Ohio Fraternity Hazing at Miami University: What Happened and What Your Family Can Do About It
If you are reading this page at 2 a.m., you already know what happened. Someone you love came home from Oxford changed — or tried to leave a fraternity and was told “the first week is always the hardest.” Maybe you are the student who heard a pledge’s voice shaking on the phone and knew something was wrong. Maybe you are the parent who found the text messages. Whatever brought you here, you are in the right place, and the first thing we want you to know is this: the fear your son felt was not weakness. It was the only rational response to a criminal environment disguised as brotherhood.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. Our lead attorney, Ralph Manginello, is currently litigating a fraternity hazing lawsuit at the university level — the active $10 million-plus Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi case at the University of Houston. That case, like this one, involves young people entrusted to an institution that let predators wear Greek letters. We know what hazing does to a person. We know what it does to a family. And we know what the other side does next, because our associate attorney, Lupe Peña, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their lawyers decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours — before he crossed the table to fight for the people they used to fight against.
Here is what the public record says happened at Miami University’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter, and here is what the law says your family can do about it.
What Happened at Miami University: The Allegations
A formal hazing incident report — not a rumor, not a social media post, but a document filed with the university — describes what a pledge at Sigma Alpha Epsilon endured over multiple days. We are going to state the facts plainly because the facts are the case, and because minimizing them is what the defense will do first.
According to the report, a student was coerced into accepting a bid at Sigma Alpha Epsilon and then hazed for multiple days. He was forced to cut communication with everyone outside the fraternity. He was required to ingest an entire can of chewing tobacco and then do a handstand. He vomited. He was then told to eat the vomit. He did not, but the instruction itself is the act — it is the deliberate infliction of degradation on a person who has been stripped of the ability to refuse.
Pledges were forced to perform wall sits while covered in baby oil, and every time a pledge slipped — and with baby oil on skin, everyone slips — he was forced to drink. That is forced alcohol consumption tied to a physical ordeal, which under Ohio’s Collin’s Law can elevate hazing from a misdemeanor to a felony when it involves forced consumption of drugs or alcohol resulting in serious harm.
They were confined to a basement. Not permitted to leave except for food and showers. That is not a “pledging event.” That is false imprisonment — the unlawful restraint of a person’s liberty — and it is a separate civil tort with its own damages.
And then there is the moment that turns this from hazing into something darker. In a message the alleged victim showed to the reporting student, an active member of the fraternity threatened a pledge. He said he would hold a “12 gauge down his throat and watch his brain splatter.” That is a death threat. It is a vivid, specific description of killing a person with a shotgun. Under Ohio law, that is not a prank. That is assault. It may be aggravated menacing. And in the context of a forced basement confinement where the victim cannot leave, it is the foundation of an intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress claim that meets any definition of “extreme and outrageous” conduct a court has ever written.
The student who reported all of this — a member of a different fraternity — said that during a phone call with the victim, “his voice sounded shaky and fearful.” That is an acute stress response documented in real time by a witness. It is the sound of a person whose nervous system has recognized a threat to his life. It is evidence.
Miami University suspended Sigma Alpha Epsilon. The Office of Community Standards is investigating. That suspension is the university’s own acknowledgment that the allegations, on their face, meet the threshold for immediate action. It is not a legal finding of liability — but it is a documented institutional response to a credible report, and it tells you how seriously the university itself took the facts before anyone called a lawyer.
Collin’s Law: Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Statute and What It Means for Your Family
Ohio rewrote its hazing law in 2021. The statute is called Collin’s Law — Senate Bill 126 — and it was enacted after the death of Stone Foltz, a Bowling Green State University student who died in a fraternity hazing incident involving forced alcohol consumption. Collin’s Law is the reason the legal landscape in Ohio changed, and it is the legal foundation of any civil case arising from what happened at Miami University.
Under Collin’s Law, hazing is both a crime and a civil wrong. Ohio Revised Code § 2903.31 defines hazing and creates criminal liability — a second-degree misdemeanor, elevated to a third-degree felony when forced consumption of drugs or alcohol results in serious harm. Ohio Revised Code § 2307.44 creates civil liability: a person who participates in or permits hazing is answerable in damages to the person harmed.
Ohio’s anti-hazing statute creates civil and criminal liability for those who participate in or permit hazing; a violation constitutes negligence per se — meaning the violation itself is the breach of duty, and the plaintiff does not need to prove separately that the conduct was “unreasonable.”
That last phrase — “negligence per se” — is the load-bearing legal concept. It means that if we prove the hazing occurred, we do not also have to prove it was “negligent” in the abstract. The statute has already told us it is wrong. The violation is the negligence. That is a massive advantage in a civil case because it removes the defense’s favorite argument: “reasonable people could disagree about whether this was hazing.” No, they cannot — not when the conduct matches the statute.
Collin’s Law also does something else that matters: it requires university employees and certain students to report hazing, with criminal penalties for failing to do so. That means if Miami University had prior reports of hazing at SAE that it failed to act on, the university itself may face liability for negligent supervision — and the failure-to-report violation is itself evidence of institutional negligence.
Can You Sue a Fraternity for Hazing in Ohio?
Yes. That is the direct answer, and it is the answer the fraternity’s insurance company does not want you to hear. You can sue the local chapter. You can sue the national organization. You can sue the individual members who participated. And in certain circumstances, you can sue the university. Each defendant is a different fight with a different insurance structure and a different theory of liability, and naming the right entities in the right order is the first critical decision in the case.
The Local Chapter — Direct Liability
The Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter at Miami University is directly liable for the intentional torts committed by its members during official pledging activities. Those torts include:
Assault — the 12-gauge shotgun threat. Under Ohio law, assault occurs when a person intentionally causes another to apprehend imminent harmful or offensive contact. A threat to blow someone’s head off with a shotgun, delivered by an active member during a mandatory pledging event, is assault. The victim’s “shaky and fearful” voice, reported by a witness, is the apprehension element made audible.
Battery — the forced ingestion of chewing tobacco. Forcing a person to consume a substance against his will, to the point of vomiting, is a battery. The physical contact is the substance entering the body under coercion.
False imprisonment — the basement confinement. Pledges were forced to stay in a basement and not permitted to leave except for food and showers. That is the unlawful restraint of personal liberty. The confinement does not have to be violent — it just has to be non-consensual, and a pledge who has been told to cut communication with everyone and is under the control of active members is not free to leave.
Intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED) — all of it, together. Ohio law requires conduct that is “extreme and outrageous” — beyond all possible bounds of decency. Forcing someone to eat their own vomit, threatening them with a shotgun, confining them in a basement for days, covering them in baby oil and forcing them to drink — the totality of this conduct clears that bar without question. The “shaky and fearful” voice is the severe emotional distress element, witnessed and documented.
The National Organization — Vicarious Liability and Negligent Supervision
Sigma Alpha Epsilon’s national organization is a separate defendant with a different theory. The national entity charters the chapter, sets the rules, provides the insurance, and is responsible for ensuring its chapters comply with anti-hazing policies. The national organization’s liability runs through two channels:
Vicarious liability — the national may be held responsible for the acts of its local chapter members under agency principles, particularly where the chapter was conducting official fraternity activities (pledging, initiation) that the national authorized and regulated.
Negligent supervision and retention — the national organization has a duty to monitor its chapters. SAE has a documented national history of hazing incidents — enough that a Greek Life safety consultant can testify to the foreseeability of hazing within this specific organization. If the national knew or should have known that its Miami University chapter was a rogue chapter and failed to pull the charter or intervene, that is negligent supervision. The FIPG (Fraternity Investment Purchasing Group) risk management guidelines provide the standard of care the national was supposed to follow. Violations of those guidelines are evidence of negligence.
Individual Members — Personal Liability
The active members who participated are personally liable. The member who made the shotgun threat is personally liable for assault and potentially for criminal charges under Ohio’s aggravated menacing statute. The members who forced the tobacco ingestion, the wall sits, the drinking, and the confinement are each individually liable for battery, false imprisonment, and IIED. And under Collin’s Law, each participant in hazing faces potential criminal prosecution — a reality that becomes leverage in the civil case, because a member facing criminal exposure has a powerful incentive to testify against the senior pledge trainers who directed the hazing.
Miami University — Potential Institutional Liability
The university’s liability depends on notice. If Miami University had prior reports, complaints, or even rumors of hazing at SAE that it failed to investigate or act on, the university may be liable for negligent supervision or failure to protect. The university’s own Student Code of Conduct sets the standard of care it owes its students. A pattern of prior reports that were ignored or lightly handled is the proof. We pull the university’s prior incident records, its disciplinary history with SAE, and any anonymous reports or complaints filed before this incident. If the university knew, or should have known, that SAE was dangerous and did nothing meaningful, the institution is in the case.
The Evidence Is Dying Right Now — and That Is the First Emergency
Every hazing case lives or dies on evidence that has a short legal life. The single most important thing we can tell you on this page — more important than any legal theory, more important than any dollar figure — is that the proof of what happened at SAE is disappearing on a clock, and that clock is already running.
Snapchat, GroupMe, and Signal logs. Fraternity communications about “lineups,” “rituals,” “pledge duties,” and threats are almost always conducted on ephemeral messaging apps. Snapchat deletes by default. GroupMe messages can be deleted. Signal’s entire purpose is self-destruction. The 12-gauge shotgun threat was delivered in a message — if that message was sent through an app with auto-delete, it may already be gone or may be gone within days. The preservation demand we send the day you call is the only thing that can freeze those records before they erase themselves. This is not a theoretical risk. It is the default behavior of the platforms fraternity members use specifically because they know the messages are incriminating.
Fraternity house surveillance footage. Most residential surveillance systems overwrite on a rolling cycle — commonly 7 to 14 days. The footage that would show pledges entering and being confined in the basement, the times they were there, and who was present is being recorded over right now. A preservation letter demanding the fraternity hold all surveillance footage is the only way to stop that cycle. Once the DVR overwrites, the footage is gone forever, and no subpoena can bring it back.
The university’s investigative report. The Office of Community Standards is conducting an investigation right now. That investigation will produce witness statements — from the reporting student, from the victim, from any pledges or members who cooperate. Those statements are the freshest, most honest accounts we will ever get, because they are taken before anyone has been coached by a lawyer, before the fraternity’s alumni advisory board has had time to circle the wagons, and before the “code of silence” has been reinforced. But once litigation begins, the university may claim FERPA protections or investigative privilege to delay or deny access. We move to get those statements early, while they are still raw and uncoached.
The victim’s clothing and physical evidence. Clothing worn during the hazing may contain biological evidence — tobacco stains, vomit residue, baby oil. This is physical corroboration of the report’s allegations. If the clothing has not been washed, it should be photographed and preserved in its current condition. If it has been washed, the fact that it was worn and what happened to it is still witness testimony — but the physical evidence is better, and it does not last.
Witness testimony before coaching. The junior members of SAE — the newest active members, the ones who were themselves hazed the year before — are the most likely to break the code of silence. They are the least invested in the system, the most likely to feel guilt, and the most vulnerable to criminal exposure if they participated. In our experience, the deposition strategy in a hazing case is to “break the line” — we depose the junior members first, before a unified defense strategy has been solidified, because a 19-year-old who is told by his pledge educator to “say nothing” is not a hardened witness. He is a scared kid who knows what he did was wrong and is terrified of going down for someone else’s decisions. His testimony, locked in early, becomes the lever that moves the case against the senior members who designed and directed the hazing.
The shotgun-threat message. If the “12 gauge” threat was sent via text, GroupMe, Snapchat, or any other platform, the message itself is the single most powerful piece of evidence in this case. It is a defendant’s own words, describing a specific method of killing a specific person. It is admissible. It is undeniable. It is the evidence that turns a hazing case into something a jury will treat as what it is — a criminal act committed under the cover of fraternity tradition. That message must be screenshotted, saved, backed up, and preserved in every available form before the app deletes it or the account that sent it is “deactivated.”
The Insurance Playbook: What the Fraternity’s Lawyers Will Do Next
The fraternity’s insurance carrier — likely a specialized Greek-letter liability program through the FIPG or a comparable surplus-lines carrier — has already opened a file. The claims adjuster assigned to this case is not your friend, and the “friendly check-in” call that will come within days is not a courtesy. It is a recorded statement trap. Lupe Peña sat in the rooms where these strategies are designed. Here is what they will do, and here is how we counter each play.
Play 1: The “Consent” Defense
What they will argue: The victim “chose” to accept the bid. He “chose” to stay. He “chose” to participate. Therefore, he consented, and consent defeats battery and false imprisonment.
Our counter: Consent obtained through coercion is not consent. The report itself says the victim was “coerced and forced into accepting a bid.” A pledge who has been told to cut communication with everyone, who is confined to a basement, who is under the control of active members who have just threatened him with a shotgun, is not freely consenting to anything. Under Ohio law, consent must be knowing and voluntary. The power differential between an active member and a pledge — especially one who has been isolated from his support system — makes true consent impossible. And the “12 gauge” threat alone vitiated any remaining pretense of consent. You cannot consent to being threatened with death.
Play 2: The Quick Settlement Offer
What they will do: A check may arrive fast — sometimes within weeks — with a release of all claims printed on the back or attached to the cover letter. The amount will seem significant to a college student or a family that has never dealt with a serious injury claim. It will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The goal is to close the file before the PTSD diagnosis, before the full psychological evaluation, before the surveillance footage is secured, and before the individual members start pointing fingers at each other.
Our counter: Do not sign anything. Do not cash any check. Do not respond to any “settlement” communication. The release on the back of that check is designed to extinguish every claim your family has — against the chapter, the national, the individual members, and potentially the university — for a number the adjuster picked in the first 48 hours, before the real injuries were diagnosed. The first rule is simple: no document gets signed without a lawyer reading it. The fraternity’s insurer is not offering you money out of generosity — it is offering you money to make the case go away cheaply, and the offer is evidence of how seriously they take their own exposure.
Play 3: The “Rite of Passage” Framing and the Social Media Surveillance
What they will do: The defense will try to frame the conduct as “traditional” hazing — unpleasant but not injurious, something “everyone goes through.” To support this, they will run surveillance on the victim. They will monitor his social media. They will look for photos of him at parties, smiling, “moving on with his life,” attending classes — anything that can be shown to a jury to argue “he wasn’t really that traumatized.” They will hire a private investigator. They will pull his public Instagram, his TikTok, his Snapchat stories.
Our counter: We assume surveillance from day one. We tell the client and the family: do not post about the incident, do not post about being “fine,” do not post about the fraternity, do not post anything that could be screenshot-edited to minimize what happened. The “I’m doing okay” post is the defense’s best exhibit. PTSD is an invisible injury — the person looks fine on the outside while their nervous system is reliving the shotgun threat every time a door slams. The social media surveillance is designed to weaponize the gap between how a trauma survivor looks and how a trauma survivor feels. We close that gap by controlling what is posted and by building the medical record — the therapist’s notes, the PCL-5 scores, the forensic psychologist’s evaluation — that proves the injury the camera cannot see.
Play 4: The “He Didn’t Report It Immediately” Attack
What they will do: The defense will argue that delayed reporting means the conduct wasn’t serious. “If someone held a shotgun to his throat, why didn’t he call 911?”
Our counter: Delayed disclosure is the norm in hazing and in trauma, not the exception. The victim did report — to a member of another fraternity, whose observation that the victim’s voice was “shaky and fearful” is documented in the hazing report. The reporting student took the report seriously enough to file it with the university. The university took it seriously enough to suspend the chapter. The timeline of disclosure — including the fact that the victim was told to cut communication with everyone, which is a deliberate isolation tactic that delays reporting by design — supports, not undermines, the claim. And the DSM-5 itself recognizes “delayed expression” as a formal specifier for PTSD — full symptoms may not appear until six months after the event. Delay is a recognized feature of the injury, not proof the injury doesn’t exist.
Play 5: The Code of Silence and Witness Coordination
What they will do: The fraternity’s alumni advisory board will mobilize. Members will be told to “stick together.” Pledges will be warned that if they talk, they will be blackballed from every Greek organization and every professional network the fraternity’s alumni control. The senior members who designed the hazing will coordinate their stories. By the time depositions happen, every witness may have the same carefully rehearsed version of events: “it was voluntary,” “no one was forced,” “the shotgun comment was a joke.”
Our counter: We depose the junior members first. The newest members — the ones who were hazed last year and are now hazing others — are the weak link in the chain. They are 19 and 20 years old. They have the most to lose from criminal exposure and the least to gain from protecting senior members who used them as instruments. When we depose a junior member and ask, under oath, “Did you hear someone threaten a pledge with a shotgun?” — the answer, from a kid who is terrified of perjury charges, is different from the answer the senior pledge educator would give. One honest deposition from a scared 19-year-old can unravel the entire coordinated defense. That is why we move fast, before the alumni board finishes its coaching.
What This Case Is Worth
Every case is different, and the value of this case depends on facts we will develop through investigation, medical evaluation, and discovery. But the framework for valuing a hazing case in Butler County, Ohio, runs through several distinct categories of damages, and we want you to understand each one.
Economic Damages
These are the costs you can put on a receipt. Past and future psychological counseling — a trauma therapist, a forensic psychologist, potentially a psychiatrist for medication management. If the victim must withdraw from Miami University, transfer to another school, or loses a semester of academic progress, tuition and related costs are recoverable. If the psychological impact affects his ability to work — delayed graduation, lost internship, lost job opportunity — those are lost earning-capacity damages. A life-care planner builds the cost stream; a forensic economist reduces it to present value.
Non-Economic Damages
These are the human costs that no receipt can capture. Pain and suffering from the humiliating rituals — the forced ingestion of tobacco, the command to eat vomit, the wall sits in baby oil, the forced drinking. The severe emotional distress from the confinement — days in a basement, cut off from everyone, under the control of people who just threatened to kill you. The PTSD from the shotgun threat — the nightmares, the hypervigilance, the startle response, the way a door slamming or a deep voice can trigger the body to relive the moment. And what the dossier identifies as a unique category: “fear of impending doom” — the specific, documented terror of believing you are about to die, which is a compensable damage in its own right, separate from the ongoing PTSD.
Punitive Damages
Punitive damages are not compensation. They are punishment. They are awarded when the defendant’s conduct was malicious, reckless, or demonstrates a conscious disregard for the rights and safety of others. The conduct described in the SAE report — forced ingestion of tobacco and vomit, confinement, a shotgun death threat — is the kind of conduct a Butler County jury will likely find was committed with malice. The “some of the guys haze just to haze” comment, attributed to an active member, is an admission that the hazing was gratuitous cruelty, not misguided tradition. That admission supports a punitive damages argument against the local chapter and potentially against the national organization if it knew of the pattern and failed to act. A wealthy national fraternity entity, with significant assets and insurance, is the target where punitive damages have the most financial consequence.
Case Value Range
Based on the facts alleged and Ohio’s legal framework, the case value range runs from approximately $150,000 on the low end to $1,750,000 on the high end. The lower figure assumes psychological trauma that responds to treatment without long-term disability. The higher figure is triggered by diagnosed PTSD from the firearm threat, academic failure or withdrawal, and punitive damages awarded against a national fraternity entity with substantial assets. Where this case falls in that range depends on the medical evidence, the defendant structure, and whether the individual members flip and testify against the senior pledge trainers.
These figures are honest estimates based on case-type analysis, not promises. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Psychological Injury: When a Shotgun Threat Becomes PTSD
The most important evidence in this case is not the tobacco or the baby oil or the basement. It is the 12-gauge shotgun threat. Everything else in the hazing report is degrading, humiliating, and physically harmful. But the death threat is the act that crosses from hazing into the territory of a life-threatening traumatic event — and that is where the medical science of trauma meets the law of damages.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mood. It is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic requirements under the DSM-5, and a survivor must meet every one of them. The first requirement — Criterion A — is exposure to a traumatic event. A death threat delivered in person, by someone who has the power to confine you, is a direct exposure to threatened death. That is Criterion A. The “shaky and fearful” voice reported by the witness is the acute stress response — the body’s autonomic nervous system recognizing an existential threat and flooding the system with adrenaline. That response, when it does not resolve, becomes the foundation of PTSD.
The intrusion symptoms — Criterion B — are the nightmares, the flashbacks, the intrusive memories of the moment the threat was made. The avoidance symptoms — Criterion C — are the streets the victim now avoids, the fraternity houses he cannot walk past, the phone calls he will not make. The negative alterations in cognition and mood — Criterion D — are the self-blame (“I should have left sooner”), the negative beliefs about the world (“no one is safe”), the loss of interest in activities, the emotional numbness. The arousal symptoms — Criterion E — are the sleep disturbance, the irritability, the hypervigilance, the exaggerated startle response, the concentration problems that can derail an academic career.
All of these must last more than one month (Criterion F), cause functional impairment (Criterion G), and not be attributable to substance use or another medical condition (Criterion H).
The defense will call this “subjective.” They will say the victim “looks fine.” They will point to social media posts showing him at class or at dinner with friends. They will hire their own expert to argue the symptoms are exaggerated or pre-existing. The counter is the same counter we use in every invisible-injury case: the injury is real because the medicine says it is real. The DSM-5 says it. The VA’s National Center for PTSD says it. The validated clinical instruments — the CAPS-5, the PCL-5 — measure it objectively. And the person who knew the victim before, who sees him across the dinner table now, can testify to the change in a way no defense expert sitting in a conference room 200 miles away can rebut.
There is also a concept in trauma medicine that the defense will exploit and that we must address: the “frozen victim” myth. When the body recognizes it cannot escape, it can lock up — tonic immobility. The muscles freeze. The voice will not come. The person cannot move or scream even though no one is physically holding them. Roughly 70% of sexual assault survivors experience significant tonic immobility. The same mechanism operates in any life-threatening situation where the person is trapped — and a pledge confined to a basement, under the control of active members, who has just been threatened with a shotgun, is trapped. The defense will say “he didn’t fight back” or “he didn’t run.” The science says: the body’s own survival reflex can make fighting and running physically impossible. Freezing is not consent. Freezing is the body doing what it has to do to stay alive.
A forensic psychologist evaluates the victim, administers the CAPS-5 and PCL-5, and testifies to the diagnosis and its causal connection to the hazing. That expert’s testimony is what converts an “invisible” injury into a number a jury can hold in its hand. The cost of that evaluation, and the cost of the treatment it prescribes, are themselves economic damages — and the future cost of treatment, projected across the victim’s life expectancy by a life-care planner, is the economic damages figure that anchors the demand.
How a Hazing Case Is Actually Built
The work of a hazing case is not a single event. It is a sequence, and each step depends on the one before it. Here is how we build it, from the day you call to the day a number is on the table.
Week one: the preservation letter. The day you call our office, a litigation-hold and evidence-preservation letter goes out — to the local chapter, to the national organization, to Miami University, and to any third-party platforms (Snapchat, GroupMe) that may hold relevant data. That letter orders every recipient to freeze all surveillance footage, all messaging logs, all internal communications, all membership records, all incident reports, all disciplinary files. It is the document that converts “routine deletion” into “spoliation of evidence” — and spoliation, when proven, allows the court to instruct the jury that they may assume the destroyed evidence was as bad for the defense as the plaintiff says it was.
Weeks two through four: the medical evaluation. The victim is evaluated by a forensic psychologist — not a general therapist, but a specialist trained in trauma assessment and courtroom testimony. The CAPS-5 and PCL-5 are administered. The diagnosis is documented. If the victim is in active crisis, treatment begins immediately and the treatment records become part of the evidentiary record. The therapist’s contemporaneous notes — the ones written before any litigation strategy exists, before any defense expert has issued a report — are the most credible medical evidence in the case because they predate any “litigation motive” accusation.
Weeks four through twelve: the investigation. We pull the university’s prior incident history with SAE. We pull the national organization’s internal disciplinary records for this chapter. We identify every member present during the hazing — who was in the basement, who directed the wall sits, who brought the chewing tobacco, who sent the shotgun threat, who said “some of the guys haze just to haze.” We identify the reporting student and the outcry witnesses. We identify any prior complaints against SAE at Miami University — from other pledges, from parents, from the university’s own Greek Life office. Each prior complaint is a brick in the wall of foreseeability.
Discovery: the depositions. We depose the junior members first. The strategy is “breaking the line” — the newest active members, the ones who were hazed themselves last year, are the most likely to tell the truth because they have the most to lose from criminal exposure and the least to gain from protecting the senior members who used them. One honest deposition from a 19-year-old who says “yes, I heard the shotgun threat, and I was scared too” can collapse the coordinated defense. Then we depose the senior pledge trainers, the chapter officers, and the members who made the threats. By the time we reach them, the junior members’ testimony has already locked in the facts.
Expert witnesses. A Greek Life safety consultant testifies about the foreseeability of hazing within SAE nationally — the documented pattern, the prior incidents, the industry’s own risk management guidelines that were violated. A forensic psychologist testifies to the PTSD diagnosis and its causal connection to the hazing. If the victim has suffered academic harm, a vocational expert may quantify the lost earning capacity. The experts convert the case from “allegations” to “proof.”
The demand. When the evidence is assembled, the medical evaluation is complete, and the depositions have locked in the facts, we build the demand. The economic damages — treatment costs, tuition loss, lost earning capacity — are itemized. The non-economic damages — pain and suffering, humiliation, PTSD, fear of impending doom — are framed. The punitive damages argument is built on the malice inherent in forcing a person to eat vomit and threatening them with a shotgun. The demand goes to every defendant and every carrier, and the number is built from the ground up — every line item traced to a medical record, a billing statement, an expert report, or a deposition transcript.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are reading this page in the hours or days after the hazing report, here is the practical roadmap. Some of it you may have already done. Some of it is urgent.
Do seek medical and psychological evaluation. If the victim has not been evaluated by a mental health professional, do so immediately — not because it helps the case, but because it helps the person. A trauma-informed therapist or psychiatrist can begin the assessment process, start treatment if needed, and document the symptoms in their earliest, most genuine form. Those first clinical notes — written before any lawyer is involved, before any insurance adjuster has called, before any fraternity alumnus has offered to “handle this internally” — are the most powerful medical evidence in the case because they predate any claim of litigation motive.
Do preserve every piece of digital evidence. Screenshots of the shotgun-threat message. The GroupMe or Snapchat logs. Any texts between the victim and active members. Any photos or videos from the hazing. Back everything up to a cloud service the victim controls. Do not rely on the phone — phones get lost, replaced, or “accidentally reset.” The shotgun-threat message is the single most important piece of evidence in this case. Save it in three places.
Do document the victim’s condition. Keep a daily journal — not a legal document, but a honest record of how the victim is sleeping, eating, functioning, feeling. Note nightmares, anxiety, avoidance behaviors, startle responses, mood changes. This contemporaneous record is evidence of the injury’s progression and its impact on daily life. Family members who observe changes should write down what they see — the dinner-table observations that no scan can capture.
Do not sign anything from the fraternity, its insurer, or its alumni association. No release. No “settlement.” No “agreement to handle this internally.” No “gag order” dressed up as a “mutual non-disparagement clause.” If a check arrives, do not cash it. If a fraternity alumnus calls and offers to “make this go away,” do not engage. Every one of these communications is designed to extinguish your rights for a fraction of their value. Every document you sign without a lawyer reading it is a door closing that cannot be reopened.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone. Not to the fraternity’s insurance adjuster. Not to the fraternity’s attorney. Not to a “neutral investigator” hired by the national organization. Not to the university’s investigator without first understanding how the university’s process interacts with your civil claim. A recorded statement is not a conversation — it is a transcript being built for the sole purpose of being quoted against you later. What you say to an insurance adjuster can and will be used to minimize your claim. The rule is simple: no statements without counsel.
Do not post about the incident on social media. Not by the victim. Not by family members. No photos. No commentary. No “feeling okay” updates. No anger at the fraternity. The defense will pull every public post, and a single photo of the victim smiling at dinner can be presented to a jury as “proof” that the trauma was not severe. Social media is a surveillance tool, and the safest posture is silence until the case is resolved.
Do not let fraternity members or their parents contact the victim. They will try. The report itself says that when the victim tried to drop out, members tried to convince him to stay — “the first week is always the hardest,” “we all had to go through it.” That contact will continue, and it will escalate. Alumni parents may call the victim’s parents. The chapter president may text. A “concerned brother” may show up. All of it is designed to pressure the victim into silence. Every contact should be documented and redirected to counsel. The family’s only response to any outreach from the fraternity or its representatives should be: “Contact our attorney.”
Why This Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — he knows how to find facts that people have tried to bury. He is the lead counsel in the active $10 million-plus University of Houston hazing lawsuit — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi — filed in Harris County in November 2025. That case, like this one, is about a university and a fraternity that failed a young person. The medicine is the same. The corporate-accountability fight is the same. The mechanism is different, but the transfer is direct: we know how hazing cases are built because we are building one right now. You can read more about Ralph’s background on his attorney page.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before he joined this side of the table. He knows how adjusters set reserves in the first 48 hours — before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered to get the victim to say “I’m feeling okay.” He knows how the surveillance is run, how the IME doctor is selected, and how the valuation software discounts pain it cannot see. He uses that inside knowledge for the people the insurance industry used to use it against. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe’s background on his attorney page.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% if the case resolves before trial, 40% if it goes to trial. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911, and our staff answers 24 hours a day — not an answering service, live people. Hablamos Español.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts, and the specific deadlines, strategies, and defendants in your case must be evaluated by an attorney admitted to practice in Ohio. We take cases in Ohio working with local counsel as required. If we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you — and we will point you to someone who is. But if a fraternity at Miami University forced your son to eat chewing tobacco until he vomited, told him to eat the vomit, held him in a basement for days, and put a 12-gauge shotgun in his face, then what happened to him was not hazing. It was a crime. And the law gives your family a way to answer it.
Contact us or call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s statute of limitations for personal injury is generally two years from the date of the incident, under Ohio Revised Code § 2305.10. For a hazing case, the clock typically starts on the date of the last hazing incident. In some cases, the discovery rule may apply — the clock may start when the victim discovered or should have discovered the connection between the harm and the hazing. Because hazing involves psychological injuries that may not manifest immediately, and because the victim was isolated from communication (which can affect when they “knew or should have known”), the accrual date can be a contested issue. Do not assume you have plenty of time — two years passes faster than most families expect, and the evidence that proves the case disappears on a much shorter clock.
Can the fraternity member who made the shotgun threat be criminally prosecuted?
Yes. The 12-gauge threat — “hold a 12 gauge down his throat and watch his brain splatter” — is not just a civil wrong. Under Ohio law, threatening another person with a deadly weapon can constitute aggravated menacing, assault, or depending on the circumstances, more serious charges. Collin’s Law itself creates criminal liability for hazing, elevated to a third-degree felony when forced consumption of drugs or alcohol results in serious harm. The Butler County Prosecutor’s Office has jurisdiction over criminal charges in Oxford. A criminal case and a civil case can proceed simultaneously — the criminal case is the state’s, the civil case is yours, and the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination means that a member who invokes it in a civil deposition is effectively confirming the conduct occurred.
What if my son “agreed” to the hazing — can he still sue?
Yes. Consent obtained through coercion is not legally valid consent. The report says the victim was “coerced and forced into accepting a bid.” He was told to cut communication with everyone — a deliberate isolation tactic. He was confined to a basement. He was under the control of active members who had just threatened him with a shotgun. A person in that position cannot freely consent. Under Ohio law, consent must be knowing, intelligent, and voluntary. The power differential between active members and pledges — especially one who has been isolated and threatened — makes true consent impossible. You cannot consent to being threatened with death. You cannot consent to being imprisoned. The “he chose to join” defense fails because the choice was not free.
Will the national Sigma Alpha Epsilon organization pay, or just the local chapter?
Both can be liable, but through different theories. The local chapter is directly liable for the intentional torts committed by its members. The national organization is liable through vicarious liability (the chapter was conducting official fraternity activities the national authorized) and through negligent supervision (the national had a duty to monitor its chapters and failed to enforce anti-hazing policies). The national organization is also the entity with the deepest pockets — it carries significant insurance and has substantial assets. The local chapter, by contrast, may have limited assets and a thinner insurance policy. Reaching the national is often the difference between a meaningful recovery and a hollow judgment against a broke local entity. The national organization’s coverage structure is a central question we answer in discovery.
Can Miami University be held responsible for what a fraternity did?
Potentially, yes — but only if the university had prior notice of hazing at SAE and failed to act. The university’s liability runs through negligent supervision or failure to protect. If Miami University had received prior complaints, reports, or even informal tips about hazing at SAE and did not meaningfully investigate or intervene, the university may be liable. The university’s own Student Code of Conduct sets the standard of care. Collin’s Law requires university employees and certain students to report hazing — if the university failed to act on prior reports, that failure is itself a violation and is evidence of institutional negligence. We pull the university’s prior disciplinary records with SAE, any anonymous reports filed before this incident, and the Greek Life office’s history with this chapter. A pattern of prior reports that were ignored or lightly handled is the proof.
What if my son is afraid to come forward because the fraternity will retaliate?
Retaliation against a hazing victim or a reporting witness is itself a separate wrong, and in many contexts it is independently actionable. The fear is real — the fraternity’s alumni network, social consequences, and the “code of silence” are genuine forces. But the law provides tools. The preservation letter freezes evidence before it can be destroyed. The deposition process locks in testimony before witnesses can be coached. And the criminal exposure of individual members creates leverage — a 19-year-old who participated in the hazing is more likely to testify truthfully when the alternative is being charged under Collin’s Law. The code of silence works because it has never been challenged. It breaks when one person speaks and the legal process protects them.
What does a hazing lawsuit cost?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33% if the case resolves before trial, 40% if it goes to trial. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The preservation letter goes out the day you call at no cost to you. Expert witnesses — the forensic psychologist, the Greek Life safety consultant — are retained by the firm and paid from the recovery, not out of your pocket. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing for our time. How contingency fees work is explained plainly on our video page, but the short version is: your family’s financial risk is zero.
What if my son wants to transfer to another school — can he still sue?
Yes. Transferring schools does not waive your legal rights. The harm occurred at Miami University, the defendants are in Ohio, and the statute of limitations runs from the date of the incident regardless of where the victim currently lives. Tuition paid to Miami University, the cost of transferring, any lost academic credit, and the disruption to the victim’s educational trajectory are all economic damages that the lawsuit can recover. The decision to transfer is a personal one — some victims need to leave the environment where the trauma occurred; others want to stay and assert their right to be safe on their own campus. Either choice is valid, and either choice is compatible with a legal claim.
Is what happened at SAE actually “hazing” under Ohio law, or is it something more serious?
It is both. Under Collin’s Law, hazing includes any act that subjects a person to physical injury, mental harm, or degradation for the purpose of affiliation with an organization. The forced tobacco ingestion, the wall sits in baby oil, the forced drinking, and the basement confinement all meet the statutory definition of hazing. But the 12-gauge shotgun threat is also assault, potentially aggravated menacing, and possibly a more serious criminal offense. The case is a hazing case because the conduct occurred in the context of fraternity pledging. But it is also an assault case, a false imprisonment case, and an intentional infliction of emotional distress case. The legal theory matters because different theories reach different defendants and trigger different insurance coverage. We plead all of them.
How do I protect the text message where the shotgun threat was made?
Screenshot it immediately. Take multiple screenshots from different angles showing the sender’s name, the date and time, and the full text of the message. Back the screenshots up to a cloud service the victim controls — not the phone itself, which can be lost, replaced, or “accidentally reset.” If the message was sent through Snapchat, GroupMe, or another app with auto-delete, check whether the message has already expired — and if it has not, screenshot it now before it does. Do not forward the message to anyone outside counsel. Do not confront the sender. Do not respond. The message is evidence — preserve it, photograph it, and let us handle the rest. The preservation letter we send will also demand that the platform and the sender preserve the message, but the screenshot you take today is the backup that does not depend on anyone else’s compliance.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day. Hablamos Español.