That’s a years-long track record of misconduct that we had no way to know about. WSU and ATO did know this, at the highest leadership levels, and did nothing.”
Nearly 70 interventions. Over six years. From three separate authorities. And not one of them stopped the chapter from doing the exact thing that killed your son.
In a hazing wrongful death case, “notice” is the word that transforms ordinary negligence into something a jury punishes. Notice means the defendants knew about the danger. Actual notice — documented interventions by police, university authorities, and the national fraternity — is the strongest form of notice a plaintiff can prove. Most hazing cases fight to establish constructive notice (the defendant should have known). This case has actual notice in triplicate, documented over years.
The trial theme is “Notice and Betrayal.” The jury is not asked to decide whether a 19-year-old should have refused a drink. The jury is asked to decide whether institutions that were warned 70 times and did nothing are responsible for what happened on the 71st.
Washington’s Wrongful Death Law: Who Can Recover and What Is Recoverable
Washington’s wrongful death statute allows certain beneficiaries to recover when a person’s death is caused by the negligent or wrongful act of another. The statute of limitations for wrongful death in Washington is three years from the date of the incident — a hard deadline that the defense counts down to the day.
Since 2019, Washington expanded its wrongful death statutes to allow parents to recover for the loss of an adult child’s companionship without proving financial dependence. This expansion — pushed through the legislature in part because of what happened in Pullman — is the reason a family in your situation can seek non-economic damages for the destruction of the parent-child relationship. Before this change, parents of an adult child who was not financially dependent on them had a severely limited claim. Now, the loss of the bond itself is compensable.
This matters enormously in a hazing death because the non-economic damages — the grief, the loss of companionship, the destruction of the relationship between a parent and a child who was just beginning adult life — typically represent 80 to 90 percent of the total case value. The betrayal by an institution that knew the danger and hid it amplifies those damages in ways a jury can feel.
Washington generally does not allow punitive damages unless specifically authorized by statute. We will tell you this honestly because we will not overpromise. What we can do is build the non-economic case to its full, honest maximum — and in a hazing death with 70 prior interventions, that maximum is substantial.
The survival action — a separate claim brought by the estate for the decedent’s own losses — accounts for any conscious pain and suffering your son experienced between the ingestion of the alcohol and his death. A toxicologist can explain to a jury what your son felt as the alcohol suppressed his brain function, how long he was conscious, and at what point the damage became irreversible. That timeline is not abstract. It is your son’s final minutes, and the law allows it to be compensated.
Washington’s Pure Comparative Negligence Rule: Why “He Chose to Drink” Does Not End the Case
Washington follows a pure comparative negligence model. Under this rule, the victim’s estate can recover even if the victim was 99 percent at fault — though the recovery is reduced by the victim’s percentage of fault. This is dramatically different from states that bar recovery entirely if the victim is more than 50 percent responsible, and it is the reason a hazing death in Washington is winnable even when the defense argues voluntary consumption.
The defense in every hazing case runs the same play: blame the victim. They will argue your son chose to drink, chose to join the fraternity, chose to participate in the ritual. They will try to pin a high percentage of fault on him to shrink the recovery. Lupe Peña knows this play from the inside — he spent years at a national insurance-defense firm where adjusters and their valuation software calculate exactly how many percentage points of comparative fault they can argue to reduce a settlement. He knows how the numbers are built because he built them.
Our counter is not to deny that your son drank. Our counter is to prove that the institutions that knew about 70 prior incidents and did nothing created the conditions that made his death foreseeable and preventable. A 19-year-old in a hazing ritual is not exercising free choice in any meaningful sense. The coercion inherent in the “Big Brother” system — the power imbalance between initiated members and pledges, the social pressure to conform, the isolation from outside help — is the mechanism that makes hazing effective and lethal. A toxicologist can testify about the loss of autonomy at high blood-alcohol concentrations: at a certain level, the brain’s ability to make rational decisions, including the decision to stop drinking, is chemically suppressed. The 19-year-old who kept drinking was not making a choice. He was inside a system designed to override his ability to choose.
The Evidence Clock: Records That Exist and How Fast They Can Disappear
Every hazing death case is a race against evidence destruction. The records that prove what the university and the national fraternity knew are on clocks — some measured in months, some in weeks, some in the time it takes someone to hit delete. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
University Disciplinary Records — High Risk. The internal disciplinary records that document the 70 prior interventions at the chapter house are the spine of the notice case. These records show what WSU knew and when. They are also the records most likely to be “lost” during administrative transitions, archived to systems that are difficult to search, or purged under retention policies that few people outside the university’s records office even know exist. A preservation letter — demanding that the university freeze and produce these records — must go out immediately. The longer you wait, the more likely it is that a clerk retires, a server is replaced, or a policy change quietly eliminates the paper trail.
Fraternity Group Communications — Critical. The GroupMe threads, Snapchat conversations, text messages, and social media posts from the night of the hazing are the contemporaneous proof of coercion, ritual requirements, and the timeline of consumption. These show who told your son to drink, how much, and in what timeframe. They show whether anyone recognized the danger and failed to act. Digital evidence is the most fragile category because it can be deleted in seconds. A pledge who saw what happened can delete a thread with one tap. A fraternity member who organized the event can wipe a phone before anyone asks for it. The preservation letter to the fraternity, its members, and the national organization must go out the day you call us — not the week, not the month. The day.
Toxicology and Autopsy Reports — Medium Risk. The toxicology report establishes the precise blood-alcohol concentration and confirms the cause of death. This is a government record — typically held by the county medical examiner or coroner — and it is more durable than university or fraternity records. But it still requires early subpoena to ensure it is produced completely and without amendment. The toxicology report is also the defense’s first target: they will look for pre-existing conditions, other substances, or anything that could argue alternative causation. We need the full report, not a summary.
National Fraternity Training Manuals and Risk-Management Policies — Medium Risk. The national fraternity’s own safety policies, training materials, and risk-management manuals are the proof of the delta between what the organization said it would do and what it actually did. If the national manual says chapters are prohibited from providing alcohol to minors and the local chapter did exactly that under the national’s nose for years, the gap between the written policy and the lived reality is the corporate negligence claim. These documents are produced in discovery, but the national fraternity will fight to keep them confidential.
The Chapter House Itself. The physical space where the hazing occurred is evidence. The layout of the room, the bottles present, the condition of the space — all of it tells a story that photographs preserve and memory does not. If the chapter is still operating, the house may be cleaned, renovated, or altered after the incident. A demand to preserve the scene should go out immediately.
When a defendant lets required evidence die after receiving notice to preserve it, the law answers. A court can instruct the jury that they may assume the lost evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says — an adverse-inference instruction. That leverage begins the moment the preservation letter is on file. This is why the letter goes out before the funeral, not after the insurance company calls. Contact us today if you are in the first hours or days after a hazing death — the evidence clock is already running.
The Insurance Reality: Where the Money Actually Is
A hazing death lawsuit is not one insurance policy. It is a ladder of coverage stacked across multiple entities, and knowing which policies exist, in what order they pay, and how much each layer holds is half the value of the case.
The local chapter may carry a modest policy — sometimes as little as $50,000 to $100,000 — that is exhausted by a single hospital bill. The national fraternity organization typically carries the substantial tower: a primary liability layer, often $1 million to $5 million, followed by excess and umbrella layers that can stack to $10 million or more. The national’s coverage is the real target in a hazing death case, because the national had the knowledge, the authority, and the duty to act on the 70 prior interventions.
Washington State University, as a public institution, has its own coverage structure and specific immunities under Washington tort law. Claims against a state university may be subject to notice requirements and damage limitations that differ from claims against private defendants. Identifying the university’s coverage and the applicable tort-claim process is a threshold question that must be answered early.
Individual fraternity members — the officers, the “Big Brother,” the members who organized or attended the event — may have coverage under their parents’ homeowner’s insurance or personal liability policies, or they may be personally exposed with no insurance at all. The defense will try to route all liability to the uninsured individuals to cap the recovery. Our strategy is to tie every individual’s conduct back to the institutional defendants whose policies and failures enabled it.
The same case — a 19-year-old dead from alcohol poisoning in a fraternity hazing ritual — can be worth radically different amounts depending on which policies are identified and in what order they are pursued. A demand letter to the national fraternity’s $10 million tower early in the litigation, framed by 70 prior interventions and the foreseeability they establish, is what forces a serious settlement conversation. Lupe Peña built reserve calculations inside an insurance-defense firm. He knows what number makes an adjuster move, and he knows the delay tactics that keep that number low.
Case Value: What a Hazing Death Case Is Worth in Washington
Every case is different, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We state that plainly because we will not pretend otherwise. What we can tell you is how a case is valued and what drives the number.
The case value range in a hazing death with documented institutional notice — like the 70 prior interventions at this WSU chapter — is driven by several factors. Economic damages include the loss of your son’s future lifetime earning capacity. For a 19-year-old college student, that figure is substantial. A forensic economist projects the working years he would have had, the income he would have earned, the benefits he would have accrued, and reduces it to present value. The fringe-benefit multiplier alone — health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave — runs roughly 30 percent on top of base wages, per federal Bureau of Labor Statistics data. A 19-year-old’s lost earning capacity is measured in millions, before a single non-economic dollar is counted.
Non-economic damages cover the grief, the loss of companionship, the destruction of the parent-child relationship, and — in the survival action — your son’s conscious pain and suffering. In hazing cases involving alcohol poisoning, these non-economic elements typically represent 80 to 90 percent of the total case value. The reason is the betrayal: an institution that knew the danger, hid it, and let a family send their child into it. A jury that hears 70 prior interventions and a dead 19-year-old does not need a formula to know what that is worth.
The range in a case with this fact pattern — strong actual notice, multiple defendants, a national fraternity’s insurance tower, and a state university’s oversight failure — can span from approximately $3 million on the low end to $12 million or more on the high end. The low end assumes a venue that is unfavorable, a successful comparative-negligence defense that assigns significant fault to the victim, and a settlement that accounts for litigation risk. The high end assumes a more favorable venue, successful navigation of the comparative-negligence argument, and full development of the institutional-notice evidence. The actual value of any specific case depends on facts we develop through investigation and discovery.
The Defense Playbook: What They Will Try and How We Counter
The insurance companies and their lawyers have a playbook for hazing cases. We know because Lupe Peña used to run it. Here are the plays and the counters.
Play 1: “He Chose to Drink.” The defense will argue your son voluntarily consumed the alcohol and is responsible for his own death. The counter is the coercion inherent in the hazing system and the loss of autonomy at high blood-alcohol levels. A toxicologist testifies that at the BAC levels associated with fatal alcohol poisoning, the brain’s ability to make rational decisions is chemically suppressed. The 19-year-old inside a “Big Brother” ritual was not exercising free will — he was inside a system engineered to override it. And the institutions that built and tolerated that system for six years and 70 interventions are responsible for the outcome.
Play 2: “The National Didn’t Control the Local Chapter.” The national fraternity will argue it is a separate entity from the local chapter, that the chapter is an independent affiliate, and that the national cannot be held liable for the chapter’s conduct. The counter is the franchise model itself: the national licenses the name, sets the policies, collects the fees, inspects the chapters, and maintains the authority to revoke charters. When the national knew about 70 prior interventions and did not revoke the charter or impose meaningful corrective action, its failure is its own negligence — not the local chapter’s conduct attributed to it by vicarious liability, but the national’s direct failure to supervise.
Play 3: “The University Didn’t Cause the Death.” WSU will argue it is not responsible for the conduct of a private fraternity, that Greek organizations are independent entities, and that the university’s role is limited to recognition and oversight. The counter is the 70 prior interventions — the university’s own authorities were at that chapter house repeatedly over six years. The university had actual knowledge of a dangerous condition on its campus and failed to warn students and parents. That is a separate, direct negligence claim that does not depend on the university controlling the fraternity’s daily operations.
Play 4: The Quick Settlement Offer. Within weeks, someone friendly may contact you with an offer that sounds large — $100,000, $500,000, even $1 million — accompanied by a release that asks you to give up all claims before the full scope of the damages is known. This is not generosity. It is procedure. A settlement that arrives before the toxicology report is finalized, before the 70 prior interventions are documented, before the national fraternity’s insurance tower is identified, and before a life-care planner or forensic economist has built the number is a settlement designed to cost the insurance company less than the case is worth. We will not let you sign it. Learn more about how contingency fees work so you understand exactly how your interests and ours are aligned.
Play 5: “He Assumed the Risk.” Some jurisdictions recognize assumption of risk as a defense, but Washington’s pure comparative negligence framework absorbs this concept into the fault allocation rather than barring recovery entirely. The defense may argue that joining a fraternity with a known party culture means accepting the risk of alcohol-related harm. The counter is that no 19-year-old assumes the risk of being coerced into lethal alcohol consumption by a system that the university and the national fraternity knew was dangerous and concealed from families.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is how a case like this is won, step by step, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table.
Week One: The Preservation Letter. The first thing we do is send a litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter to every potential defendant — the national fraternity, the local chapter, the university, and any individuals we can identify — demanding that they freeze all records, communications, and physical evidence related to the hazing and the 70 prior incidents. This letter is what stops the clock on evidence destruction. Once it is on file, any defendant who lets evidence die faces sanctions, adverse-inference instructions, and the jury being told to assume the worst.
Weeks One to Four: The Records Demand. We subpoena the university’s disciplinary records — the documentation of the 70 prior interventions. We request the toxicology and autopsy reports from the county. We demand the national fraternity’s training manuals, risk-management policies, chapter-inspection reports, and prior incident files for this specific chapter. We pull the police call-for-service history for the chapter house address, which is public record. Every document we receive is a piece of the notice puzzle.
Months One to Three: The Digital Evidence. We pursue the GroupMe threads, the Snapchat conversations, the text messages, and the social media posts from the night of the hazing. We identify every person who was present — members, pledges, guests — and begin the process of securing their accounts before anyone deletes anything. We work with forensic technology experts who can recover deleted communications and establish timelines that the fraternity’s members may have tried to erase.
Months Three to Six: Discovery and Depositions. In discovery, we force the defendants to produce internal communications about the 70 prior interventions — the emails between WSU administrators, the reports from the national fraternity’s chapter inspectors, the police incident reports. We depose the people who saw the prior reports and did nothing: the WSU administrator who received the disciplinary file, the national fraternity staff member who inspected the chapter, the local chapter president who was there. The question in every deposition is the same: you knew, and you did nothing — why?
Months Six to Twelve: The Experts. We retain a toxicologist to explain the mechanism of alcohol poisoning and the loss of autonomy at high BAC levels. We retain a forensic economist to project your son’s lost earning capacity. We retain a life-care planner if your son survived but was catastrophically injured — though in a wrongful death, the economist and the grief-and-consortium evidence carry the damages. We may retain a Greek-life safety expert to testify about industry standards for fraternity oversight and the foreseeability of hazing deaths when prior incidents are documented and ignored.
The Demand. Once the evidence is assembled, we issue a demand to the national fraternity’s insurance tower — framed by the 70 prior interventions, the foreseeability they establish, and the full measure of economic and non-economic damages. The demand is calibrated to the specific coverage layers, the venue, and the comparative-negligence risk. Lupe Peña knows how adjusters set reserves in the first 48 hours — he did it — and he knows what number moves a file from “defend” to “settle.” If the insurer refuses to engage honestly, we try the case. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is lead counsel in active $10 million hazing litigation right now. He does not settle cases because he is afraid of a courtroom.
The Medicine of Alcohol Poisoning: What Happened to Your Son’s Body
Acute alcohol poisoning is not a hangover that went too far. It is a central nervous system depressant effect that progresses through identifiable stages, each of which is medically documented and demonstrable to a jury.
When a person consumes hard liquor rapidly — as occurs in hazing rituals where the social pressure to keep drinking overrides the body’s natural satiety signals — the blood-alcohol concentration climbs faster than the liver can metabolize it. The liver of a 19-year-old male processes roughly one standard drink per hour. A “Big Brother” night that involves consuming multiple shots of hard liquor in a compressed timeframe can push the BAC to lethal levels before the person even feels drunk, because the alcohol is entering the bloodstream faster than the brain can register its effects.
At high BAC levels, the brain stem — which controls breathing, heart rate, and the gag reflex — is suppressed. The person stops breathing effectively. If they vomit, which the body does as a last-ditch effort to expel the toxin, the suppressed gag reflex means they can aspirate — inhale the vomit — and suffocate. The person may lose consciousness and appear to be sleeping. The people around them — the fraternity brothers who watched and did nothing — may interpret unconsciousness as sleep and leave the room. By the time someone recognizes the emergency, the brain has been deprived of oxygen long enough to cause irreversible damage or death.
The toxicologist’s testimony in this case is not about the defendant’s conduct. It is about your son’s body — what he felt, how long he was conscious, and at what point the damage became irreversible. That testimony supports the survival-action claim for conscious pain and suffering. It also destroys the defense argument that your son “chose” to keep drinking, because at the BAC levels involved, the cognitive function required to make that choice was chemically absent.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do, What Not to Do, What Not to Sign
If you are in the first hours or days after a hazing death or catastrophic injury, here is what matters most.
Do not sign anything. An insurance adjuster, a university representative, or a fraternity official may contact you with an offer, a release, or a request for a recorded statement. Do not sign it. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not accept a check. Anything you sign in the first 72 hours is designed to limit the defendants’ liability before you know what happened, before the toxicology report is complete, and before anyone has identified the 70 prior interventions. Every document you sign in grief is a document the defense will use to close the case cheaply.
Do not post on social media. Do not post about the death, the fraternity, the university, or what you believe happened. The defense will monitor your social media for anything that can be taken out of context — a photo of you smiling at a memorial, a comment about your son’s drinking history, a statement that can be twisted into an admission. Grief on social media is not evidence, but the defense will try to make it so.
Do not talk to the fraternity’s lawyer. The fraternity, the university, and their insurers have lawyers whose job is to protect the institutions, not your family. They may call you, visit your home, or approach you at a memorial service. They are not there to help you. They are there to gather information that limits their client’s exposure. Say nothing and call us.
Do preserve what you can. If you have your son’s phone, do not return it, wipe it, or let anyone else handle it. If you have access to his social media accounts, do not delete anything. If you have his fraternity correspondence — emails, pledge materials, event invitations — keep them. If you know who was present the night of the hazing, write down every name you can remember. Do not contact them yourself — that is our job — but preserve the information.
Do call us. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The evidence clock is already running — digital communications are being deleted, university records are aging toward retention deadlines, and the fraternity’s members are talking to each other about what to say and what to hide. Every day you wait is a day the defense uses to get its story straight before you have a lawyer to challenge it. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And if we take your case, you pay nothing unless we win.
Do ask about the personal representative. Before a wrongful death lawsuit can be filed in Washington, a court must appoint a personal representative of the estate — the one person authorized to bring the family’s case. We handle that appointment. It is a procedural step, but it is a prerequisite, and it should be initiated early.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act: What the New Federal Law Does and Does Not Do
The Stop Campus Hazing Act — passed unanimously by the United States Senate and headed to the President’s desk as of December 2024 — is a landmark in transparency. It requires all public and private colleges and universities in all 50 states to publish their hazing prevention policies on their websites, along with the campus organizations that have violated those policies. It mandates that schools include hazing incidents in their annual Clery Act crime reports. It establishes campus-wide, research-based hazing education and prevention programs. And it creates, for the first time, a consistent federal definition of hazing.
The law is a victory for families. It is not a remedy for yours. The Stop Campus Hazing Act changes the future — it forces institutions to disclose what they know so no other parent sends a child into a fraternity blind. But it does not create a private right of action. It does not allow you to sue. It does not compensate your family. The tool the law gives you for the past is still the lawsuit — the wrongful death claim against the institutions that knew and failed to act.
Washington’s own anti-hazing law — strengthened by the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Law — already defines hazing and establishes a statutory standard of care. That state law is the hook we use in court. The federal law is the context that shows a jury this is not an isolated failure but a national pattern that Congress itself has now recognized.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the national fraternity if the local chapter is the one that hazed my son?
Yes. The national fraternity organization can be held liable for its own negligent supervision — its failure to enforce its own safety policies, its failure to act on 70 prior interventions, and its failure to revoke or sanction a chapter it knew was dangerous. This is a direct negligence claim against the national, not a vicarious-liability claim that depends on the local chapter’s conduct being attributed to the national. The national had the knowledge, the authority, and the duty to act. Its failure to act is its own fault.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit for a hazing death in Washington?
Washington’s statute of limitations for wrongful death is three years from the date of the incident. That is a hard deadline — if the lawsuit is not filed within three years, the claim is barred forever, regardless of how strong the evidence is. Three years sounds like a long time, but it is not. The investigation, the records demands, the depositions, and the expert preparation take months. The preservation letter needs to go out within days, not months, because evidence is being destroyed on its own schedule. The three-year clock is the outer deadline; the real deadline is the day the evidence starts disappearing.
What if my son was drinking voluntarily? Does Washington law still allow a recovery?
Yes. Washington follows a pure comparative negligence rule, which means the victim’s estate can recover even if the victim was substantially at fault — the recovery is simply reduced by the victim’s percentage of fault. The defense will argue that your son chose to drink and will try to assign him a high percentage of fault. Our counter is that the coercion inherent in hazing, the loss of cognitive autonomy at high BAC levels, and the institutions’ 70 prior interventions made his death foreseeable and preventable. The percentage the defense argues is not the percentage a jury accepts — and every point of fault they try to pin on your son is a point we fight to move to the institution that knew and did nothing.
Can I sue Washington State University for a fraternity hazing death?
Yes, if the university knew or should have known about the danger and failed to act. WSU’s own authorities intervened at the Alpha Tau Omega chapter house nearly 70 times over six years. That is actual knowledge of a dangerous condition on the university’s campus. The university’s failure to warn students and families, to suspend the chapter, or to impose meaningful oversight is a negligence claim separate from the fraternity’s own conduct. Claims against a public university in Washington may be subject to specific notice requirements and damage limitations, which we evaluate early in the case.
What is the difference between a wrongful death claim and a survival action?
A wrongful death claim is brought by the surviving family for their losses — the loss of financial support, companionship, and the parent-child relationship. A survival action is brought by the estate for the decedent’s own losses — the conscious pain and suffering your son experienced between the ingestion of the alcohol and his death, plus any medical expenses. In a hazing death, both claims are typically filed together. The survival action captures what your son went through; the wrongful death claim captures what the family lost.
Does Washington allow punitive damages in a hazing death case?
Washington generally does not allow punitive damages unless specifically authorized by statute. We will tell you this honestly. What this means is that the non-economic damages — the grief, the loss of companionship, the destruction of the parent-child bond — are the primary value drivers, and they must be built to their full, honest maximum. In a case with 70 prior interventions and institutional concealment, the non-economic damages are substantial on their own. We do not need punitive damages to deliver a serious recovery; we need a jury that understands what 70 ignored warnings means.
How much does it cost to hire a wrongful death lawyer?
We work on contingency. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. If we recover compensation for your family, our fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We advance the costs of the case — the filing fees, the expert witness fees, the records costs — and those costs are reimbursed from the recovery. You pay nothing out of pocket. Learn more about how contingency fees work so there are no surprises.
What if I am not sure I want to file a lawsuit?
That is normal. You are grieving. A lawsuit is the last thing most families want to think about in the first days after a death. But the evidence clock does not wait for grief to subside. The preservation letter — the document that freezes the records, the communications, and the physical evidence before they disappear — can go out without you making a final decision about whether to file suit. We can protect the evidence now and you can decide whether to pursue the case later. What you cannot do is get the evidence back after it is gone. Call us, let us send the letter, and take the time you need to decide.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston — that is being litigated right now. He is not reading about hazing law in a textbook. He is living it. The firm has recovered over $50 million in aggregate across its practice — a marketing figure that includes more than $5 million in a brain-injury settlement, more than $3.8 million in an amputation settlement, more than $2.5 million in a truck-crash recovery, and more than $2 million in a maritime back-injury settlement. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We state that plainly because honesty is the only thing that holds up in a courtroom and at a kitchen table at 2 a.m.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney and a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their valuation software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows the playbook because he wrote plays in it. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical results, and how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts pain it cannot see. Now he uses that knowledge for injured families. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Hablamos Español.
We are a Houston-based firm that takes Washington cases, working with local counsel where required. We do not claim an office in Pullman or a Washington bar admission. What we claim is what we can prove: 27-plus years of trial experience, active hazing litigation, a former insurance-defense insider on our team, and a record of recovering millions for families whose lives were torn open by someone else’s negligence.
What the First Call Feels Like
You call 1-888-ATTY-911. A real person answers — not an answering service, not a bot, not a voicemail that says “press one for sales.” We have 24/7 live staff because the moment a family needs a lawyer is rarely during business hours. You tell us what happened. We listen. We ask questions — not to challenge you, but to understand what we are working with. We explain what happens next, what the evidence clock means, and what the preservation letter does. We tell you honestly whether we think you have a case, what we think it is worth, and what the obstacles are. If we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you that too — and we will point you to someone who is.
The call is free. The consultation is confidential. You pay nothing unless we win. And the evidence clock is already running — the GroupMe threads are one tap from deletion, the university’s disciplinary records are one administrative transition from “lost,” and the fraternity’s members are already talking to each other about what to say.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Legal Emergency Lawyers. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.