Wisconsin Campus Hazing Injury Lawyer — Stop Campus Hazing Act, Fraternity Lawsuits & Your Rights
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. in a hospital waiting room in Milwaukee, or at a kitchen table with a daughter who came home from semester break changed and terrified, or with a son who will not come home at all — you are in the right place, and you are not alone. What happened on that campus was not a rite of passage. It was not “boys being boys.” It was not something your child signed up for. Under a brand-new federal law and a Wisconsin criminal statute that has been on the books for years, what happened was hazing — and the people and institutions that allowed it are accountable in ways they were not before.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial attorneys who currently litigate a hazing wrongful-death case against a university and a national fraternity, and we built this page so that when a family in Wisconsin searches for help after campus hazing, they find the truth about what the law now does, what it has always done, and what we can do with it. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. That number is 1-888-ATTY-911, and a live human answers it 24 hours a day.
What the New Federal Stop Campus Hazing Act Actually Does
In late 2024, the Stop Campus Hazing Act was signed into federal law, amending the Clery Act — the same statute that requires universities to report campus crime statistics — to force colleges to treat hazing as what it is: a foreseeable, preventable danger they can no longer hide behind silence and internal discipline files.
The law does three things that matter directly to a family weighing a lawsuit:
First, it requires every college that participates in federal financial aid programs to include hazing incidents in its Annual Security Report. That means hazing incidents that were previously buried in student-conduct proceedings, handled quietly by Greek-life advisors, or never reported at all must now appear in a public document — one that parents, attorneys, and journalists can read.
Second, it establishes a federal definition of hazing that strips away the defense’s favorite escape hatch:
“any intentional, knowing, or reckless” act against a person that creates a reasonable risk of harm for initiation, regardless of that person’s consent
Three words in that definition do the work that changes every case: “regardless of consent.” For decades, fraternities and universities have defended hazing lawsuits by arguing the victim “agreed” to participate. Under this federal definition, that argument is legislatively dead. A person who is pressured, coerced, drunk, sleep-deprived, or desperate to belong cannot consent to being harmed — and even if they tried, the law says it does not matter.
Third, the law requires a campus hazing transparency report — a separate, publicly accessible document where students and families can see what hazing incidents have actually been documented at a specific school. This report is a litigation roadmap. It shows patterns. It shows notice. It shows whether the university was aware of a dangerous chapter before your child ever set foot on campus.
The compliance threat is real: non-compliance with the Clery Act, as amended by the Stop Campus Hazing Act, can jeopardize a university’s federal funding. That is not a slap on the wrist. It is the financial lifeblood of almost every institution of higher education in Wisconsin, from Marquette University to the entire UW System.
Marquette University, located in the heart of Milwaukee, has publicly stated it is in the “information gathering phase” of aligning its hazing policy with the new federal requirements. That phrasing matters. It means the policy is being drafted — which means the records of what was reported, how it was handled, and what was done about it are in flux right now. If your child’s incident happened at Marquette or any Wisconsin campus, the records that prove the university knew about a dangerous pattern may exist in a form they will not exist in once the policy update is complete.
Wisconsin’s Own Hazing Law: Statute 948.51
Wisconsin did not wait for the federal government to criminalize hazing. Wisconsin Statute § 948.51 has been on the books for years, and it carries teeth that most families — and most general-practice lawyers — do not know about.
Under § 948.51, hazing is a criminal offense in Wisconsin. When hazing results in great bodily harm, it rises to a Class H felony. That is not a municipal citation. That is a felony charge that can be brought against the individuals who participated in, directed, or authorized the hazing — and a felony conviction is powerful evidence in a civil lawsuit because it establishes, through the criminal process, exactly what happened.
Here is how the two laws work together in a Wisconsin hazing case:
The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act creates the reporting framework — it forces the university to document hazing, defines it without a consent defense, and makes the records public. Wisconsin’s § 948.51 creates the criminal framework — it makes the hazing itself a state crime, and a felony when the harm is serious. Your civil lawsuit — the case that pays for your child’s medical care, psychological treatment, lost years, and the life that was stolen — rides on top of both. The federal law gives us the records. The state law gives us the standard. The civil tort system gives us the money.
Wisconsin follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. That means your recovery is reduced by your percentage of fault — but it is only barred entirely if you are more than 50% at fault. In a hazing case, the defense will try to pin fault on the victim: “she chose to participate,” “he could have walked away.” The new federal definition — “regardless of consent” — and the power dynamic between members and pledges make that defense weaker than it has ever been. And under Wisconsin law, if the at-fault party violated a safety statute (like § 948.51), the victim’s own contributory negligence may be wiped out entirely.
The Consent Defense Is Dead — Here Is Why
The Hazing Prevention Network reports that 55 percent of students who participate in fraternities and sororities experience hazing in some form. But here is the number that should make every university general counsel and every insurance adjuster nervous: among those students, only one-tenth label what they experienced as hazing.
That means nine out of ten hazing victims do not even know they were hazed. They call it “tradition.” They call it “bonding.” They call it “what everyone goes through.” And when a defense lawyer asks them on the witness stand whether they “chose” to participate, they say yes — because they have internalized a narrative the organization fed them.
The Stop Campus Hazing Act’s definition was written to cut through that. “Regardless of consent” means the law recognizes what the psychology of hazing actually is: a power dynamic between people who are in the group and people who desperately want to be part of it. As the executive director of the Hazing Prevention Network described it: “It gets dangerous when those in the group start requiring activities or things of those wanting to be a part of the group.”
When a 19-year-old pledge is told to drink a bottle of liquor, or stand in freezing water, or endure a beating, or carry a brick until his kidneys shut down — the fact that he did not physically refuse does not mean he consented. The law now says so explicitly. And in a civil courtroom, that changes the entire landscape.
Who Can Be Held Liable When Hazing Happens on a Wisconsin Campus
A hazing case is almost never one defendant. It is a stack — and each layer has its own insurance, its own lawyers, and its own incentive to point at the others. Here is the map:
The University Board of Trustees. A university that recognizes, houses, and supervises student organizations owes a duty to protect students from foreseeable harm within those organizations. The theory is negligent supervision — the university knew or should have known that a fraternity or sorority on its campus was hazing pledges, and it failed to act. If the hazing occurred on university-owned or controlled property, premises liability adds a second theory. If the university’s own student handbook and enrollment agreement promise safety standards it did not maintain, breach of contract adds a third. Private institutions like Marquette University typically carry high-limit Educators Legal Liability and Commercial General Liability policies, often with self-insured retentions exceeding $1 million — meaning the university’s own money sits on the first layer of any claim before outside insurance responds.
The National Fraternity or Sorority Organization. The national office collects dues, sets bylaws, publishes risk-management policies, and claims to supervise its chapters. When a local chapter hazes, the national organization’s defense is always “the chapter went rogue.” But if the national office knew or should have known about a pattern of hazing at that chapter — from prior incidents, from member surveys, from insurance claims — and failed to revoke the charter or enforce its own rules, it faces vicarious liability and direct negligence for failing to enforce its own anti-hazing bylaws. National Greek organizations are usually insured through specialized risk management pools that provide multi-million-dollar layers of coverage.
The Local Chapter and Its Officers. The chapter president, pledge educator, risk manager, and other officers who designed, authorized, or carried out the hazing are direct defendants. They participated. They directed. They are the ones whose group chats, text messages, and social media posts show the planning and the mindset. In Wisconsin, they may also face criminal prosecution under § 948.51.
The Individual Perpetrators. Every person who laid a hand on your child, who poured alcohol down a pledge’s throat, who stood by and filmed on a phone instead of calling 911 — each is individually liable for battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violation of Wisconsin’s hazing statute.
The Evidence That Proves a Hazing Case — And How Fast It Disappears
Hazing cases live and die on evidence that is uniquely fragile. The proof is held by students who are scared, by organizations that are motivated to destroy it, and by universities that may be in the middle of updating the very policies that govern its retention. Here is the evidence clock, and it is unforgiving:
Social media and group chats. The single most valuable evidence in a modern hazing case is the digital record — the GroupMe thread where the brothers planned the pledge event, the Snapchat where someone filmed the hazing, the Instagram post that shows your child’s physical state before and after. Students delete this evidence instinctively after an incident goes wrong. They delete messages, they close accounts, they “lose” their phones. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the case, and the preservation letter that freezes it has to go out the day you call us — not the week, not the month. The day.
University incident reports. The university’s own conduct-board records, public-safety reports, and Greek-life advisor notes prove notice — they show the university knew about prior hazing at this chapter before your child was hurt. But the article itself tells us Marquette is “in the information gathering phase” of updating its hazing policy. That means records are being reviewed, reorganized, and potentially reclassified right now. Records that existed under an old policy framework may not survive the transition to the new one. They have to be demanded in writing before the update is complete.
National fraternity audit logs. The national organization’s internal records — chapter inspection reports, risk-management audits, member-conduct filings, insurance-claim histories — show whether the national office knew this chapter was dangerous. These require a subpoena to obtain, but they are the documents that pierce the “rogue chapter” defense. They survive on the national office’s own retention schedule, which means they exist — but only if we demand them before the schedule permits destruction.
Hospital toxicology and medical records. If your child was taken to a hospital — Froedtert, Aurora Sinai, Children’s Wisconsin, or any emergency department in Milwaukee or elsewhere — the blood-alcohol level, the toxicology panel, the imaging, the trauma notes are the objective proof of physical harm. These records show the degree of forced consumption, the severity of injury, and the medical timeline that ties the hazing to the harm. They are critical for damages, and they must be pulled before hospital retention schedules permit destruction.
The pattern across all of this is simple: the evidence that helps the plaintiff is the evidence the defense is motivated to lose. The law of spoliation — the rules that punish a party for destroying evidence after being put on notice to preserve it — is the tool that makes preservation letters effective. When we send a preservation demand and the defendant lets the evidence die anyway, a judge can instruct the jury to assume the missing evidence was as bad for the defense as the plaintiff says it was. That leverage begins the moment the letter is on file.
What Hazing Injuries Look Like — and What They Cost for a Lifetime
Hazing injuries are not one thing. They are a spectrum, and the defense will try to minimize every point on it. Here is what actually happens to a human body during the hazing events that universities and fraternities call “tradition”:
Acute alcohol poisoning. Forced consumption of large quantities of liquor — “line drills,” “power hours,” “family drinks” — can produce blood-alcohol concentrations that suppress the gag reflex, cause aspiration, and kill. A survivor may have been minutes from death when someone finally called 911. The medical record shows the blood-alcohol level; the toxicology panel shows what else was in the system. The cost: ICU admission, intubation, the risk of permanent brain damage from hypoxia, and the lifelong psychological aftermath of having nearly died for a social club.
Traumatic brain injury. Beatings, falls from balconies during forced drinking, “tackle football” against pledges, and blunt-force “paddle games” produce head trauma that can range from concussion to severe TBI. A “mild” TBI can come with a perfectly normal CT scan — the damage is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers that standard imaging was never designed to see. Roughly one in seven people with a concussion never fully recovers. The headaches, the memory gaps, the personality changes — these can be permanent. Brain injury cases require neuropsychological testing, advanced imaging, and the testimony of people who knew the person before.
Rhabdomyolysis and kidney failure. Extreme physical exertion — “pledge workouts,” forced calisthenics, carrying heavy objects for miles — destroys muscle cells and floods the bloodstream with a protein called myoglobin that clogs and scars the kidneys. The diagnostic marker is creatine kinase, a blood enzyme that keeps climbing for up to three days after the injury. A single early “normal” blood draw does not rule it out. The cost: dialysis, potential chronic kidney disease, and a lifetime of renal monitoring.
Hypothermia. Outdoor exposure rituals — “pledge walks,” immersion in cold water, standing shirtless in Wisconsin winter — can produce core-temperature drops that cause cardiac arrhythmia and death. Wisconsin’s climate makes this a specific, foreseeable danger that no university in this state can claim it did not anticipate.
Sexual assault. Hazing rituals that involve sexualized humiliation, forced nudity, or “games” that cross into sexual contact are not just hazing — they are sexual assault. The psychological injury (PTSD, major depression, complex trauma) is the primary compensable harm, and it is real, diagnosable, and provable with clinical instruments.
Post-traumatic stress disorder. The DSM-5 defines PTSD with eight specific criteria, and a hazing survivor has to meet every one of them: the traumatic event, the intrusive memories, the avoidance of reminders, the negative changes in mood and cognition, the hyperarousal, the duration beyond one month, the functional impairment, and the exclusion of other causes. Rape is the single most PTSD-generating event researchers have measured — more likely to cause lasting psychological injury than combat, car crashes, or natural disasters. The defense will call it “subjective.” The science says otherwise.
Death. When hazing kills — and it has killed, on campuses across this country, in numbers that shatter any claim that this is rare — the case becomes a wrongful death action. In Wisconsin, wrongful death damages include a statutory cap for loss of society and companionship: $350,000 for an adult, $500,000 for a minor. But that cap does not touch the economic damages — the lost lifetime earnings, the medical bills, the funeral costs — and Wisconsin law allows punitive damages where the defendant acted with “malice or intentional disregard” under § 895.043. Hazing cases, by their nature, involve intentional and reckless conduct. Punitive damages are not a theoretical add-on. They are the core of what makes these cases valuable.
The Insurance Tower: Where the Money Actually Sits
When a family asks what a case is worth, the first question is not what the harm deserves — it is what the insurance tower will actually pay. Here is the architecture:
A university like Marquette — a private institution — typically carries high-limit Educators Legal Liability coverage and Commercial General Liability policies, often with self-insured retentions exceeding $1 million. That means the university pays the first million out of its own pocket before any carrier writes a check. Above the SIR, layered excess and umbrella policies stack into the tens of millions.
National fraternities and sororities are insured through specialized risk-management pools that are built for exactly this kind of claim. These are not standard auto policies with $25,000 limits. They are multi-million-dollar programs designed by entities that know hazing lawsuits are their primary exposure. The coverage is real, but the carriers fight hard, and the policies often contain assault-and-battery exclusions that the defense will try to invoke — which is why the theory of the case (negligent supervision vs. intentional tort) matters to coverage, not just to liability.
Individual perpetrators may have nothing — or they may have coverage under their parents’ homeowners policies, which sometimes extend to the acts of household members away from home. Finding every policy, in the right order, at the right layer, is half the value of the case.
Wisconsin’s punitive damages statute (§ 895.043) requires a showing that the defendant acted with “malice or intentional disregard.” When that standard is met — and hazing is the textbook factual pattern for it — punitive damages are in play. But insurance often does not cover punitive damages (the public policy of many states prohibits insuring against intentional wrongdoing). That means punitive exposure can come from the defendant’s own assets, which is precisely why a properly structured demand that highlights reckless and intentional conduct can create settlement pressure that a pure-negligence theory never could.
What Your Case Is Worth
Every case is different, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the framework for valuing a Wisconsin hazing case rests on the injury severity, the defendant’s conduct, and the coverage available.
At the lower end — cases involving psychological trauma, mild physical harm, and no permanent injury — values can begin around $250,000 when the defendant’s conduct was clearly reckless and the institution had notice.
At the higher end — catastrophic injuries or wrongful death resulting from systemic, known hazing rituals against institutional defendants with deep coverage — cases frequently reach seven or eight figures through settlement or verdict. The combination of a felony-level criminal statute, a new federal reporting law that creates a documentary roadmap, Wisconsin’s punitive damages statute, and a university’s self-insured retention creates pressure points that can push a case well past what a standard negligence claim would command.
The economic damages — past and future medical care, psychological counseling, lost earning capacity, the life-care plan for a catastrophically injured survivor — are uncapped. The non-economic damages — pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, the severe emotional distress inherent in power-dynamic abuse — are limited only by Wisconsin’s wrongful-death caps in death cases, and by the jury’s conscience in survival cases. Punitive damages, where the facts support them, are limited only by constitutional due-process ratios.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — Named, With Counters
If your child was hurt in a hazing incident, the insurance machinery is already moving. Here are the plays you will see — and the counters:
Play 1: The “just checking in” call. Within days, someone friendly will call you — maybe a university risk-management representative, maybe a claims adjuster for the fraternity’s insurance pool — and ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is built to be quoted against you in court. The counter: do not give a recorded statement without counsel. Say nothing except that you are consulting an attorney. Every word you say before you have representation is a word the defense will try to use.
Play 2: The fast check with a release. A check may arrive quickly — sometimes before the medical results are in, sometimes before the full scope of psychological injury is diagnosed — with a release attached. The release, once signed, ends your case forever. The counter: never sign a release from an insurance company without an attorney reading it. The adjuster’s job is to close this claim for the smallest amount possible, not to make sure your child is taken care of for life.
Play 3: The “he consented” defense. The fraternity’s lawyer will argue your child chose to participate, knew the risks, and assumed them. The counter: the federal Stop Campus Hazing Act explicitly defines hazing as acts creating risk of harm “regardless of that person’s consent.” Wisconsin’s own hazing statute criminalizes the conduct. The consent defense is now legislatively and statutorily invalid, and a jury that hears the power dynamic — pledges desperate to belong, members holding all the power — will not buy it.
Play 4: The “rogue chapter” defense. The national fraternity will say the local chapter acted outside its rules and without authorization. The counter: the national organization’s own audit logs, risk-management filings, and prior-incident records — which we obtain through subpoena — show whether the national office knew this chapter was dangerous and failed to act. If the national office collected dues from a chapter it knew was hazing, “rogue” is not a defense. It is an admission of willful blindness.
Play 5: Blaming the victim. The defense may argue your child was “fine” at the scene, walked out on their own, or did not report the hazing immediately. The counter: tonic immobility — the involuntary freeze response that paralyzes a person during a traumatic event — is a recognized medical phenomenon, not a sign of consent. Delayed disclosure is the norm for hazing survivors, not the exception. And a “clean” CT scan in a brain injury is the standard medical presentation, not proof that nothing is wrong. The medicine is on your side, but only if it is properly documented and properly presented.
How We Build a Hazing Case From the First Call
Here is what happens when you call 1-888-ATTY-911:
The preservation letter goes out immediately. The same week we are retained — sometimes the same day — we send written demands to the university, the national fraternity, the local chapter, and every individual we can identify, ordering them to preserve all evidence: social media, group chats, incident reports, surveillance video, medical records, fraternity communications, university conduct-board files, and the new hazing transparency reports the Stop Campus Hazing Act now requires. That letter converts routine data-deletion into sanctionable spoliation. If they let the evidence die after that letter, the jury can be told to assume the worst.
We pull the public record. The university’s Clery Act Annual Security Report, its new hazing transparency report (once published), its student-conduct policies, its fraternity-recognition agreements, and its public safety log are all documents we obtain and analyze. If the university has reported hazing incidents under the new federal law, those reports are a roadmap to the pattern — and to notice.
We build the medicine. We work with your child’s treating physicians to document every injury — physical and psychological. We arrange neuropsychological testing for cognitive deficits. We engage trauma specialists who can diagnose PTSD using validated clinical instruments. We build a life-care plan that prices out, year by year, what your child will need for the rest of their life — every surgery, every therapy session, every medication, every year of lost earning capacity.
We identify every defendant and every policy. We trace the corporate structure — the local chapter LLC, the national fraternity’s insurance pool, the university’s ELL and CGL towers, the individual perpetrators’ homeowners policies. We identify the self-insured retention that puts the university’s own money on the line. We map the coverage from bottom to top so no policy is missed and no layer goes unexhausted.
We take the depositions that matter. The chapter president under oath. The pledge educator under oath. The university’s Greek-life advisor under oath. The national organization’s risk-management director under oath. The questions are designed to establish what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did — or did not do — about it. The deposition transcript is where the “rogue chapter” defense dies and the institutional knowledge is locked in.
The First 72 Hours After a Hazing Incident
If your child was hospitalized, the first priority is medical. But the legal clock starts the same hour:
Hour 1-24: Medical first. Get your child to the right hospital. In Milwaukee, that means Froedtert for adult trauma, Children’s Wisconsin for pediatric cases. Make sure the medical record accurately describes what happened — not what the fraternity told the ER to write, but what your child actually experienced. If your child has a head injury, demand a CT and ask about MRI. If there is alcohol involvement, make sure a toxicology panel is drawn. If there is psychological trauma, get a mental-health evaluation initiated immediately.
Hours 24-48: Preserve the evidence. Do not let your child delete anything. Screenshot every group chat, every Snapchat, every Instagram story, every text thread. Photograph every physical injury — bruises, scratches, swelling, the state of their body when they came home. Save every piece of clothing. Preserve the phone itself — do not reset it, do not trade it in, do not let the carrier “upgrade” it. The phone is the single most important piece of physical evidence in the case.
Hours 48-72: Call us. The preservation letter has to go out before the evidence disappears. The longer you wait, the more the fraternity’s members coordinate their stories, delete their messages, and close their accounts. The university is already updating its policies, which means records are in motion. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
What not to do: Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster. Do not sign anything from the university, the fraternity, or any insurance company. Do not post about the incident on social media — and tell your child not to, either. Do not confront the fraternity yourself. Do not assume the university’s conduct-board process is the same as justice — it is not. It is an internal disciplinary proceeding that protects the university, not your child.
Wisconsin’s Statute of Limitations: How Long You Have
Wisconsin gives you three years to file a personal injury lawsuit under its statute of limitations, codified at Wis. Stat. § 893.54. For wrongful death, the same three-year window applies from the date of death.
Three years sounds like a long time. It is not. Hazing injuries — especially psychological ones — can take months or years to fully declare themselves. A PTSD diagnosis may not come until a semester later, when your child cannot return to school. A traumatic brain injury may not be diagnosed until the neuropsychological testing is finally done. The discovery rule — the legal principle that the clock may start when you discover (or should have discovered) the injury and its cause — can extend the deadline in some cases, but you should never rely on it without consulting an attorney.
The harder deadline is the evidence clock. The social media disappears in days. The group chats vanish in hours. The university updates its policies and the old records may not survive. Three years to file a lawsuit is not the same as three years to preserve the proof. The proof is dying now.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a Wisconsin university for hazing?
Yes. A university that recognizes, houses, and supervises a student organization owes a duty to protect students from foreseeable harm within that organization. If the university knew or should have known about hazing at a fraternity or sorority on its campus — through prior incidents, conduct-board records, student complaints, or the new hazing transparency reports required by the Stop Campus Hazing Act — and failed to act, it can be held liable for negligent supervision. If the hazing occurred on university property, premises liability adds a second claim. If the university’s enrollment agreement or student handbook promised safety standards it did not maintain, breach of contract adds a third.
Does the Stop Campus Hazing Act apply to Marquette University and other Wisconsin schools?
Yes. The Stop Campus Hazing Act amends the Clery Act, which applies to every institution of higher education that participates in federal financial aid programs. That includes Marquette University, every campus in the UW System, and every private college in Wisconsin that accepts federal student aid — which is essentially all of them. Non-compliance threatens federal funding, which is the financial lifeblood of these institutions. Marquette has publicly stated it is in the process of aligning its policies with the new requirements.
What is Wisconsin’s hazing law?
Wisconsin Statute § 948.51 makes hazing a criminal offense. When hazing results in great bodily harm, it is a Class H felony. This is not a campus conduct violation — it is a state crime, and a conviction or even a charging document is powerful evidence in a civil lawsuit. The statute works alongside the federal Stop Campus Hazing Act: the federal law creates the reporting framework, the state law creates the criminal framework, and your civil lawsuit recovers the money.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Wisconsin?
Wisconsin’s statute of limitations for personal injury is three years under Wis. Stat. § 893.54. For wrongful death, the same three-year window applies from the date of death. But the evidence disappears far faster than the deadline. Social media and group chats can be deleted in hours. University records may not survive a policy update. The three-year filing deadline is not the same as a three-year evidence window — the proof is dying now, and a preservation letter has to go out immediately.
Can a fraternity be sued for hazing injuries?
Yes — and a strong hazing case names multiple layers of defendants. The local chapter and its officers are directly liable for designing and carrying out the hazing. The national fraternity or sorority organization is liable if it knew or should have known about a pattern of hazing at that chapter and failed to enforce its own anti-hazing bylaws. National Greek organizations carry multi-million-dollar insurance through specialized risk-management pools, and the coverage is real — but the carriers fight hard, and the policies often contain exclusions that must be navigated by a lawyer who understands the structure.
What if my child “consented” to the hazing?
The consent defense is dead. The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act defines hazing as acts creating risk of harm “regardless of that person’s consent.” Wisconsin’s criminal hazing statute does not recognize consent as a defense. And the psychology is clear: a pledge desperate to belong, subjected to a power dynamic controlled by members who hold the keys to admission, cannot meaningfully consent to being harmed. The defense will try to frame participation as consent. The law now says it is not.
What kind of compensation can I recover for hazing injuries?
Economic damages include all past and future medical expenses — hospitalization, surgery, psychological counseling, medication, and ongoing treatment for permanent injuries. They include lost wages and lost earning capacity — the income your child will never earn because of what was done to them. They include the cost of a life-care plan for catastrophically injured survivors. Non-economic damages include pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and the severe emotional distress inherent in hazing abuse. In Wisconsin, wrongful death damages include loss of society and companionship (capped at $350,000 for adults, $500,000 for minors) plus the full economic loss. Punitive damages are available where the defendant acted with malice or intentional disregard — and hazing, by its nature, involves intentional and reckless conduct.
Can I sue if my child died from hazing?
Yes. Wisconsin’s wrongful death statute allows certain family members to bring a claim for the death of a loved one. The claim includes the economic loss — the financial support your child would have provided, the funeral costs, the medical bills from the final injury — and loss of society and companionship. A personal representative is appointed by the court to bring the case on behalf of the family. We handle that appointment as part of the representation. If your child died from hazing, the criminal statute (§ 948.51) and the new federal reporting requirements make the civil case stronger than it has ever been. Our wrongful death practice handles these cases with the gravity they deserve.
Does the university’s insurance cover hazing injuries?
It depends on the policy structure, and this is one of the most contested issues in a hazing case. Universities typically carry Educators Legal Liability and Commercial General Liability coverage, often with self-insured retentions exceeding $1 million. National Greek organizations carry specialized risk-management pool coverage. But policies may contain assault-and-battery exclusions, intentional-act exclusions, and other limitations that the defense will try to invoke. Whether coverage exists for your specific facts is a question that requires a lawyer who understands insurance towers and coverage litigation — not a question to leave to the adjuster’s first answer.
What should I do if my child was hazed on a Wisconsin campus?
Get medical attention first. Then preserve every piece of evidence — screenshots, photos, the phone itself, medical records, the names of witnesses. Do not give a recorded statement to any insurance adjuster. Do not sign anything. Then call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We will tell you honestly whether you have a case, what it is worth, and what the next steps are. If we are not the right fit for your situation, we will tell you that too.
Why Attorney911
Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is 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 — and how to tell it to a jury. He is lead counsel in an active $10M+ hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity — a case that involves the same institutional defendants, the same culture of silence, and the same pattern of neglect that Wisconsin families face. He knows this space because he is in it right now. Learn more about Ralph.
Lupe Peña is a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the valuation software discounts pain it cannot see, and how the quick check with the release attached arrives before the medical results do. He now uses that insider knowledge for injured clients. He conducts full consultations in Spanish — sin intérprete, sin barreras. Learn more about Lupe.
Our firm is Texas-based. We take Wisconsin cases working with local counsel and through pro hac vice admission where required — and we have done exactly that in the hazing cases we are litigating. We do not claim a Wisconsin office or a Wisconsin bar number. What we claim is the medicine, the corporate-accountability fight, the catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death work that does not change because the campus is in Milwaukee instead of Houston. The live case in front of you is the bridge. Our hazing practice page tells you what we do in this space.
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 call is free. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911, and a live person answers it 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service, a human being.
Habla Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish. Su familia recibe la misma profundidad, la misma preparación, y la misma voz de protección — en el idioma que usted ora.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. What we guarantee is that if you call us tonight, someone will answer, someone will listen, and someone who has been in this fight before will tell you the truth about where you stand and what comes next.
The evidence is dying. The university is updating its policies. The fraternity’s members are deleting their messages. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you. 1-888-ATTY-911. We are here.
