Stone Foltz BGSU Hazing Case — Bench Warrant, Fraternity Liability & Ohio Hazing Law
If you are reading this page, you already know what hazing does. You may be the parent of a son or daughter who came home from a fraternity event changed — or who never came home at all. You may be following the Stone Foltz case and just learned that a defendant failed to appear in court, and you are asking the question every family in your position eventually asks: is anyone actually going to be held accountable? We are going to answer that honestly — not with reassurance, but with the law, the evidence, and the specific tools a wrongful death case gives a family to force accountability even when the criminal system stumbles.
A bench warrant for a defendant who fails to appear is not a sign that the system has collapsed. It is a sign that accountability in hazing cases is complicated, fragile, and dependent on multiple legal tracks running at the same time. The criminal prosecution is one track. The civil wrongful death lawsuit is a second, separate track — and it does not depend on any individual defendant showing up to a courtroom. That is the track we build. Our firm handles fraternity and sorority hazing lawsuits and catastrophic wrongful death cases, and we are currently lead counsel in an active hazing wrongful death lawsuit — experience that transfers directly to what happened at Bowling Green State University. We are Ralph Manginello, 27 years in courtrooms, and Lupe Peña, a former insurance-defense attorney who now sits on the family’s side of the table. The call is free. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day.
What Happened to Stone Foltz — The Hazing Death at Bowling Green State University
Stone Foltz was a 20-year-old sophomore at Bowling Green State University, a public university of roughly 18,000 students in Bowling Green, Ohio — the county seat of Wood County, about 20 miles south of Toledo along the I-75 corridor. He was a pledge of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. During a fraternity hazing event, he was subjected to dangerous levels of alcohol consumption — the kind of forced or coerced rapid intake that has killed pledges at campuses across this country for decades. He died.
The Wood County Coroner’s toxicology report and autopsy findings established the blood alcohol concentration, the cause and manner of death, and the toxicological timeline of the fatal intoxication. That evidence is preserved in official county records — it is stable, it is not going anywhere, and it is the medical spine of both the criminal prosecution and the civil wrongful death case.
Multiple fraternity members faced criminal prosecution in connection with the hazing death. The case drew national attention to fraternity hazing practices and helped drive legislative reform in Ohio — Collin’s Law, enacted in 2021, which we will explain in detail below. The Foltz family has been prominent in national anti-hazing advocacy since the loss of their son. Civil wrongful death litigation by the family against the fraternity and individual members runs parallel to the criminal prosecution. And now, a bench warrant has been issued for a defendant who failed to appear for a scheduled court proceeding.
That bench warrant is the news hook that brought you to this page. But it is the underlying case — the death of a young man, the institutional failures that allowed it, and the legal tools a family has to hold the responsible parties accountable — that we are going to empty completely.
Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Legal Framework: Collin’s Law and the Wrongful Death Statute
Ohio’s anti-hazing statutes impose both criminal liability and civil remedies for hazing activities that cause injury or death. The legal framework that governs a hazing wrongful death case in Ohio is built from several separate statutes and doctrines, each addressing a different piece of the harm. Understanding how they fit together is the first step in understanding what your family’s case can actually do.
Collin’s Law (2021). Ohio enacted Collin’s Law in 2021, strengthening criminal penalties for hazing and imposing mandatory reporting requirements on universities. The law was partly a response to the Stone Foltz case and other Ohio hazing deaths. Before Collin’s Law, certain hazing offenses were misdemeanors. The law elevated certain hazing offenses to felony-level conduct and required universities to report hazing incidents — a recognition by the Ohio legislature that hazing is not a prank gone wrong but a serious crime that institutions have a duty to detect and stop.
Collin’s Law, enacted in 2021, elevated certain hazing offenses from misdemeanor to felony and imposed mandatory university reporting obligations following multiple Ohio hazing deaths.
Ohio’s wrongful death statute. Ohio’s wrongful death statute provides a cause of action for the benefit of surviving family members — the parents, spouse, and children of the person killed. The limitation period is typically two years from the date of death. This is the statutory clock that kills the case if you wait too long. Two years sounds like a long time when you are grieving, but it is not. The evidence in a hazing case — the fraternity’s internal records, the witness statements, the toxicological timeline — has to be preserved, demanded, and locked down long before that two-year window closes, because much of it dies on its own schedule, not the statute’s.
Modified comparative negligence. Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence system with a 51% threshold. This means your recovery is barred only if the plaintiff’s fault equals or exceeds 51%. In a hazing case, the defense will argue the pledge voluntarily consumed the alcohol — and therefore bears some share of fault. This is the defense’s favorite argument, and we will explain in a later section exactly why it fails in the coercive context of hazing. But the legal rule is this: your own share of fault reduces your recovery, and only eliminates it if it reaches 51%. The coercive dynamics of hazing make it extraordinarily difficult for a fraternity to push a deceased pledge’s fault above that line.
Social host liability and furnishing alcohol to a minor. Ohio’s liquor control laws independently criminalize furnishing alcohol to persons under 21. This creates a parallel statutory duty — separate from the anti-hazing statutes — that can support a negligence per se theory in civil wrongful death litigation against the individuals who provided the alcohol and the organization that facilitated its consumption. Stone Foltz was 20 years old — underage. Every person who handed him a bottle, every person who poured, every person who organized the event where alcohol was furnished to a minor violated Ohio law. That violation is not just a criminal matter. In a civil case, it is evidence of negligence per se — the breach of a statutory duty designed to protect exactly the person who was killed.
Federal requirements. At the federal level, the Clery Act and the Campus SaVE Act require institutions of higher education to disclose campus crime statistics including hazing incidents and maintain policies addressing hazing. Enforcement of these provisions is primarily administrative — they do not create a private cause of action — but they establish a federal standard of care that universities are expected to meet, and failure to comply can be evidence of institutional negligence in a civil case.
The Bench Warrant: What a Defendant’s Failure to Appear Means for the Case
A bench warrant is issued by a judge when a defendant who has been released pending court proceedings fails to appear as required. The warrant authorizes law enforcement to arrest the individual and bring them before the court. It is a serious development — but it is a criminal procedural event, not a civil one.
Here is what the bench warrant means for the parallel civil wrongful death case: it underscores the fragility of criminal accountability and the importance of maintaining independent civil pressure. A defendant who fails to appear in a criminal case may be fleeing, may be in contempt, or may simply be irresponsible — but in every scenario, that defendant’s absence does not stop the civil clock. The civil wrongful death lawsuit against the fraternity, its local chapter, and its national organization does not depend on any individual member appearing in a criminal courtroom. The civil case is a separate engine of accountability, with its own burden of proof, its own evidence, and its own timeline.
The non-appearing defendant’s absence also underscores a broader problem in hazing litigation: witnesses graduate, disperse, and sometimes flee. Memories degrade with each passing semester. Group chats are deleted. Members replace their phones. The bench warrant is a reminder that the evidence in these cases is perishable — measured in semesters, not years — and that preserving it is the first job of any lawyer who takes a hazing wrongful death case. If the family had not already sent preservation letters and initiated civil discovery, the bench warrant would be the moment to recognize that the criminal track alone is not enough.
The criminal case and the civil case serve complementary functions. The criminal prosecution provides individual accountability for the actors who caused the death. The civil wrongful death lawsuit exposes the institutional failures that allowed this hazing culture to persist unchecked — and it reaches the deep pockets: the national fraternity organization and its insurers. Criminal convictions or guilty pleas of fraternity members, where they occur, provide powerful civil liability leverage and should be used to the fullest extent permitted by Ohio evidentiary rules. But the civil case does not wait for the criminal case to resolve. It moves on its own timeline, driven by the two-year wrongful death statute of limitations and the evidence-preservation clock that runs far faster.
Who Can Be Held Liable: The Fraternity Defendant Structure
One of the most important things to understand about a fraternity hazing wrongful death case is that the defendant is not one entity. It is a stack — a deliberately layered structure that, when you peel it apart, reveals multiple parties with different duties, different levels of control, and different insurance realities. Naming only the obvious defendant — the local chapter — leaves money on the table and lets the institution that created the culture walk away.
Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity (the national organization). This is the deep-pocket defendant. The national fraternity sets the policies, collects dues, charters the local chapter, and maintains institutional knowledge of hazing practices across its chapters nationwide. The national organization owes a duty to supervise its local chapters and enforce its own anti-hazing policies. When hazing persists at a chapter — and the national organization failed to investigate, discipline, or revoke the charter — that failure is the breach of duty that transforms a tragedy into a case for institutional recklessness. The national fraternity carries insurance and has institutional assets. This is where the real recovery lives.
Pi Kappa Alpha BGSU chapter (the local entity). The local chapter directly sponsored and executed the hazing event that caused the death. The chapter-level failure to comply with the fraternity’s own anti-hazing rules, the university’s anti-hazing rules, and Ohio law is the direct breach. The local chapter is the primary actor — but it may have limited assets compared to the national organization.
Individual fraternity members. The members who organized, participated in, or failed to stop the hazing are individually liable for their conduct. Furnishing alcohol to a minor, failing to summon medical assistance, and participating in a hazing event that caused death are all civilly actionable. However, individual student defendants are frequently judgment-proof — they are college students with no assets and minimal or no insurance. Their value in the case is primarily as witnesses and as evidence of the conduct that establishes recklessness for the institutional defendants. Criminal convictions or guilty pleas of individual members provide powerful civil liability leverage.
Fraternity house corporation / owning entity. The entity that owns or controls the fraternity house where the hazing occurred owes a premises-liability duty to invitees to maintain the premises free from known dangerous activities. Allowing hazing — an unlawful and inherently dangerous activity — on the premises is a breach of that duty. The house corporation may have its own insurance, separate from the fraternity’s national liability program.
Bowling Green State University (potential defendant). BGSU is a public university, which means sovereign immunity considerations apply. Ohio’s governmental immunity statutes may limit or bar direct claims against the university. The university’s potential liability would be based on negligent oversight of Greek life organizations — failure to investigate prior hazing complaints, failure to enforce its own anti-hazing policies. But sovereign immunity is a significant barrier, and any claims against the university require careful analysis of Ohio’s governmental immunity statutes and their exceptions. The university’s records — student conduct files, Greek life oversight records, prior complaints — are still discoverable and may be critical evidence against the fraternity defendants, even if the university itself is not a defendant.
The defense strategy in every fraternity hazing case is the same shell game: the national says “the local chapter did this, not us.” The local chapter says “a few rogue members did this, not the organization.” The individual members say “he participated voluntarily.” Each defendant points at the others. The job of the plaintiff’s lawyer is to break through that shell game by proving the national organization’s institutional knowledge of hazing culture, its failure to supervise, and the direct causal link between its policies (or the absence of them) and the death of a 20-year-old pledge.
Why Hazing Is Not Voluntary: The Coercive Dynamics That Defeat Comparative Fault
The defense in a hazing wrongful death case will almost always argue that the pledge voluntarily consumed the alcohol. It is the only card they have, and they play it hard. But it is a weak card, and here is why.
Hazing is inherently coercive. The power imbalance between active fraternity members and pledges is total. A pledge is a person seeking admission to a group that controls their social identity, their housing, their friendships, and often their sense of belonging at a university where they may know few people. The active members hold all the power. The pledge holds none. When an active member hands a pledge a bottle and tells him to drink, the pledge is not making a free choice. He is operating under duress — the implicit threat of rejection, humiliation, ostracism, or worse treatment if he refuses.
Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence system with a 51% threshold, meaning recovery is barred only if the plaintiff’s fault equals or exceeds 51% — though the coercive dynamics of hazing significantly complicate any comparative-fault defense against a deceased pledge.
The law recognizes coercion as a defense to apparent consent. A person who acts under duress is not acting voluntarily. In the hazing context, the entire structure of the pledging process is designed to create compliance — to make the pledge do things he would not otherwise do, precisely because the cost of refusal is social destruction. That is not voluntary conduct. It is coerced conduct, and the law treats coercion as eliminating the voluntariness that comparative fault requires.
A fraternity culture and hazing expert can establish the coercive dynamics that undermine comparative-fault defenses. This expert testimony is not filler — it is the mechanism by which the court and jury understand that the “he chose to drink” argument is a lie told by the people who built the system that left him no real choice. In voir dire, we explore jurors’ attitudes about Greek life, personal responsibility, and campus safety — particularly parents of college-age children who understand intuitively that a 20-year-old pledge surrounded by older members demanding he drink is not making a free decision.
The comparative-fault defense in a hazing case is not just weak — it is morally and legally bankrupt. And our job is to make sure the jury sees it that way.
The Medicine of Acute Alcohol Intoxication: How Hazing Kills
Understanding the mechanism of death in a hazing-by-alcohol case is not just medical detail. It is the foundation of the survival action — the claim for the pre-death conscious pain and suffering that Stone Foltz experienced before he died. And it is the answer to anyone who suggests that a hazing death is an accident rather than a predictable, preventable consequence of forced overconsumption.
The mechanism. Acute ethanol intoxication kills through central nervous system depression. Alcohol is a depressant — it suppresses brain function in a dose-dependent progression. At low blood alcohol concentrations, the effects are euphoria and reduced inhibition. As the concentration rises, the depression deepens: confusion, loss of coordination, stupor, coma. At dangerous levels, the depression reaches the brainstem — the part of the brain that controls breathing and heart rate. Respiratory depression means breathing slows or stops. The loss of the gag reflex means that if the person vomits — and they will, because nausea and vomiting are the body’s desperate attempt to expel the poison — they can aspirate, inhaling vomit into the lungs. Hypothermia sets in. Blood sugar crashes. Without medical intervention, the chain ends in respiratory arrest, aspiration, or cardiac arrhythmia.
The toxicological timeline. The blood alcohol concentration at the time of death, established by the Wood County Coroner’s toxicology report, tells the story of how much was consumed and how fast. Lethal blood alcohol concentrations are typically above 0.30 to 0.40 percent, though individual tolerance varies. For a 20-year-old of average build, reaching a lethal BAC requires rapid consumption of a large volume of hard liquor — the kind of consumption that does not happen by accident and does not happen voluntarily. The toxicology report is already preserved in official county coroner records. It is stable, but it should be obtained and reviewed by an independent forensic pathologist who can reconstruct the timeline and establish the pre-death experience.
Pre-death conscious pain and suffering. Before death, acute alcohol intoxication produces a cascade of symptoms that the victim consciously experiences: nausea, vomiting, cognitive impairment, loss of coordination, progressive confusion, respiratory distress, the terror of losing control of one’s own body, and the awareness — if it lasted long enough — that something was terribly wrong and that the people around him were not helping. This is the survival action. These damages survive to the estate. They are separate from the wrongful death damages that compensate the family for their loss. A forensic toxicologist can establish the lethal mechanism and BAC timeline, and the treating medical records — or, in their absence, the coroner’s findings — establish the duration and severity of the pre-death suffering.
The critical delay. In many hazing deaths, the most aggravating fact is not the alcohol itself but the delay. Fraternity members who observe a pledge in distress — vomiting, unresponsive, turning blue — and fail to call 911 or delay calling out of fear of consequences are not just negligent. They are demonstrating the reckless indifference that supports punitive damages. The decision to protect the fraternity from consequences rather than to save a dying person’s life is the moral core of the case, and it is the fact that a jury will not forget.
What Your Family’s Case Is Worth: Damages in Hazing Wrongful Death
The value of a hazing wrongful death case is not a single number. It is a stack of damage categories, each with its own evidence, its own method of proof, and its own story. We build each one separately, and the total is the sum of all of them.
Economic damages. The wrongful death of a 20-year-old college sophomore supports substantial economic damages, including the full present value of a lifetime of lost earning capacity. A forensic economist projects this using age-appropriate work-life expectancy tables and educational attainment projections — a college sophomore has decades of working life ahead and the earning trajectory of a degree holder. Funeral and burial expenses are recoverable. Any medical costs incurred prior to death are recoverable. These are objectively calculable losses — provable with records and expert math.
Non-economic wrongful death damages. The family’s loss of society, companionship, guidance, and prospective support is the heart of a wrongful death case. This is the loss of a son, a brother, a friend — the empty chair at every future family gathering, the milestones he will never reach, the life he was just beginning to build. Mental anguish is part of this. Non-economic damages in Ohio wrongful death actions are generally treated differently from the caps applicable in personal injury tort reform provisions, but the specific interplay of caps and wrongful death damages should be confirmed against current Ohio law.
Survival damages — pre-death pain and suffering. As we explained in the medicine section, Stone Foltz experienced conscious pain and suffering from acute alcohol intoxication prior to death — nausea, vomiting, cognitive impairment, loss of consciousness, and respiratory distress. These damages survive to the estate and are separate from the wrongful death damages that compensate the family.
Punitive damages. The deliberate organization of a hazing event involving life-threatening alcohol consumption demonstrates the recklessness or conscious disregard for safety required for punitive damages. This is where the discovery into the national fraternity’s internal records becomes the engine of the case. Prior hazing complaints at this chapter and at other chapters nationwide, internal risk management files, chapter disciplinary records — all of this establishes institutional knowledge. And institutional knowledge that hazing is dangerous, combined with the failure to stop it, is what elevates this from simple negligence to conscious disregard. That is the punitive damages standard, and it is the standard that drives case value into the range where the national fraternity and its insurers take the case seriously.
Case value range. Based on the factors in this case — the catastrophic wrongful death of a young adult with full lifetime earning capacity, the deep-pocket collectibility of the national fraternity through its insurance program and institutional assets, the criminal hazing conduct establishing recklessness, and the punitive exposure — case value ranges from approximately $3,000,000 on the low end to $20,000,000 or more on the high end. Deflators include comparative-fault arguments (though hazing coercion substantially weakens this defense), Wood County’s moderate venue profile (neither strongly plaintiff-friendly nor defense-oriented, with a population that tends toward pragmatic, community-minded verdicts), and the likely judgment-proof status of individual student defendants, which concentrates recovery on the national fraternity and its insurers. Comparable hazing wrongful death settlements nationally have reached multi-million-dollar figures against national fraternity organizations.
Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The numbers above are an honest framework for what these cases are worth, not a promise. The actual value of your family’s case depends on the evidence, the defendants, the venue, and the specific facts that discovery uncovers.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist and How Fast They Disappear
Evidence in a hazing wrongful death case is measured in semesters, not years. Members graduate and disperse. Group chats are deleted. Phones are replaced. Institutional memory fades with each incoming class. Every record that matters is on a clock, and the clock started running the day Stone Foltz died. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Fraternity house surveillance or security footage. This footage would prove the sequence of events during the hazing incident and the condition of the victim during and after alcohol consumption. DVR overwrite cycles are typically 7 to 30 days. Given the 2021 incident date, this footage is almost certainly no longer available — unless a preservation letter was sent early enough to freeze it. The absence of this footage is itself a spoliation argument if the fraternity failed to preserve it after notice of potential litigation.
Member cell phone records, group chats, and social media communications. These prove the coordination of hazing activities, knowledge of the victim’s condition, and any post-incident obstruction or cover-up attempts. Members graduate, replace phones, and delete communications. Retention diminishes rapidly each semester. Every semester that passes without a litigation hold is a semester of group chats that quietly vanish. The non-appearing defendant’s flight risk underscores that witnesses in these cases are not reliable — they scatter, they forget, and they protect themselves.
National fraternity risk management files and chapter discipline records. This is the notice-and-punitives engine — the single most important category of evidence in the case. These files prove the national organization’s institutional knowledge of hazing practices at this chapter and at other chapters nationwide, prior complaints, and the failure to enforce safety policies. They are subject to corporate retention policies. A litigation hold must be issued immediately to prevent routine destruction. If the national fraternity destroyed or allowed these records to be destroyed after notice of the claim, that is spoliation — and the law answers spoliation with an adverse-inference instruction, allowing the jury to assume the lost records were as bad as the plaintiff says they were.
BGSU student conduct and Greek life oversight records. These prove the university’s awareness of hazing at this chapter and the adequacy of its response. They may show prior complaints or investigations that the university handled inadequately. FERPA and university records retention policies apply, and these records are subject to institutional document destruction schedules. They must be demanded before the schedules permit their destruction.
Toxicology report and autopsy findings from the Wood County Coroner. These establish blood alcohol concentration, cause and manner of death, and the toxicological timeline. Already preserved in official county coroner records — this evidence is stable. But it should be obtained and reviewed by an independent forensic pathologist who can build the complete medical picture.
Witness statements from fraternity members and event attendees. These establish the hazing protocol, who provided the alcohol, who observed the victim’s distress, and whether anyone delayed summoning medical assistance. Witnesses graduate and disperse. Memories degrade. The non-appearing defendant’s absence is a concrete reminder that flight risk among witnesses is real. Statements must be taken while memories are fresh and before witnesses lawyer up, graduate, or disappear.
The preservation letter — sent the day you call a lawyer — is what stops the clock on all of these records. It puts every potential defendant and evidence custodian on notice that destruction is now spoliation. Without that letter, records can be destroyed on routine schedules and the evidence is gone forever. With that letter, every deleted group chat, every overwritten video file, and every “lost” risk management file becomes a liability for the party who let it die.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook in Fraternity Hazing Cases
The insurance industry has a playbook for hazing wrongful death cases, and it is designed to minimize what the family receives. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — he knows this playbook from the inside, because he used to run it. Here are the plays you should expect, and the counter to each one.
Play 1: “He chose to drink.” The adjuster will frame the death as voluntary participation. “Your son was a legal adult. He chose to attend the event. He chose to drink. This is a tragedy, but it is not our client’s fault.” This is the comparative-fault argument, and it is designed to plant the seed of shared responsibility in the family’s mind before a lawyer is involved — to make you think your case is worth less than it is. The counter: hazing is inherently coercive. The power imbalance between actives and pledges eliminates meaningful choice. A fraternity culture and hazing expert establishes the coercive dynamics. The law does not treat a person who acts under duress as having acted voluntarily. What you should not say to an insurance adjuster is anything that sounds like you accept the premise that your son chose this freely.
Play 2: The fast settlement check. A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks — with a release attached. The amount will seem significant to a grieving family that is not thinking clearly and does not yet know what the case is worth. The release is designed to be signed before the medical results are in, before the fraternity’s internal records are obtained, and before a lawyer has evaluated the full scope of liability and damages. The counter: never sign anything from an insurance company without a lawyer reviewing it first. A release signed in grief is binding. The first offer from an insurance company is always a fraction of what the case is worth — it is designed to close the file cheaply, not to compensate the family.
Play 3: “The national fraternity is not responsible — just a few rogue members.” The adjuster will argue that the national organization did not organize the hazing event, did not participate in it, and cannot be held liable for the independent actions of local members. This is the shell game. The counter: the national fraternity chartered the chapter, set the policies, collected the dues, and knew or should have known of hazing practices at its chapters nationwide. Discovery into the national organization’s risk management files, prior hazing complaints, and chapter discipline records establishes the institutional knowledge that transforms this from a local accident into a systemic failure for which the national organization is responsible.
Play 4: The recorded statement request. Someone friendly will call the family and ask for a recorded statement about what happened. The recording is built to be quoted against you later — a parent who says “I know he was excited about joining” will hear that clip played at deposition to support the voluntary-participation defense. The counter: decline the recorded statement. Let your lawyer speak for you. No insurance adjuster is calling you to help you. Every call is designed to reduce the value of your case.
Play 5: The delay strategy. The adjuster may go quiet for months, hoping the family will get tired, lose focus, or accept a low offer out of desperation. The strategy is to run out the clock — to push the family toward the statute of limitations deadline and then leverage the pressure of an expiring claim. The counter: a lawyer who is actively building the case — sending preservation letters, filing suit, conducting discovery — keeps the pressure on the defense. Time is only the enemy if you let it work against you. In our hands, time is the tool that builds the case.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like this is actually built — from the first call to resolution. This is not a summary. It is the process, step by step, told by someone who has lived it.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day you call, a litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter goes to the national fraternity, the local chapter, the house corporation, the university, and any individual members whose conduct is at issue. The letter names every category of evidence — surveillance footage, group chats, risk management files, cell phone records, student conduct records, the accident register. The letter converts routine document destruction into spoliation. From this moment forward, every deleted file is a liability for the party who let it die.
Weeks one through four: the medical evidence is assembled. We obtain the Wood County Coroner’s toxicology report and autopsy findings. We engage an independent forensic pathologist to review the findings, reconstruct the toxicological timeline, and establish the pre-death conscious pain and suffering that supports the survival action. The BAC evidence tells the story of how much was consumed and how fast — and it tells it in numbers that a jury can understand.
Months one through three: the complaint is filed and discovery begins. We file the wrongful death and survival action in the appropriate Ohio court — likely Wood County Common Pleas Court, which handles felony criminal matters and major civil litigation in this venue. The complaint names every defendant in the stack: the national fraternity, the local chapter, the house corporation, and the individual members whose conduct is established. We serve discovery requests — interrogatories, requests for production, requests for admission — targeted at the national fraternity’s internal risk management files, prior hazing complaints at chapters nationwide, chapter discipline records, and any communications demonstrating institutional knowledge of dangerous pledging practices. This is the notice-and-punitives engine that transforms a tragic death into a case for institutional recklessness.
Months three through six: the depositions. We depose national fraternity leadership — the executives who set the policies, the risk management staff who were supposed to enforce them, the chapter advisors who were supposed to supervise. Their testimony on institutional knowledge and policy enforcement drives the punitive damages value. We depose the individual members who organized and participated in the hazing. Their testimony establishes the specific facts of what happened that night — who provided the alcohol, who observed the distress, who failed to call for help.
Months six through twelve: the experts build the value. The forensic toxicologist establishes the lethal mechanism and BAC timeline. A fraternity culture and hazing expert establishes the coercive dynamics that undermine the comparative-fault defense. A forensic economist quantifies the full present value of lost lifetime earning capacity, using age-appropriate work-life expectancy tables and educational attainment projections for a 20-year-old college sophomore. The life-care plan, if applicable, quantifies future costs. The number at the end is built from all of this — from the medicine, the corporate failures, the lost years, and the institutional knowledge that made this death foreseeable and preventable.
Mediation and resolution. Mediation should be deferred until key depositions of national fraternity leadership are completed, because their testimony on institutional knowledge and policy enforcement drives the punitive damages value. In Ohio, excess-exposure and bad-faith insurance considerations may arise if the fraternity’s liability insurer acts unreasonably in settlement negotiations, creating additional leverage for a policy-limits demand. The case resolves when the defense sees the evidence and understands what a jury in Wood County — a community-minded, pragmatic venue — will do with a dead 20-year-old pledge, a national fraternity that knew hazing was happening, and a toxicology report that tells the story in numbers.
This is not a fast process. It is a thorough one. And every step is designed to make the defense understand that the evidence is locked down, the experts are credible, and the jury will see the truth.
The First 72 Hours: What Families Should Do
If your family is dealing with the death or serious injury of a child in a hazing event — whether at Bowling Green State University or anywhere else — the first 72 hours matter more than any other period in the case. Here is what to do, and what not to do.
Do seek medical attention first. If your child survived but was injured, the medical record is the foundation of the case. Follow every medical recommendation. Keep every appointment. Symptoms of serious injury — including traumatic brain injury and acute alcohol poisoning effects — can be delayed or occult. The medical record built from day one is what the defense cannot contradict.
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no settlement agreement, no authorization for the fraternity or its insurer to obtain records. Nothing. If someone puts a document in front of you and asks you to sign it, call a lawyer first. A document signed in grief is binding.
Do not give a recorded statement. To anyone. Not to the fraternity’s insurance adjuster, not to the fraternity’s lawyer, not to a “neutral investigator” hired by the fraternity. Every question is designed to elicit a response that can be used to reduce the value of your case. Let your lawyer speak for you.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the incident, nothing about your grief, nothing about the fraternity. The defense will mine your social media for any statement that can be taken out of context and used against you. A grieving parent’s venting on social media becomes the defense’s exhibit A.
Do preserve everything you have. Your son’s phone, his computer, his fraternity materials, any communications he sent or received before the event, any photographs — all of it is evidence. Do not delete anything. Do not return anything to the fraternity. Secure it all.
Do contact a lawyer immediately. The preservation letter — the single most important early step — can only go out if a lawyer is on the case. Every day you wait is a day the fraternity’s video footage overwrites itself, a day group chats get deleted, a day the evidence that would have proven everything is simply gone. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
If your child was a minor, the parents’ guide to injury lawsuits covers additional considerations specific to claims involving children — though in a hazing case, the victim is typically a young adult, which presents its own legal framework.
Why This Firm: Hazing Litigation Experience
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes hazing wrongful death cases in Ohio and nationwide, working with local counsel where required. We do not have an office in Ohio, and we do not claim a bar admission we do not hold. What we have is experience in the specific kind of case that killed Stone Foltz — and that experience is directly relevant to what your family is facing.
Ralph P. Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has 27 years of trial practice — admitted November 6, 1998, Texas Bar #24007597, also admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. He is a journalist by training, a trial lawyer by profession, and a competitor who hates losing. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit — a hazing wrongful death case against a national fraternity that is currently being litigated. That case involves a different fraternity at a different university, but the legal architecture is the same: a national organization that failed to supervise its local chapter, a hazing culture that was known or should have been known, and a young person who died because the institution chose not to act. The experience from that case — the discovery strategies, the expert witnesses, the approach to the national fraternity’s internal records, the playbook for defeating the comparative-fault defense — transfers directly to any hazing wrongful death case in any state.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. He has 13 years of practice — Texas Bar #24084332, also admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. Before he joined our firm, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like the families we now represent. He knows how the insurance industry values hazing wrongful death claims, how it sets reserves, how it selects defense experts, and how it runs surveillance and social-media mining. He uses that knowledge for your family now. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Our fee structure. We work on contingency. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service, live people who can take your call right now. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Our approach to hazing cases. We understand the wrongful death claim framework and how it intersects with anti-hazing statutes. We understand that the national fraternity is the deep pocket and that the local chapter and individual members are the evidence. We understand that the coercive dynamics of hazing defeat the voluntary-participation defense. We understand that the evidence is perishable — measured in semesters, not years — and that the preservation letter is the first and most important step. We understand that the medicine of acute alcohol intoxication is the foundation of the survival action. And we understand that the national fraternity’s internal records — its risk management files, its prior hazing complaints, its chapter discipline records — are the notice-and-punitives engine that transforms a tragic death into a case for institutional recklessness.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a bench warrant mean for the Stone Foltz hazing case?
A bench warrant means a defendant who was required to appear in court for the criminal case failed to do so, and the judge has authorized law enforcement to arrest that person and bring them before the court. It is a criminal procedural event. It does not directly affect the civil wrongful death lawsuit, which is a separate legal track. But it underscores the fragility of criminal accountability in hazing cases and the importance of maintaining independent civil pressure through the wrongful death lawsuit against the fraternity and its national organization.
Can I sue a fraternity for a hazing death in Ohio?
Yes. Ohio’s wrongful death statute provides a cause of action for surviving family members when a death is caused by the wrongful act, neglect, or default of another. The claim is typically filed within two years of the date of death. In a hazing death, the defendants include the national fraternity organization (for negligent supervision and failure to enforce anti-hazing policies), the local chapter (for direct sponsorship and execution of the hazing event), the fraternity house corporation (for premises liability), and individual members (for direct participation and furnishing alcohol to a minor). The national fraternity is the deep-pocket defendant with insurance and institutional assets.
What is Collin’s Law in Ohio?
Collin’s Law, enacted in 2021, is Ohio’s strengthened anti-hazing statute. It elevated certain hazing offenses from misdemeanor to felony level and imposed mandatory reporting requirements on universities. The law was enacted partly in response to the Stone Foltz case and other Ohio hazing deaths. In a civil wrongful death case, a violation of Collin’s Law can support a negligence per se theory — the breach of a statutory duty designed to protect exactly the person who was killed.
How long do I have to file a hazing wrongful death lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s wrongful death statute provides a limitation period that is typically two years from the date of death. This is a hard deadline — miss it and the case is gone, no matter how strong the evidence. But the evidence in a hazing case dies far faster than the statute of limitations. Surveillance footage overwrites in weeks. Group chats are deleted every semester. Witnesses graduate and disperse. The preservation letter has to go out in days, not months, even though the filing deadline is two years out.
Is hazing considered voluntary in a wrongful death case?
No — not in the coercive context of fraternity pledging. The defense will argue the pledge voluntarily consumed the alcohol, but hazing is inherently coercive. The power imbalance between active members and pledges eliminates meaningful choice. A pledge who drinks under the implicit threat of rejection, humiliation, or ostracism is not acting freely. Ohio’s modified comparative negligence system bars recovery only if the plaintiff’s fault equals or exceeds 51%, and the coercive dynamics of hazing make it extraordinarily difficult for a fraternity to push a deceased pledge’s fault above that threshold.
What is the survival action in a hazing death case?
The survival action is a claim that belongs to the estate of the deceased person, separate from the wrongful death claim that belongs to the family. It compensates the pre-death conscious pain and suffering the victim experienced — in a hazing-by-alcohol case, that includes nausea, vomiting, cognitive impairment, loss of coordination, respiratory distress, and the terror of losing control while those around you fail to help. The duration and severity of the pre-death suffering depend on the toxicological timeline established by the autopsy and BAC evidence, reviewed by an independent forensic pathologist.
Can the national fraternity be held liable for what a local chapter does?
Yes — when the national organization failed to supervise the local chapter, failed to enforce its own anti-hazing policies, or knew or should have known of dangerous hazing practices and did nothing. The national fraternity owes a duty to supervise its chartered chapters. Discovery into the national organization’s internal risk management files, prior hazing complaints at chapters nationwide, and chapter discipline records establishes the institutional knowledge that transforms a local tragedy into a case for institutional recklessness and punitive damages. The national fraternity’s insurance program and institutional assets provide the deep-pocket collectibility that individual student defendants cannot.
What should I do if an insurance adjuster contacts me after a hazing death?
Do not give a recorded statement. Do not sign any document. Do not accept any check. Call a lawyer first. The insurance adjuster’s job is to minimize what your family receives, not to help you. Every question is designed to elicit a response that can be used to reduce the value of your case. The first settlement offer is always a fraction of what the case is worth. Let a lawyer speak for you — everything you say to the adjuster can and will be used against you.
How much is a hazing wrongful death case worth?
It depends on the facts — the age and earning capacity of the victim, the conduct of the fraternity, the severity of the institutional failures, the venue, and the punitive exposure. Based on comparable cases and the factors present here — the wrongful death of a 20-year-old college sophomore with full lifetime earning capacity, a national fraternity with insurance and assets, criminal hazing conduct establishing recklessness — case value ranges from approximately $3,000,000 to $20,000,000 or more. Individual student defendants are often judgment-proof, concentrating recovery on the national fraternity and its insurers. Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Does the criminal case affect the civil wrongful death lawsuit?
The criminal and civil cases are separate legal tracks, but they interact. Criminal convictions or guilty pleas of fraternity members provide powerful civil liability leverage and should be used to the fullest extent permitted by Ohio evidentiary rules. The civil case does not depend on the criminal case resolving — it moves on its own timeline. But a bench warrant for a defendant who fails to appear in the criminal case is a reminder that the criminal track is fragile and that the civil track is the one the family controls.
If your family has lost a child to hazing — at Bowling Green State University or anywhere — the call is free and it costs you nothing to find out what your rights are. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. We answer 24 hours a day. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español.
