East Lansing, Michigan: MSU Fraternity Hazing, Sexual Abuse, and the University That Looked Away
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. in an East Lansing dorm room, or from a parent’s kitchen table in a town hours from campus, you already know something went wrong at a fraternity house on or near Michigan State University. Maybe your son came home with a mark across his face and a story he cannot finish telling. Maybe your daughter walked out of a frat house at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday and told a stranger she had just been sexually assaulted. Maybe you are the one who was hit, or curb-stomped, or forced into a basement, and you are trying to figure out whether what happened to you was a crime, a violation, or something the law can actually reach.
It was all three. And we can help. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes Michigan cases, and right now we are looking at what happened across multiple fraternities at MSU — Pi Kappa Alpha, Theta Delta Chi, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Tau Gamma, and Alpha Phi — where reports of violent hazing and sexual abuse were filed by the university’s own senior administrators, and where MSU’s own police department and Title IX office chose not to investigate, citing a “lack of named victims looking to participate.” We have an active hazing lawsuit against a fraternity right now — the $10 million Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston case, where our managing partner Ralph Manginello is lead counsel — and we know how these institutions behave when someone finally holds them to account. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
The Pattern of Negligence at MSU Fraternities
Here is what the public record already shows, and it is ugly.
Between October 2023 and April 2024, a cascade of reports flowed into MSU’s police department and Title IX office describing violence and sexual abuse inside fraternity houses recognized by the university. The reports did not come from anonymous cranks. The October 2023 report — the one describing hazing and possible sexual abuse of pledges in the Pike basement — was filed by a cadre of MSU’s most senior student-life administrators, including the then-Senior Vice President for Student Life and Engagement, the Dean of Students, the Director of the Office of Student Support and Accountability, the Assistant Director for Student Organization Conduct, and the Director for Fraternity and Sorority Life. They filed it, in their own words, “in fulfillment of their duties as mandatory reporters.”
A spokesperson for the university said the report was “gathered and provided” to the East Lansing Police Department, calling it standard protocol for alleged criminal misconduct at off-campus frat houses. But when East Lansing Police were asked about this, a department spokesperson said he “asked a few staff members, and no one is aware of what you are referring to.”
That gap — MSU claiming it handed the case to city police, and city police having no idea what MSU is talking about — is not a clerical error. It is the jurisdictional black hole where these cases go to die, and it is the first thing a civil lawsuit forces into the daylight.
The reports that followed were equally disturbing and equally ignored:
A March 2024 report described a pledge being smacked in the face with an open hand twice, leaving a mark across his face and neck. He was “thrown down into the basement” and his phone was taken away. The report says someone told the victim “they needed to tough it up after being hit.” That person ended up in the emergency room. MSU Police did not investigate, citing a lack of participating victims.
A February 2024 report described people at Pike being hit in the face with a “boxing glove.” The reporter appeared to work in MSU’s Student Life and Engagement office and referenced finding a student’s identity through case-management software called Advocate — a program MSU housing staff use for conduct issues, disputes, and students in crisis. Even with a named student identified through the university’s own software, MSU Police did not pursue an investigation.
An April 2024 report described an anonymous witness who “witnessed a poor kid get curb stomped and absolutely beat up for no apparent reason” at Pike on Halloween night. The witness wrote that they “could hear screams coming from the kid” and that the perpetrators “beat the living s— out of him, not letting him stop until he was almost passed out.” The witness waited months to come forward because they were “scared for my own personal safety.” Like every other report, it was not investigated.
Beyond Pike, the same pattern repeated at other Greek organizations. A sexual assault at Theta Delta Chi — a young woman walked out of the house around 7 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and told a passerby she had just been assaulted inside. A sexual assault at Sigma Tau Gamma during welcome week in fall 2022, where the victim was later confronted by a man asking “if he was kicked out of [redacted] due to her.” Third- and fourth-hand reports about Sigma Alpha Epsilon and Alpha Phi, including an apparent video of the reported conduct. In every single case, MSU Police and the Title IX office chose not to investigate.
The throughline is not subtle. It is the absence of resolution. And the excuse — “lack of named victims looking to participate” — is not a legal barrier. It is a choice the university made, and a choice that Michigan law and federal civil-rights law may well call deliberately indifferent.
Understanding Your Rights Under Michigan’s Hazing Laws
Michigan has a statute that exists for exactly this situation. It is called Garret’s Law, and it specifically defines hazing as a criminal act when it causes physical injury. The law provides a statutory basis for civil claims when someone is hurt — meaning that a fraternity that hazes its pledges is not just violating university policy or social norms. It is breaking Michigan law.
Here is what this means in plain terms: when a pledge is smacked in the face, thrown into a basement, curb-stomped, or hit with a boxing glove, the people who did it committed a crime under Michigan law. And the fraternity — the local chapter, the national organization, and the house corporation that owns the building where it happened — can be held civilly liable for the injuries that crime caused.
Michigan follows a pure comparative negligence system, which matters here in a specific way. In an ordinary injury case, your own share of fault reduces your recovery. But Michigan courts have repeatedly rejected the “consent” defense in hazing cases, and for good reason: the power imbalance of the fraternity hierarchy — pledges answer to brothers, brothers control the process, pledges want to belong — vitiates true consent. A pledge who “agreed” to be hit is not legally the same as a person who freely chose to be struck. The fraternity hierarchy is built on coercion dressed up as tradition, and Michigan law recognizes that.
The statute of limitations for personal injury in Michigan is generally three years. But Michigan’s recent legislative changes have extended the windows for reporting sexual assault, particularly where institutional concealment is involved — and when a university receives mandatory reports of sexual abuse from its own vice presidents and still does nothing, the argument that the institution concealed the danger is not a stretch. If you were a minor when it happened, the clock may not have started yet. The specific deadline for your case depends on the facts, and we will tell you honestly whether time is running.
One more thing about Michigan law that matters: the “loss of educational opportunity” is a damage category unique to Title IX cases. When a student is hazed or sexually assaulted and their academic performance, mental health, or entire college career is derailed, the lost tuition, the lost semester, the transferred credits, the changed major, the dropped-out year — all of it is compensable. A fraternity beating is not just a battery. It is the theft of an education, and the law can make the institutions that allowed it pay for what was stolen.
Title IX: Why MSU Is Liable for Failure to Investigate
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is the federal law that governs MSU’s response to sexual violence on campus or in programs the university controls. The legal standard that matters is “deliberate indifference” — when a university has actual knowledge of sexual abuse or harassment and responds in a manner that is clearly unreasonable, it can be held liable for the harm that followed.
Here is what makes the MSU situation so damning: the university had actual knowledge. Not from a rumor. Not from a tip. From its own Senior Vice President, its Dean of Students, its Director of Student Support and Accountability, its Assistant Director for Student Organization Conduct, and its Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life. Five of the most senior student-life officials at Michigan State University filed a formal report saying pledges were being hazed and possibly sexually abused in a fraternity basement. These are mandatory reporters — people the law requires to report when they know a student is in danger. They did their job. The system below them did not.
When MSU Police and the Title IX office closed every case citing “a lack of named victims looking to participate,” they were making a choice. And that choice — to treat a victim’s silence or fear as a reason not to investigate, rather than as a reason to investigate harder — is the exact kind of response courts have called deliberately indifferent. A “victim-centered” approach does not mean “abandonment of investigation.” It means handling the investigation with care for the victim. MSU appears to have confused the two, and the distinction is the difference between compliance and liability.
The Clery Act adds another layer. It requires MSU to maintain a public crime log and issue timely warnings about dangers on campus — a duty that was arguably breached when reports of a violent “curb stomping” were received and no warning was issued to the campus community. The newly signed Stop Campus Hazing Act goes further, requiring colleges to publicly post statistics and information about hazing by affiliated organizations like Greek Life. When MSU’s spokesperson was asked whether the university would handle these issues differently in light of the new law, she declined to answer.
Ingham County — where MSU sits and where a civil lawsuit would be filed — has juries that have grown increasingly sensitive to institutional failures in the wake of MSU’s high-profile historical misconduct cases. The community knows what happens when a university looks the other way. A jury of East Lansing residents is not going to be impressed by the argument that the police could not act because no victim raised their hand.
The Mandatory Reporter Paradox — MSU’s Own Leaders Reported, and Still Nothing Happened
This is the fact we would lead with at trial, and it is the fact that separates this case from an ordinary negligence claim.
The five MSU administrators who filed the October 2023 report are mandatory reporters under Michigan law. That means the law requires them to report known or suspected abuse. They did. They went to the university’s misconduct hotline, they named the fraternity, they described the basement hazing, and they referenced outside groups that had suspected sexual abuse against pledges. They followed the law.
Then the university’s own police department — a department that answers to MSU, not to the city — closed the case because there was no named victim willing to participate. The Title IX office did the same. And when a university spokesperson was later asked to explain, she claimed the cases were forwarded to the East Lansing Police Department.
A spokesperson for East Lansing Police, asked about her claim, told reporters: “no one is aware of what you are referring to.”
So the report went from MSU’s most senior administrators to MSU’s own police department, which closed it. Then MSU claimed it went to the city police, who say they never received it. And in that gap — between the mandatory reporters who did their job and the investigators who did not — the pledges who were being hazed in that basement kept being hazed.
This is not a system that failed by accident. This is a system that was built to produce exactly this outcome: a report filed, a box checked, a case closed, and nobody outside the university ever learning what happened. The fraternity president confirmed the playbook when he told reporters the allegations had all been “investigated and proven untrue by the University and the Intrafraternity Council” — a claim that MSU’s own spokesperson contradicted, noting that the Interfraternity Council does not investigate such claims and that the Office of Student Support and Accountability is the body that would. When pressed for the formal letters of resolution that MSU sends fraternities at the conclusion of an investigation, the president did not respond.
The mandatory reporter paradox is this: the people inside the institution who saw the danger and reported it have no power to make the institution act on what it knows. The power to act sits with the police department that answers to the university and the Title IX office that answers to the university. When both choose passivity, the only force left that can make the institution move is a civil lawsuit — because a lawsuit is the one thing the institution cannot close by citing a lack of participating victims.
Who Can Be Held Responsible — The Defendant Map
A hazing and sexual abuse case at a major university is never one defendant. It is a stack, and each layer has its own role, its own insurance, and its own reason it should pay. Here is the map:
Pi Kappa Alpha — Gamma Rho Chapter (the local fraternity): Direct liability for assault, battery, and negligent supervision of the pledging process. The local chapter is the entity whose members committed the acts, whose officers controlled the basement, and whose culture produced the hazing. It may carry its own liability coverage, but it may also be thinly capitalized — which is why we look up the chain.
Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity (the national organization): Vicarious liability and negligent oversight of chapter operations. National fraternities know hazing happens. They publish anti-hazing policies, they send risk-management consultants, they collect insurance premiums from local chapters — and when a chapter under their banner hazes a pledge into the emergency room, the national organization’s failure to enforce its own rules is its own negligence. The national typically carries a liability tower that dwarfs what the local chapter can pay.
Michigan State University: Deliberate indifference under Title IX and failure to act on mandatory reports from its own officials. MSU is the institution that recognized these fraternities, that placed them under its Office of Student Support and Accountability, that received reports from its own vice president, and that chose not to investigate. The university’s liability is not vicarious — it is direct. It knew, and it did nothing.
Individual perpetrators: Primary liability for physical assault, the “curb stomping,” and sexual abuse. Civil discovery — the forced production of documents and sworn testimony — is how we unmask them. We file under “John Doe” pseudonyms to protect our clients’ identities while using the legal process to identify the individuals who committed the acts. The fraternity hierarchy that vitiates consent also identifies the perpetrators: the brothers who ran the basement, the pledge educator who organized the lineup, the president who knew.
Fraternity house corporations: Premises liability for allowing dangerous criminal activity to persist on the property. The entity that owns the fraternity house — often a separate alumni-controlled corporation — owes a duty to the people who enter that building. When the basement is used for hazing that sends someone to the ER, and the house corporation knew or should have known, the premises liability theory runs alongside the negligence claim.
The coverage tower in a case like this can be substantial. The national fraternity typically carries layered insurance — a primary general liability policy, then excess layers stacked above it. The university has its own coverage. The house corporation may carry premises liability. When the full stack is identified, the recovery ceiling can be far higher than what any single defendant could pay alone.
What This Is Worth — Compensation for Physical and Emotional Trauma
Every case is different, and we will not tell you a number we cannot stand behind. But the framework for valuing these cases is built from real, identifiable cost categories, and the range we work from — based on the facts of this incident and Michigan’s legal landscape — runs from a floor of approximately $250,000 for an individual assault claim with clear medical records up to $3,500,000 or more where systemic deliberate indifference by MSU and the national fraternity regarding sexual abuse is proven. In the post-Nassar MSU environment, multi-million-dollar settlements for institutional failure to protect students from sexual violence are not theoretical — they are the precedent.
Here is how a real number is built:
Economic damages — the things you can put on a receipt. Emergency room costs from the basement hazing. Ongoing psychological therapy, which for sexual assault and severe hazing trauma can run for years. Lost tuition if a semester was derailed. Lost future earnings if academic performance or a career path was sidetracked. The life-care plan, built by a certified planner, that prices out every therapy session, every medication, every academic accommodation, and every year of care the injury will require — reduced to present value by a forensic economist the way the Supreme Court required in Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp. v. Pfeifer.
Non-economic damages — the things no receipt can measure. Physical pain and suffering. The permanent scarring from a “curb stomping.” The severe emotional distress and PTSD that follows sexual abuse. The nightmares, the hypervigilance, the classrooms a survivor cannot walk into, the relationships that strained under the weight of what happened. In the largest study of its kind, rape was found to be the single most PTSD-generating event researchers measured — more likely to cause lasting post-traumatic stress than combat, than a car wreck, than a natural disaster. When a fraternity and a university allow sexual abuse to happen through deliberate indifference, the lifelong harm that follows is not a surprise. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
Punitive damages — punishment, not compensation. When the fraternity’s conduct was willful and wanton — and a pledge who is smacked, thrown into a basement, and told to “tough it up” while brothers watch describes conduct that meets that bar — Michigan law permits exemplary damages designed to punish and deter. The national fraternity that knew its chapters haze and did not stop it, the university that received reports from its own vice president and closed the file — punitive damages are what juries use to send the message that this does not happen again.
Loss of educational opportunity — the Title IX damage category that is unique to campus cases. The lost semester. The transferred credits. The changed major. The dropped-out year. The degree that takes five years instead of four. The career trajectory that bent because a student was too traumatized to sit in a lecture hall. All of it is compensable, and all of it is real.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the framework is the framework, and the institutions on the other side of this case have the resources to pay what the harm is worth.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Disappears
This is the section that decides whether your case can be won, and it is the reason the day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
MSU ‘Advocate’ Software Records: The case-management software MSU housing staff use for conduct issues and students in crisis contains digital footprints of these reports long before they reached formal police channels. The February 2024 boxing-glove report references a reporter who found a student’s identity through Advocate. These records prove “actual notice” to university staff — proof that MSU knew about specific students and specific incidents. Risk level: HIGH. Data can be purged, overwritten, or “archived” on the university’s own retention schedule. We send a preservation demand immediately.
Emergency Room Medical Records: The March 2024 report says someone was taken to the emergency room after the basement hazing. ER records are the forensic proof of physical trauma — facial marks, neck injuries, fractures, the pattern of injury that tells the story of what happened in that basement. Risk level: MEDIUM. Records are stable but need immediate subpoena. Hospital retention schedules vary, and a delay of months can mean a records “purge” that destroys the contemporaneous documentation of the injury.
Social Media and GroupMe Logs: Fraternities coordinate hazing “lineups” and “basement sessions” through encrypted or ephemeral messaging apps — GroupMe, Snapchat, Signal, the chapter group chat. These messages identify who was present, who organized the hazing, who told the victim to “tough it up.” Risk level: EXTREME. Students will delete apps and messages the moment news breaks or a lawyer calls. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the entire case, and a preservation letter has to go out within days — not months.
MSUPD and ELPD Communication Logs: The communication between MSU Police and East Lansing Police — or the conspicuous absence of it — reveals the “jurisdictional gap” that MSU’s spokesperson claimed existed and ELPD denied. These logs are critical for establishing MSU’s negligence and the failure to refer criminal acts for investigation. Risk level: HIGH. Police dispatch records and CAD logs have their own retention schedules, and once those windows pass, the proof that MSU claimed it forwarded cases it never forwarded can legally disappear.
Surveillance footage from fraternity houses: Cameras that may have captured the Halloween-night curb stomping, the comings and goings at the Pike house, or the young woman walking out of Theta Delta Chi at 7 a.m. Risk level: EXTREME. Most security systems overwrite on a rolling loop — often 30 to 90 days. Once overwritten, the footage is gone forever, and no lawsuit can bring it back.
The preservation letter is the single most important thing we do in the first week. It goes to MSU, to the fraternity, to the house corporation, to the camera vendor, and to every third party that holds a piece of the proof. It orders them, in writing, to freeze every record, every message, every frame of footage. If they destroy evidence after receiving that letter, the law gives the jury an adverse-inference instruction — meaning the jury can assume the lost evidence was as bad as we say it was. That is leverage, and it begins the day you call.
The Playbook — What the Fraternity and the University Will Try
We know what the other side does in these cases because we have been on the inside of the insurance industry and we have litigated hazing cases. Here are the plays you should expect, and here is how each one is countered.
Play 1: “There is no participating victim, so there is nothing to investigate.”
This is MSU’s go-to move — the one they used to close every single report. It sounds reasonable until you realize it is a circular trap: the victims do not come forward because they are terrified of retaliation, and the university uses their fear as the reason to do nothing, which makes the next victim even less likely to come forward. The counter: a civil lawsuit does not require a “participating victim” in the police sense. We file as John Doe. We use discovery to identify the perpetrators. We subpoena the records. The university cannot close a civil case by saying “no one came forward” — because the person who came forward is the one who filed the lawsuit.
Play 2: “The pledge consented to the hazing.”
The fraternity will argue that pledging is voluntary, that the student chose to join, that the activities were part of a tradition everyone goes through. Michigan law rejects this. The power imbalance of the fraternity hierarchy — pledges want to belong, brothers control belonging, the cost of refusal is social exile — vitiates true consent. A pledge who “agrees” to be hit is not freely choosing to be struck. He is choosing between being hit and being humiliated. That is not consent. It is coercion, and Michigan courts have recognized the difference.
Play 3: “These allegations were investigated and proven untrue.”
The Pike president already tried this one. He told reporters the reports were “investigated and proven untrue by the University and the Intrafraternity Council.” MSU’s own spokesperson contradicted him — the IFC does not investigate such claims, and the Office of Student Support and Accountability is the body that would. When pressed for the formal letters of resolution that MSU sends at the conclusion of an investigation, the president went silent. The counter is simple: produce the letter. If the investigation happened, there is a letter. If there is no letter, there was no investigation. And if there was no investigation, the claim that the allegations were “proven untrue” is a lie.
Play 4: “This could be a mad ex-girlfriend, somebody joking around, or another fraternity.”
The Pike president said this too — suggesting bad-faith motives in those who report allegations. This is the playbook’s ugliest play: smear the accuser, imply the reports are fabrications driven by spite or rivalry, and hope the stigma of a “false accusation” narrative silences the next person who might come forward. The counter is the evidence. Five MSU senior administrators did not file a report because of a “mad ex-girlfriend.” A witness who waited months because they were “scared for my own personal safety” did not describe a curb stomping because they were “joking around.” The reports come from people with nothing to gain and everything to lose, and the fraternity’s attempt to discredit them is itself evidence of the culture that produced the hazing.
Play 5: The quick settlement offer.
After the first reports go public, the fraternity’s insurance carrier may send a representative to offer a fast, small check with a release attached. This check will arrive before the medical results are in, before the psychological evaluation is done, before the full scope of the harm is known. The release will be written to close every door — every future claim, every unnamed perpetrator, every theory of liability against the national fraternity and the university. The counter: never sign anything from the other side without your own lawyer. A check that arrives before the MRI results is not generosity. It is a purchase — and the thing it is buying is your silence.
The Medicine of Hazing — What the Body Goes Through and What the Records Prove
The physical injuries from these reports are specific and severe. A “curb stomping” — where the victim’s head is forced against a curb and struck — can cause facial fractures, dental destruction, traumatic brain injury, and permanent scarring. The emergency room visit described in the March 2024 report is the contemporaneous medical proof of what happened in that basement, and the ER records will document the injuries in the language of medicine, not the language of a fraternity’s public-relations team.
But the deeper harm in these cases is often the one you cannot see on a scan. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria under the DSM-5, and a survivor has to meet every one of them: the traumatic event itself, the intrusive memories and nightmares that follow, the avoidance of anything that triggers the memory, the negative changes in mood and thinking, the hypervigilance and exaggerated startle, the symptoms that last more than a month and disrupt the ability to function. This is not a label a lawyer picks. It is a clinical diagnosis a psychiatrist builds from structured instruments — the CAPS-5, the PCL-5 — and from the testimony of people who knew the person before.
One of the cruelest myths about sexual assault is that a “real” victim fights back. The science says the opposite. When the body senses it cannot escape, it can lock up — an involuntary, brainstem-mediated freeze response called tonic immobility. The person physically cannot move or speak, even though no one is holding them down. In clinical studies, the majority of rape survivors experienced exactly this involuntary paralysis. The ones who froze were not consenting. They were the ones the trauma hit hardest — they go on to suffer PTSD at far higher rates. If you or someone you love did not fight back, did not scream, did not run — that is not evidence that it did not happen. It is evidence of how severe the trauma was.
The lifetime cost of sexual assault is measurable. Federal public-health researchers estimate the lifetime cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that number only counts what you can put on an invoice: the therapy, the doctor visits, the work she can no longer do. It does not begin to measure the nightmares, the marriage that strained, the front door she cannot walk through alone. For hazing-related physical trauma, the costs compound: the ER visit, the reconstructive surgery, the ongoing psychological care, the academic accommodations, the semester that was lost. A life-care plan built by a certified planner prices out every cost across a lifetime, and a forensic economist reduces it to present value. That is how a real demand number is built — not from a lawyer’s guess, but from the same methodology the Supreme Court endorsed.
How a Case Is Actually Built — From Preservation Letter to Verdict
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like yours moves from the day you call to the day a number is on the table.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. It goes to MSU, to the local fraternity chapter, to the national fraternity, to the house corporation, to the camera vendor, and to every third party that holds a piece of the proof. It orders them to freeze every record, every message, every frame of footage, every log entry. The Advocate software records, the ER medical records, the GroupMe logs, the surveillance footage, the MSUPD dispatch records, the ELPD communication logs — all of it is locked down before the university’s retention schedule lets it die.
Weeks two through four: We file as John Doe to protect your identity. The complaint lays out the Title IX deliberate indifference theory against MSU, the negligent supervision theory against the fraternity, the premises liability theory against the house corporation, and the assault and battery claims against the individual perpetrators — who are identified through discovery, not named in the complaint. The university cannot close this case by saying “no victim participated.” You are the participant. You are the plaintiff.
Months one through three: Discovery begins. We subpoena the Advocate records. We subpoena the ER records. We demand the fraternity’s pledge education materials, its risk-management file, its prior incident reports, its insurance policy. We take the depositions of the mandatory reporters — the senior administrators who filed the October 2023 report — and they testify, under oath, about what they knew and what they reported. We take the deposition of the MSU Police officer who closed the case and ask, under oath, why a report from five senior administrators was not enough to start an investigation. We depose the fraternity president and ask him, under oath, to produce the letter he claimed proved the allegations were untrue.
Months three through six: The experts are retained. A fraternity safety consultant testifies about the national standards for pledge education and the known risks of basement hazing. A Title IX compliance specialist testifies about what “deliberate indifference” means and why closing cases for “lack of participating victims” is not a victim-centered response. A life-care planner builds the cost stream. A forensic economist reduces it to present value. A trauma specialist documents the PTSD diagnosis through validated clinical instruments.
Months six through twelve: The number is built. It is built from the medical records, the therapy notes, the life-care plan, the economist’s present-value calculation, the lost tuition, the lost semester, the changed career trajectory. It is built from the deposition testimony of the administrators who reported and the officers who did nothing. It is built from the fraternity’s own documents — the ones that show they knew this was happening and let it continue. And the number is presented — to the university, to the fraternity, to the insurers — with the full weight of a case that has been investigated, documented, and prepared for trial.
This is how a case is won. Not by hoping the university does the right thing. Not by waiting for the police to investigate. By building the proof, piece by piece, until the institutions that looked away are looking at a jury.
The First 72 Hours — What to Do and What Not to Do
If you or someone you love was hazed or sexually abused at an MSU fraternity, here is what matters most in the first hours and days:
Get medical care first. If you were physically assaulted — hit, curb-stomped, thrown into a basement — go to the emergency room. The ER records are the contemporaneous forensic proof of your injuries, and they document what happened in the language of medicine. If you were sexually assaulted, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) can collect forensic evidence and document injuries in a protocol designed for the legal system. Do not shower, do not change clothes, do not clean up before a SANE exam if you can help it — the physical evidence of a sexual assault is time-sensitive, and the exam window is narrow. Your health comes first, always. But the medical record that follows from getting care is also the record that wins the case.
Do not talk to the fraternity’s insurance company, the university’s risk-management office, or anyone who calls you “just to check on you.” A friendly call within days of an incident is not concern — it is a recorded statement, engineered to get you to say “I’m feeling okay” or “it wasn’t that bad” on tape before the full scope of your injuries is known. A check may arrive fast, with a release buried under it, before your medical results are in. None of this is bad luck. It is procedure. Do not sign anything. Do not give a statement. Do not post about the incident on social media.
Write down everything you remember while it is fresh. Names, dates, who was in the basement, who was watching, who told you to “tough it up,” what was said, what was done, what you saw. Memory degrades, and the defense will exploit every gap. A contemporaneous note — written the same week — is the most powerful personal record you can create.
Call a lawyer. The preservation letter — the one that freezes the surveillance footage, the GroupMe logs, the Advocate records, the dispatch logs — has to go out in days, not months. Every day that passes is a day the fraternity can delete messages, the university can “archive” records, and the camera system can overwrite the footage of what happened. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And the letter goes out the day you hire us.
Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. We are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service. Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue MSU for not investigating my hazing report?
Yes. When a university has actual knowledge of hazing and sexual abuse — especially when that knowledge comes from its own senior administrators filing mandatory reports — and it responds by doing nothing, that is the definition of Title IX deliberate indifference. MSU’s own vice president, dean of students, and director of student support filed the October 2023 report. MSU Police closed the case. The Title IX office closed the case. That sequence — knowledge followed by inaction — is what federal courts call clearly unreasonable, and it is the basis for institutional liability.
How much time do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Michigan?
Michigan’s statute of limitations for personal injury is generally three years. But Michigan has extended the windows for reporting sexual assault, particularly where institutional concealment is involved. If you were a minor when it happened, the clock may not have started yet. The specific deadline depends on your facts, and we will tell you honestly whether time is running. Do not wait to find out — because the evidence disappears faster than the legal deadline does.
What is Michigan’s Garret’s Law?
Michigan’s Garret’s Law specifically defines hazing and criminalizes it when it causes physical injury. It provides a statutory basis for civil claims — meaning that when a fraternity hazes a pledge and the pledge ends up in the emergency room, the law treats the hazing as a crime, and the civil case can use that criminal statute as the standard the fraternity violated. It is not just university policy that was broken. It is Michigan law.
Can a fraternity be sued for hazing?
Yes. The local chapter can be sued for assault, battery, and negligent supervision of the pledging process. The national fraternity can be sued for vicarious liability and negligent oversight of its chapter. The house corporation that owns the building can be sued for premises liability. Each layer has its own insurance and its own reason it should pay. A fraternity is not a shield against accountability — it is a corporate structure, and corporate structures can be pierced.
What if I was hazed but did not report it to police?
You are not alone, and you are not out of options. MSU closed every case by saying there was “no participating victim.” A civil lawsuit is different. You do not need a police report to file one. You do not need the university’s permission. You do not need the fraternity’s acknowledgment. You file as John Doe, you use discovery to identify the perpetrators, and you force the institutions to produce the records they have been sitting on. The police’s failure to investigate does not prevent you from suing. It may actually help your case, because it proves the institution did nothing.
Can I stay anonymous if I sue my fraternity?
Yes. We file John Doe lawsuits to protect our clients’ identities. The complaint uses a pseudonym. The discovery process — the forced production of documents and sworn testimony — is how we identify the individual perpetrators without exposing our client to social retaliation on campus. Your privacy is not a barrier to justice. It is a feature of how these cases are built.
What is Title IX deliberate indifference?
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires universities that receive federal funding to respond to sexual violence. The legal standard is “deliberate indifference” — when a university has actual knowledge of sexual abuse or harassment and responds in a manner that is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. Closing every case for “lack of named victims” is a choice, not a legal requirement. And when that choice is made by the police department and Title IX office of the same university that received the reports, it is a choice a jury can call deliberately indifferent.
How much is a hazing or sexual abuse case worth?
Every case is different, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Based on the facts of this incident and Michigan’s legal landscape, we work from a range of approximately $250,000 for an individual assault claim with clear medical records up to $3,500,000 or more where systemic deliberate indifference by MSU and the national fraternity regarding sexual abuse is proven. The number is built from medical costs, therapy costs, lost tuition, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and — where the conduct was willful and wanton — punitive damages. In the post-Nassar MSU environment, multi-million-dollar settlements for institutional failure to protect students from sexual violence are the precedent, not the exception.
Can I sue if I was sexually assaulted at a fraternity party?
Yes. The fraternity — local chapter and national organization — can be held liable for negligent supervision, premises liability, and failure to protect. The university can be held liable under Title IX if it knew about the risk and did nothing. The individual perpetrator can be identified through civil discovery and held directly liable for the assault. A sexual assault at a fraternity house is not just a crime. It is a civil case with multiple defendants, multiple theories of liability, and multiple sources of recovery.
Will the university try to say they cannot investigate without my participation?
They already did. MSU closed every case by citing “a lack of named victims looking to participate.” But “victim-centered” policing does not mean “abandonment of investigation.” It means handling the investigation with care for the victim’s autonomy. MSU appears to have confused the two. In a civil lawsuit, you are the participant — you are the plaintiff. The university cannot close a civil case by saying no one came forward, because you are the one who came forward by filing it.
Why This Firm — Ralph Manginello, Lupe Peña, and the Fight Against Frat Hazing
We are not the firm that writes a letter and waits. We are the firm that has been in the courtroom against fraternities, and we are doing it right now.
Ralph Manginello is our managing partner — 27+ years of trial practice, admitted in federal court, a journalist before he was a lawyer, and lead counsel in the active $10 million Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston hazing lawsuit that is being litigated in Harris County right now. That case is a fraternity hazing case. Ralph knows how fraternities operate, how their insurance companies respond, and how the universities that host them try to look the other way. He also knows how to force them to look back.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Lupe sat on the other side of the table. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the quick check with the release attached is designed to close the case before the medical results come in. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
Our hazing practice is built on the knowledge that fraternity hazing is not an accident — it is a system. The pledge process, the basement sessions, the “tough it up” culture, the silence enforced by fear of retaliation — it is a system that produces predictable injuries, and the institutions that run it are responsible for the harm it causes. We have litigated that system. We are litigating it now.
We work on contingency. That means 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. The call is confidential. And the first thing we do — the day you hire us — is send the preservation letter that freezes the evidence before the fraternity’s cameras overwrite it and the university’s software archives it.
You do not have to do this alone. You do not have to be the “participating victim” MSU said was missing. You just have to call.
1-888-ATTY-911. Twenty-four hours. Seven days. Live staff, not an answering service. Hablamos Español.
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.