When a Fraternity Investigation Becomes Your Family’s Emergency
You are reading this page because something happened to someone you love inside a fraternity — at the University of Kansas, inside Alpha Tau Omega, or somewhere just like it. Maybe your son came home with bruises he could not explain. Maybe he was rushed to the hospital with alcohol poisoning and a blood alcohol level that should have killed him. Maybe he is afraid to tell you what they made him do. Maybe the worst has already happened and you are reading this from a hospital waiting room or a funeral home.
We are Attorney911, and we build hazing cases. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston. That case is filed in Harris County, Texas, and it is live right now. We know what hazing does to a young person. We know how fraternities defend themselves. We know where the evidence hides and how fast it disappears.
A five-year suspension is the university saying, on the record, that something went wrong inside that chapter. That is the starting point — not the ending point. A suspension is an administrative finding, not a court judgment, and the fraternity’s lawyers will work to distance the national organization, the local chapter, and every individual member from what happened. Your family’s case is a separate fight, and it has its own clock.
What the KU Suspension Means — and What It Does Not Mean
The University of Kansas suspended Alpha Tau Omega for five years following a hazing investigation. That sentence is a fact. Here is what it means and what it does not.
The University of Kansas suspended Alpha Tau Omega fraternity for five years following a hazing investigation.
A five-year suspension means KU’s internal disciplinary process concluded that hazing occurred within the ATO chapter at a level serious enough to withdraw the university’s recognition of the organization for half a decade. The chapter may continue to exist informally — fraternities do not need university recognition to operate — but it loses official campus standing, university housing privileges, the ability to recruit through campus channels, and access to university resources.
What the suspension does not mean: it is not a court finding of legal liability. It does not automatically prove that any specific individual was harmed. It does not identify who was hazed, who did the hazing, or what specific acts occurred. It does not put money in a victim’s pocket. And it does not start or stop the statute of limitations on your family’s legal claim.
What the suspension does give your family: powerful evidence that the university itself concluded hazing occurred. That finding — documented, dated, and on the record — is a piece of proof that a civil case can use to establish that the danger was real, that the fraternity knew or should have known, and that the harm was foreseeable.
Who Is Responsible: The Fraternity Liability Stack
A fraternity hazing case is almost never one defendant. It is a stack of entities, each with its own insurance, its own lawyers, and its own strategy for pointing at the others. Understanding this stack is the first step in building a case that actually reaches the money.
The National Fraternity Organization
Alpha Tau Omega, like every national social fraternity, is a national organization with a central office, a board of directors, a set of risk management policies, and an insurance program. The national organization collects dues from every chapter, sets the rules chapters must follow, provides liability insurance, and sends staff to inspect chapters. The national organization’s policy manual almost certainly contains an anti-hazing policy — every national fraternity has one — and that policy is the standard of care the chapter was supposed to meet.
The national organization will argue that the local chapter is autonomous, that it sets its own policies, and that the national cannot be held responsible for what individual college students do on a Friday night. That argument is the first wall we work to break through. The national organization collected dues, set policies, sent representatives, and held itself out as the authority over the chapter. The more control it exercised, the more responsibility it carries.
The Local Chapter
The local ATO chapter at KU is the entity where the hazing occurred. The chapter has its own officers — a president, a pledge educator or “new member educator,” a risk management chair — and those officers are the individuals who organized, directed, or tolerated the hazing. The chapter may be incorporated as a separate LLC or it may be an unincorporated association operating through the national organization’s charter. Identifying the chapter’s legal structure is the first piece of detective work in the case.
The University of Kansas
The university has a duty to protect its students from foreseeable harm, including hazing that it knows or should know is occurring within recognized student organizations on its campus. KU recognized ATO, gave it campus privileges, allowed it to recruit students, and had a disciplinary framework that was supposed to catch hazing before it caused harm. If KU had prior notice of hazing in ATO — from earlier complaints, from incident reports, from rumors that reached student affairs — and did not act forcefully enough, the university itself can be a defendant.
University liability is a contested fight in every state. Public universities like KU may assert sovereign immunity or governmental immunity, and Kansas law provides specific frameworks for claims against state entities that include notice requirements and damage limitations. We investigate the university’s role carefully, because the university’s insurance and resources are often the deepest pocket in the stack.
Individual Members
The students who conducted the hazing — the pledge educator who organized it, the active members who participated, the officers who allowed it — are individual defendants. Their homeowners’ insurance policies may or may not cover hazing acts, because many policies exclude intentional acts or assault. But naming individuals serves two purposes: it puts the people who caused the harm under oath in depositions, and it creates pressure that pushes the fraternity and the university toward resolution.
The Housing Corporation
Many fraternity chapters have a separate housing corporation or alumni board that owns or leases the chapter house. If the hazing occurred at the house, the housing corporation may have premises liability for allowing dangerous conditions and activities on property it controls. This is a separate entity with its own insurance, and it is often overlooked.
Kansas Hazing Law and Your Family’s Rights
Kansas, like virtually every state in the country, has criminalized hazing. The precise framework of Kansas hazing law includes criminal penalties for hazing that causes injury or risk of injury, and civil liability runs through the ordinary tort system — negligence, gross negligence, premises liability, and wrongful death. We state the governing rules in plain language here because the specific statute section numbers in Kansas are something we confirm with the live code at the time we file, not something we print from memory on a web page.
The Statute of Limitations
In Kansas, the statute of limitations for personal injury claims is generally two years from the date of the injury, and the statute of limitations for wrongful death claims is generally two years from the date of death. These deadlines are unforgiving — miss the deadline and the case is gone, no matter how strong the evidence is. There are narrow exceptions: the discovery rule may apply where the injury or its cause was not immediately apparent, and the deadline may be tolled for a minor (giving a child additional time after reaching adulthood). But the safest approach is to treat two years as the wall and work backward from it.
Comparative Negligence in Kansas
Kansas follows a modified comparative negligence rule. This means that if the injured person is found to share some of the fault, their recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault — and if their share of fault reaches a certain threshold, recovery is barred entirely. In hazing cases, the defense will try hard to pin fault on the pledge: “he chose to join, he showed up, he participated, he could have walked away.” Every state that has enacted a hazing statute has addressed this defense — most provide that consent is not a defense to hazing. The law recognizes that a college student pressured by older peers, in a culture of obedience, surrounded by alcohol and sleep deprivation, is not freely consenting to be abused. We fight the “he volunteered” argument with the same statute the defense tries to hide behind.
Wrongful Death in Kansas
If hazing caused a death, Kansas’s wrongful death statute allows specific beneficiaries — typically the spouse, children, and parents of the deceased — to bring a claim for the financial and emotional losses they suffered. A separate survival action may carry the claim the deceased person would have had for their own pain and suffering between injury and death. The exact beneficiary class and damage categories are set by the statute, and we confirm them at the time of filing.
The University’s Immunity and Notice Requirements
Claims against a public university in Kansas may involve specific procedural hurdles — notice requirements, shorter deadlines, and damage caps. These are the traps that kill otherwise valid claims if they are not handled from the very first week. We work with local counsel in Kansas to meet every procedural requirement the state imposes on claims against public entities.
The Evidence That Is Dying Right Now
Hazing cases are won and lost on evidence that disappears faster than almost any other type of case. The proof lives on phones, in group chats, on social media platforms that auto-delete content, and in the memories of college students who graduate and scatter across the country. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Digital Communications — The Fastest-Dying Evidence
Fraternity hazing is organized through digital communication. Pledges are added to GroupMe threads, Snapchat groups, and WhatsApp chains. Activities are announced by text. Evidence of what the chapter planned, what they told pledges to do, and what the pledges experienced is sitting in these messages right now — and it is being deleted.
Snapchat stories disappear in 24 hours. Snapchat messages can be set to delete immediately after viewing. Instagram Stories vanish in 24 hours. GroupMe threads can be deleted by any admin. Text messages can be individually deleted or wiped with a factory reset. Every day that passes without a preservation letter is a day someone can quietly erase the conversation that proves what happened.
We send preservation letters the day a family calls us. The letter goes to the fraternity, the university, the individual members we can identify, and the digital platforms involved. It orders them, in writing, to freeze every message, every post, every photo, every video. Once that letter is on file, any deletion becomes spoliation — and a court can instruct a jury to assume the deleted evidence would have helped your family.
University Investigation Records
KU conducted a hazing investigation that resulted in a five-year suspension. That investigation generated a file — witness statements, findings, documentary evidence, and the university’s reasoning. Much of this may be protected by FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act), which shields student educational records. But FERPA has exceptions, and a subpoena issued in civil litigation can pierce FERPA’s shield. The investigation file is one of the most valuable pieces of evidence in your case, and it must be demanded early, through the right legal channels.
Fraternity Internal Documents
The national ATO organization maintains files on every chapter: risk management reports, incident reports, inspection findings, charter reviews, and communications between the national office and the local chapter. These documents can show whether the national organization knew about hazing problems at the KU chapter before the suspension — prior complaints, prior warnings, prior disciplinary actions. If the national knew and did not act, that is the foundation of a gross negligence claim and the predicate for punitive damages. These records exist, but the fraternity controls them, and they have no federal retention mandate. We demand them in discovery, and a litigation hold freezes them.
Medical Records
If the hazing caused injury — alcohol poisoning, a beating, a fall, sexual assault — the medical records from the emergency room or the campus health center are the contemporaneous proof of what happened to the body. Hospitals have retention schedules, but campus health centers can have shorter windows. We subpoena the full medical record, including the nursing notes that often contain the patient’s own description of what happened — descriptions that can be the first time the victim told the truth.
Witness Statements
The pledges who went through the same hazing, the active members who participated, the students who lived in the house and saw what happened — these are the witnesses. College students graduate. They move. They lose their phones. Their memories degrade. And the fraternity’s alumni network can pressure them to stay quiet. Identifying witnesses and locking in their statements early, through sworn testimony or recorded interviews, is how a hazing case survives the years between the event and the trial.
Social Media and Surveillance Footage
If the hazing occurred at the chapter house, at a bar, at an off-campus location, or at a university facility, there may be security camera footage. This footage overwrites on a schedule — often 30 days or less. Photos and videos posted to social media by participants can show the culture, the activities, and the state of the pledges. These are the most perishable forms of evidence, and they must be frozen within days.
Hazing Injuries: What Happens to the Body and the Mind
Hazing is not a prank. It is a physical and psychological assault on a young person, and the injuries it causes can last a lifetime — or end one.
Alcohol Poisoning
Forced or pressured consumption of large quantities of alcohol is the most common hazing mechanism in American fraternities. The physiology is brutal: a high blood alcohol concentration suppresses the central nervous system, the gag reflex fails, the person aspirates vomit, and the breathing slows until it stops. A blood alcohol concentration above 0.30 is potentially lethal for most adults; hazing has produced BACs above 0.40 and higher. Even if the person survives, an alcohol overdose can cause irreversible brain damage from oxygen deprivation, acute kidney injury from rhabdomyolysis, and liver damage. The medical record — the blood panel, the BAC, the intubation notes, the ICU admission — is the proof that this was not “just drinking.”
Traumatic Brain Injury
Beatings, “paddle” strikes, falls during impaired activities, and being forced into physical exertion beyond capacity can all produce traumatic brain injury. A “mild” TBI — a concussion — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan, because the damage is diffuse axonal injury: microscopic tearing of the brain’s white-matter connections that standard imaging was never designed to see. More than one-third of patients with a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 13 — the top of the “mild” range — have potentially life-threatening intracranial lesions. The headaches, the memory loss, the personality changes, the inability to concentrate — these can persist for months or become permanent. Brain injury cases require specialized medical proof, and we build that proof with the right experts.
Hypothermia and Exposure
“Line ups” — forcing pledges to stand outside in cold weather, often inadequately dressed, for extended periods — can produce hypothermia. The body’s core temperature drops, the heart’s rhythm becomes unstable, and without intervention, the person dies. Even survivors can suffer frostbite leading to amputation and permanent cold sensitivity.
Water Intoxication and Drowning
Forced water consumption — a hazing practice that has killed multiple college students — dilutes the blood’s sodium concentration until the brain swells. The symptoms look like alcohol intoxication at first, which delays treatment. Death can follow within hours. Water-based hazing activities also carry drowning risk.
Sexual Assault
Sexual assault is a form of hazing, and it is one of the most underreported. The psychological injury — PTSD, depression, anxiety, self-harm — can be devastating and lifelong. We handle these cases with the sensitivity and privacy they demand, and we connect families with the right medical and psychological experts.
PTSD and Psychological Trauma
The medical literature is unambiguous: sexual assault is the single most PTSD-producing event a person can experience, with nearly half of female survivors developing post-traumatic stress disorder. But hazing of all kinds produces psychological injury. The DSM-5 diagnosis requires eight specific criteria, and a survivor has to meet every one: the traumatic event, the intrusive memories, the avoidance behavior, the negative changes in mood and thinking, the altered arousal and reactivity, the functional impairment, and symptoms lasting more than a month. PTSD is a real, diagnosable, compensable injury — and it is invisible, which means the defense will fight it. We prove it with clinical instruments, expert testimony, and the testimony of the people who knew the person before.
Death
Hazing kills. The combination of alcohol, sleep deprivation, physical abuse, and dangerous activities has produced a body count that grows every academic year. When hazing causes a death, the family’s claim is a wrongful death action — and the value of that claim includes the financial support the young person would have provided, the lost companionship, and in some cases the pain and suffering the person endured before death. Wrongful death cases are among the most complex and emotionally difficult cases we handle.
What a Fraternity Hazing Case Is Worth
Every case is different, and the value of a hazing case depends on the severity of the injury, the number and solvency of the defendants, the strength of the evidence, and the jurisdiction. But here is how a real number is built.
Economic damages — the money side you can add up — include past and future medical bills, rehabilitation costs, counseling and psychiatric care, lost wages, and lost earning capacity. A traumatic brain injury can require lifetime care that costs millions. A severe alcohol poisoning event can produce kidney damage that requires ongoing treatment. PTSD can require years of therapy and medication.
Non-economic damages — the human losses no receipt can measure — include physical pain, emotional suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, disfigurement, and the loss of the person’s ability to live the life they had before. In a wrongful death case, this includes the family’s loss of companionship, guidance, and the relationship they had with the person who died.
Punitive damages — the damages meant to punish and deter — may be available when the defendant’s conduct was grossly negligent, willful, or reckless. If the national fraternity knew about hazing in its chapters and did not act, if the local chapter had a years-long pattern of hazing that the university ignored, or if individual members acted with deliberate cruelty, punitive damages become a real possibility. Kansas has specific rules on punitive damages that we verify at the time of filing.
The firm has recovered $50 million in total across our practice, including a $5 million-plus brain injury settlement and a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement. We have filed a $10 million hazing lawsuit that is currently active. These are our verified results, and they tell you the scale we work at. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But they tell you that when the harm is catastrophic, we know how to build a number that reflects what was lost.
The Defense Playbook: What the Fraternity and University Will Try
Every defendant in a hazing case has the same playbook. The names change; the moves do not. Here are the plays, in the order you will see them, and how we counter each one.
Play 1: “The Pledge Consented”
This is the oldest defense in the book. The fraternity will argue that the pledge voluntarily joined, voluntarily showed up, voluntarily participated, and therefore assumed the risk of whatever happened. This argument is designed to trigger comparative negligence and reduce the family’s recovery.
Our counter: Hazing statutes in virtually every state provide that consent is not a defense. A college freshman, pressured by older peers, in a culture of obedience, sleep-deprived, intoxicated, and afraid of social exile, is not freely consenting. We prove the pressure environment — the power differential between actives and pledges, the documented history of the chapter’s practices, the social and psychological coercion — and we use the statute that says consent is no defense.
Play 2: “The National Organization Is Not Responsible for Chapter Conduct”
The national fraternity will argue that each chapter is autonomous, that the national cannot control what college students do on a weekend, and that the national’s anti-hazing policy absolves it of liability.
Our counter: The national organization collected dues, set the policies, sent inspectors, chartered the chapter, and held itself out as the governing authority. The more control it exercised — through policies, inspections, dues, charters, and the power to revoke recognition — the more responsibility it carries. We pull the national’s own risk management files, inspection reports, and prior incident records. If the national knew about hazing at this chapter or at other chapters and did not act forcefully enough, that is the foundation of gross negligence.
Play 3: “The University Is Not Responsible for Off-Campus Greek Activities”
The university will argue that fraternity hazing occurs off-campus, in private housing, and that the university has no duty to supervise what happens there.
Our counter: The university recognized the fraternity as an official student organization, gave it campus privileges, allowed it to recruit students through university channels, and had a disciplinary framework that was supposed to catch hazing. If the university had prior notice — earlier complaints, earlier suspensions, rumors that reached student affairs — and did not act, it breached its duty. We pull the university’s disciplinary records, prior complaints, and the timeline of what the university knew and when.
Play 4: “We Had Anti-Hazing Policies and Training”
The fraternity will produce its risk management policy, its anti-hazing education program, and its signed acknowledgments from members. They will argue that they did everything a reasonable organization would do.
Our counter: A policy on paper that is not enforced is not protection — it is a defense strategy. We ask the questions that expose the gap: Who enforced the policy? What happened when violations were reported? Was anyone ever disciplined? Were the policies designed to prevent hazing, or were they designed to protect the organization from liability when hazing inevitably occurred? A policy that exists to be produced in litigation is not a safety program.
Play 5: Quick Settlement Offers
The fraternity’s insurance company may contact the family early — before they have a lawyer — with a settlement offer that sounds large but is a fraction of the case’s real value. The offer will come with a release that, once signed, extinguishes every claim the family has against every defendant.
Our counter: Never sign anything from the fraternity’s insurance company without a lawyer. The first offer is always a fraction of the case’s worth. We have seen the other side’s playbook from the inside — Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years at a national insurance-defense firm before joining our side. He knows how adjusters set reserves, how they value claims, and how they engineer quick, cheap settlements because he used to do it. That knowledge now works for your family.
Play 6: Delay Until Witnesses Graduate and Scatter
The fraternity’s lawyers know that college students graduate and move away. They know that memories fade, that group chats get deleted, and that witnesses lose the urgency to come forward. They will file motions, request continuances, and drag the case out until the evidence has rotted.
Our counter: We move fast. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. We identify witnesses and lock in their statements while their memories are fresh and before they leave campus. We use the court’s discovery rules to force the fraternity and the university to produce their documents before they can be “lost.” Speed is the counter to delay, and we build for speed from the first phone call.
How We Build a Hazing Case
Here is the chronological walk of how a hazing case is actually built, from the first call to resolution.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out — to the national fraternity, the local chapter, the university, the housing corporation, and every digital platform that may hold evidence. This letter freezes the evidence. It orders every recipient to preserve all communications, documents, surveillance footage, social media content, and internal files. Once the letter is on file, any deletion is spoliation — and spoliation has legal consequences.
Weeks two through four: We pull the medical records, the university investigation file, the police reports, and the fraternity’s internal documents. We identify the witnesses — the other pledges, the active members, the alumni, the university staff. We begin the process of securing sworn statements before witnesses graduate and scatter.
Months one through three: We file the lawsuit. The complaint names every defendant in the stack — the national fraternity, the local chapter, the university, the individual members, and the housing corporation. We serve discovery requests that force each defendant to produce its internal files, its communications, its insurance policies, and its prior incident records. We take depositions — starting with the fraternity officers and the pledge educator, then the university administrators, then the national organization’s risk management staff.
Months three through twelve: The discovery fight. The fraternity will resist producing its internal documents. The university will raise FERPA. The individual members will claim Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination if there is a parallel criminal investigation. We fight through each shield, using the court’s authority to compel production. The documents that come out of this fight — the risk management reports, the prior complaints, the internal emails, the group chats — are the evidence that builds the number.
Resolution: Most cases resolve before trial, but the resolution that matters is the one that reflects the full value of the harm. We prepare every case as if it will be tried, because the preparation is what drives the value. A fraternity that knows we are ready to put its practices in front of a jury is a fraternity that takes settlement seriously.
The First 72 Hours: Your Roadmap
If your family is in the first hours and days after a hazing incident, here is what to do and what not to do.
Do This
Get medical care first. If your son was injured — alcohol poisoning, a beating, a fall, any physical harm — get him to an emergency room. The medical record is the contemporaneous proof of what happened. If he is refusing to go, understand that the injuries from hazing can be worse than they appear: a brain bleed from a beating can take hours to declare itself. Alcohol poisoning can cause kidney damage that is not immediately obvious. Get the medical evaluation, and keep every document.
Preserve every digital communication. Do not delete anything. Screenshots of group chats, text messages, Snapchat conversations, Instagram posts — save all of it. Take screenshots before content disappears. If your son has his phone, make sure nothing is deleted. If you can identify the phones of other pledges or members, do not attempt to access them — but note who had what device.
Write down what you know. While the memory is fresh, write down everything: the date, the location, who was involved, what your son told you, what you observed, what the university told you. Time stamps matter. The sequence of who knew what and when they knew it is the spine of the case.
Call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The call is free, the consultation is free, and we do not get paid unless we win. The preservation letter — the document that freezes the evidence before it disappears — goes out the day you call us. Not the week. Not the month. The day.
Do Not Do This
Do not sign anything from the fraternity or its insurance company. No release, no settlement agreement, no acknowledgment of facts, no statement about what happened. If an insurance adjuster calls and sounds sympathetic and offers a quick check, do not engage. That call is not a courtesy — it is a play, and the goal is to close your claim for a fraction of its value before you have a lawyer.
Do not give a recorded statement to the fraternity, the university, or their insurance company. A recorded statement is designed to lock you into a version of events before you know the full story, and it will be used to impeach you later. If they ask for one, say you need to speak with a lawyer first — and then call us.
Do not post about the incident on social media. Nothing about the hazing, nothing about the injury, nothing about the fraternity. The defense will mine your social media for anything they can use — a photo of your son smiling at a family event will be offered as proof that he was “fine.” A post about the incident can be twisted into a narrative of consent. Silence on social media is protection.
Do not wait. The statute of limitations in Kansas gives you two years, but the evidence gives you weeks. Snapchat stories vanish in 24 hours. Surveillance footage overwrites in 30 days. Witness memories degrade. Witnesses graduate. The single most important thing you can do in the first 72 hours is call a lawyer who can freeze the evidence before it disappears.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue the national fraternity for what the local chapter did?
Yes, but it requires proving that the national organization exercised enough control over the chapter to create legal responsibility. The national fraternity collected dues, set policies, inspected the chapter, and held the power to revoke its charter. The more control the national exercised, the more responsibility it carries. We pull the national’s own internal files — risk management reports, inspection findings, prior complaints — to prove that the national knew or should have known about the hazing culture at this chapter.
The university already suspended the fraternity for five years. Does that help my case?
Yes, significantly. The suspension is the university’s own finding that hazing occurred within the chapter. While it is not a court judgment of liability, it is powerful evidence — documented, dated, and on the record — that the danger was real and that the university recognized it. We use the university’s own investigation file to establish that the hazing occurred, that the chapter tolerated it, and that the university had enough evidence to justify a five-year suspension.
My son “consented” to the hazing activities. Does that ruin our case?
No. Virtually every state’s hazing law explicitly provides that consent is not a defense. The law recognizes that a college freshman — pressured by older peers, in a culture of obedience, surrounded by alcohol and sleep deprivation, afraid of social exile — is not freely consenting. The defense will try to use your son’s participation against him, but the statute is on your side, and we use it.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
In Kansas, the statute of limitations for personal injury and wrongful death claims is generally two years. For a minor, the deadline may be extended. There may also be shorter notice requirements if the university is a defendant. Two years sounds like a long time, but the evidence that wins these cases disappears in days and weeks, not years. The earlier you call, the more evidence we can freeze.
What is the fraternity hazing case worth?
The value depends on the severity of the injury, the number and solvency of the defendants, the strength of the evidence, and the jurisdiction. The firm has recovered over $50 million in total, including a $5 million-plus brain injury settlement and a $3.8 million-plus amputation settlement, and we have filed a $10 million hazing lawsuit that is currently active. These results tell you the scale we work at. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The only way to know what your case is worth is to call us and let us evaluate it.
The fraternity’s insurance company already offered us money. Should we take it?
Not without a lawyer. The first offer from an insurance company is almost always a fraction of the case’s real value. The adjuster’s job is to close the claim cheaply before the family has legal representation. The offer will come with a release that, once signed, extinguishes every claim against every defendant — forever. Before you sign anything, call us. The consultation is free, and we can tell you whether the offer is fair or whether it is a fraction of what your family is owed.
What if my son does not want to talk about what happened?
That is common. Hazing produces deep shame, fear of retaliation, and fear of being blamed. Many survivors never tell their families the full story. We handle these cases with patience and privacy. Your son does not have to relive the experience in front of strangers — we can build the case from documents, witness statements, medical records, and the fraternity’s own communications. But we do need to talk to him, eventually, in a setting where he feels safe. We start by building trust, not by demanding a full account.
Can we sue the individual members who did the hazing?
Yes. The students who organized, directed, or participated in the hazing are individual defendants. Their homeowners’ insurance may or may not cover hazing acts — many policies exclude intentional acts or assault. But naming individuals serves critical purposes: it puts the people who caused the harm under oath in depositions, it creates pressure that pushes the fraternity and the university toward resolution, and it holds the actual wrongdoers accountable, not just the institutions that enabled them.
What if there is a criminal investigation too?
A criminal investigation can actually help your civil case. Criminal proceedings generate evidence — search warrants, grand jury testimony, forensic analysis — that can be used in the civil case. The criminal standard (beyond a reasonable doubt) is higher than the civil standard (preponderance of the evidence), so even if the criminal case does not result in a conviction, the evidence it produced can support your civil claim. We monitor any parallel criminal investigation and coordinate with law enforcement where appropriate, without compromising your family’s civil case.
Is this confidential? I do not want my family’s name in the news.
Hazing cases can be filed under pseudonyms (Jane Doe / John Doe) to protect the privacy of the victim and the family. Courts understand the sensitivity of these cases, and we can request protective orders to keep sensitive information sealed. Your family does not have to become a public story to pursue justice.
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the managing partner of our firm and the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston — a case that is live right now, in Harris County, Texas, and that represents exactly the kind of fight your family may be facing. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and he approaches every case the same way: find the facts, find the proof, find the people who knew and did nothing, and put it all in front of a jury. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, and he has recovered over $50 million for his clients across his career.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney, and he brings something that most plaintiff’s lawyers cannot offer: he spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how reserves are set, how recorded statements are engineered, how surveillance is deployed, and how quick settlement checks are timed to arrive before the medical results do. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We do not get paid unless we win your case. Our fee is a contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. The call is free. And we have 24/7 live staff answering our phones — not an answering service, but people who can take your information and get it to the trial team immediately.
If your family is living through the aftermath of fraternity hazing — at KU, at ATO, or anywhere else — call us. 1-888-ATTY-911. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The evidence freeze starts the day you call. The clock that is running against your family starts working for you the day you call.
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish, and our bilingual staff is ready to help your family in the language you pray in.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case depends on its specific facts, and the information here is general. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.