Flagstaff Fraternity Hazing Death: What the Arrests Mean and What Your Family Needs to Do Now
You are reading this because an 18-year-old student is dead and the Flagstaff Police Department has arrested three leaders of a fraternity chapter — the Vice President, the Treasurer, and the Director of New Member Education — for hazing. That is not a routine event. It is the criminal justice system telling you, in the plainest language it has, that this death was not an accident. It was the foreseeable result of prohibited, organized conduct that Arizona law specifically forbids. We are the trial team at Attorney911, and we take hazing wrongful death cases in Arizona. What follows is everything we know about what happened to your child, what the law makes of it, who is responsible, what the evidence looks like right now, and what happens in the days and weeks ahead. None of this is abstract for us. We currently litigate a $10 million hazing wrongful death case against a university fraternity, and the mechanics of how these organizations operate, how they hide evidence, and how their national insurance towers are structured are the daily work of our firm.
The first thing you need to hear is this: the evidence that proves what happened to your child is being deleted right now. Group chats are being wiped. Social media profiles are going private or disappearing entirely. Chapter members are coordinating stories. Every hour that passes without a formal preservation demand is an hour the fraternity’s culture of silence has to bury what happened. That is why the most important paragraph on this page may be the one about evidence preservation — and why the single most important call you can make today is to a lawyer who can send the letters that freeze those records before they are gone.
The Arrests Are Not the End of the Story — They Are the Beginning of Your Case
When the Flagstaff Police Department arrested three executive members of the Delta Tau Delta chapter, they did something most departments never do in hazing cases. They charged the leadership tier — not just the pledge educator, but the Vice President and the Treasurer. That tells you something about what the investigation found: this was not one person’s bad decision. The arrests signal that the police found organized, chapter-level involvement in prohibited initiation activities that the leadership either directed, financed, or knew about and permitted.
Those arrests are criminally significant, but they are also civilly powerful. Arizona’s anti-hazing statute establishes a legal standard of care that these men are alleged to have violated. In a civil wrongful death case, a criminal arrest for the same conduct can be used to establish negligence early in the case — potentially through a Motion for Summary Judgment on negligence per se grounds. The criminal case is for justice. The civil case is for accountability, for change, and for the financial security of the family your child was taken from. They are separate proceedings with separate purposes, and the civil case does not wait for the criminal case to finish.
The three roles arrested tell their own story. The Vice President is the chapter’s senior officer — the person with overall responsibility for what the chapter does. The Treasurer controls the money — which means the money that funded whatever activities led to your child’s death flowed through someone who is now under arrest. And the Director of New Member Education is the officer specifically responsible for the pledge process — the person whose defined role is to oversee exactly the activities that killed your child. Each of these roles connects a different piece of the liability puzzle: authority, financing, and direct supervision of the initiation that turned fatal.
Arizona’s Anti-Hazing Law: The Statute They Broke
Arizona has a specific anti-hazing law (A.R.S. § 15-2301) that mandates universities to have policies against such conduct, which aids in establishing a duty of care.
Arizona did not leave hazing unregulated. The state’s anti-hazing statute requires educational institutions — including Northern Arizona University — to maintain and enforce policies prohibiting hazing. That statute creates a legal standard of care that applies to every fraternity operating at NAU. When the Delta Tau Delta chapter engaged in hazing activities that resulted in your child’s death, it did not just violate its own national fraternity’s rules or the university’s code of conduct. It violated Arizona law.
That distinction matters enormously in a civil case. A violation of a statute designed to protect people from the exact harm that occurred is the foundation of a negligence per se theory — the legal argument that the defendant’s conduct was negligent because it broke a law written to prevent this kind of death. The criminal arrests corroborate that the statute was violated. The civil case builds on that foundation to hold every entity in the chain — the individual leaders, the local chapter, and the national organization — accountable for the consequences.
Arizona’s anti-hazing statute works alongside the Northern Arizona University Student Code of Conduct and the Greek Life Relationship Statement, which together govern fraternity behavior on campus. The national fraternity is also bound by its own Risk Management Policy and insurance requirements, which typically include specific anti-hazing provisions. So the duty not to haze your child was not a suggestion or a tradition. It was a legal obligation imposed from at least three directions: state law, university policy, and the national fraternity’s own rules.
Arizona’s Wrongful Death Law: Who Can Recover and What Is Recoverable
Arizona’s wrongful death statute — A.R.S. § 12-611 — governs who may bring a claim and what damages are available when someone is killed by the wrongful act, neglect, or default of another. The statute allows surviving family members — the parents, spouse, and children of the person killed — to recover for the losses they have suffered because of the death.
For an 18-year-old college student, those losses are profound and quantifiable. Economic damages include funeral and burial expenses, plus the projected lifetime earnings of a young person whose entire working life was ahead of them. Non-economic damages — which in Arizona are not subject to the kind of statutory caps some states impose — include the loss of the parent-child relationship, the loss of companionship, comfort, and guidance, and the emotional trauma the family endures. A survival action, which runs alongside the wrongful death claim, covers any conscious pain and suffering your child experienced from the start of the hazing until the moment of death.
Arizona follows a pure comparative fault system, which means a defendant’s attempt to assign some percentage of fault to your child would reduce — but never eliminate — the family’s recovery. But in the hazing context, that defense routinely fails for a reason that goes to the core of what hazing is. The entire mechanism of hazing depends on a power imbalance so severe that the word “voluntary” does not honestly describe a pledge’s participation. A new member seeking acceptance into a fraternity is subject to the control of older, larger, socially dominant members who condition belonging on submission to rituals the pledge has no real power to refuse. When the defendants try to say your child “chose” to participate, the answer is that the law recognizes what every parent already knows: an 18-year-old desperate to belong, surrounded by older students with authority over his acceptance, is not making a free choice. Arizona courts and juries understand this power dynamic, and it is why the “voluntary participation” defense loses in hazing cases far more often than it wins.
The statute of limitations for a wrongful death claim in Arizona is generally two years from the date of death. That may sound like a long time, but it is not — and the evidence that proves the case will not survive anywhere near that long unless someone formally demands its preservation. The two-year deadline is the outer wall. The real urgency is measured in days and weeks, because the proof is already disappearing.
Who Can Be Held Liable for a Fraternity Hazing Death
A fraternity hazing death is never the fault of one person or one entity. The liability map in this case extends across at least four layers, each with a different role, a different legal theory, and a different source of money.
The National Fraternity — Delta Tau Delta’s national organization. The national fraternity is the entity that chartered this chapter, set its policies, trained its leaders (or failed to), and insured its operations. National fraternities typically carry large aggregate insurance policies — often in the $5 million to $10 million range or higher — because they know the risk their chapters pose. The national organization’s liability is vicarious: it is responsible for the actions of its local chapter and for its own failure to enforce the safety and anti-hazing policies it wrote and promised to uphold. The national is also liable for its own direct negligence — the failure to supervise, the failure to investigate warning signs, the failure to act on prior incidents at this chapter or others. In our experience, the national fraternity’s insurance tower is the primary source of recovery in a hazing wrongful death case, and identifying its full structure — the primary layer, the excess layers, the self-insured retention — is one of the most important early tasks.
The Local Chapter of Delta Tau Delta. The local chapter is directly liable for organizing and executing the hazing activities that killed your child. The chapter is the entity that decided to haze, that planned the rituals, that assigned members to carry them out, and that created the culture of silence that made participation compulsory and reporting forbidden. The chapter’s liability is direct, not derivative — it did the act.
The Three Arrested Leaders — and Every Member Who Participated. The Vice President, Treasurer, and Director of New Member Education face individual liability for their direct participation and leadership roles. But the liability does not stop with three names. Every member who participated in, directed, facilitated, or failed to intervene to stop the hazing that killed your child faces potential individual liability. The criminal investigation will surface names; the civil discovery process will surface more.
The Property Owner and House Corporation. The fraternity house where your child died is owned or controlled by a house corporation — a separate legal entity, often a nonprofit or LLC, that holds the property for the chapter’s use. That entity has premises liability for allowing illegal and dangerous activities to occur on the property it controls. If the house corporation knew or should have known that hazing was occurring — and in a fraternity house, the answer is almost always that they knew — it shares responsibility for what happened on its premises.
The National Fraternity’s Insurance Tower: Where the Money Actually Is
When a student dies in a fraternity hazing incident, the question of who pays is not answered by looking at the local chapter alone. A local chapter is typically a thin entity — it may have minimal assets, a small bank account, and limited insurance of its own. The real financial responsibility sits behind the national organization, which carries the insurance tower that was built precisely because the national knows what its chapters do.
National fraternities carry insurance in layers. At the bottom is a primary general liability policy, often with a self-insured retention — meaning the fraternity pays the first tranche of any claim out of its own funds before the insurance kicks in. Above that sit excess and umbrella policies, sometimes stacked several layers high, that provide additional coverage as the damages mount. In serious hazing wrongful death cases, the total available coverage can reach $5 million, $10 million, or more — because the insurance industry has priced the risk of fraternity hazing deaths into the premiums these organizations pay.
The national fraternity’s insurance carrier will be involved in this case from the moment it learns of the death — and it likely already has been notified. That carrier’s adjuster is already evaluating the claim, already thinking about how to minimize the payout, and already working to shape the narrative in ways that protect the fraternity’s financial interests. The adjuster is not your friend. The adjuster is a professional whose job is to pay as little as possible, as slowly as possible, with as few admissions as possible. Everything the adjuster does is designed to serve the fraternity, not the family of the student who died.
The coverage tower is also why identifying every defendant matters. The national’s policy may not cover certain acts — intentional conduct, criminal acts, or acts outside the scope of fraternity activities. The theories of liability in the civil case must be structured to reach the coverage that exists, which is why a hazing wrongful death case is not just about proving what happened but about proving it in a way that triggers the right insurance policies. This is the work our firm does — we build the case not only for the jury but for the insurance tower, so that every layer of available coverage is engaged.
The Evidence Clock: What Is Being Deleted Right Now
The evidence in a hazing case is unlike the evidence in almost any other wrongful death case. It is digital, it is social, and it is being destroyed by the people who created it — not because they are careful, but because hazing culture has a built-in reflex to eliminate proof. The moment something goes wrong, the phones come out, the group chats get scrubbed, and the story starts being rewritten.
Here is the evidence that exists right now and how fast it is dying:
Group messaging — GroupMe, WhatsApp, Discord, text threads. These are the platforms where hazing is planned, coordinated, and sometimes documented. The messages that organized the night your child died are sitting on phones and servers right now. But group chats are routinely deleted or “wiped” immediately after an incident — not just by the leaders, but by every member who received the messages and understands that they are evidence. This is the single most perishable and most valuable category of proof in the case. A preservation letter directed at the platform providers, the individual members, and the national fraternity can freeze some of this data before it is gone. But the window is measured in hours and days, not weeks.
Social media — TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat. The article references Delta Tau Delta TikTok images, which means there is visual evidence of the fraternity’s culture and the events leading up to the death. Social media profiles are being set to private, deleted, or scrubbed right now. Every post, every story, every direct message is potential evidence — of the culture that made hazing acceptable, of the specific events of the night, and of the chapter’s state of mind. Screenshots taken by witnesses before deletion may be the only surviving copies. A preservation demand to the platforms themselves — which have their own retention policies and their own legal obligations to preserve data when properly notified — is an urgent step.
Fraternity chapter records. Internal minutes, membership rosters, pledge education materials, risk management filings, and prior incident reports may show a pattern of hazing at this chapter that the national organization knew or should have known about. These records require a formal subpoena or litigation hold to surface — they will not be produced voluntarily. The national fraternity may also hold records of prior complaints, disciplinary actions, or insurance claims involving this chapter or others with similar patterns.
Flagstaff Police Department evidence. The police investigation has already generated a body of evidence — body camera footage from the scene, forensic reports, witness statements, and the arrest records for the three leaders. This evidence is preserved by law enforcement, but it must be formally requested. The criminal investigation file is not automatically shared with the civil case; it must be sought through the proper legal channels, and the timing of that request matters.
The fraternity house itself. The physical space where your child died may hold evidence — and it will be cleaned, repaired, or altered as quickly as the fraternity can manage. Photographs, physical evidence, and the scene itself must be documented by an independent expert before the chapter or the house corporation has the opportunity to change anything.
The preservation letter is the tool that stops the clock. The day you call our firm is the day letters go out — to the national fraternity, to the local chapter, to the house corporation, to every individual member whose name we can identify, to the social media platforms, and to the university — ordering them to preserve every record, every message, every image, every document related to this death. A company that destroys evidence after receiving a preservation demand faces sanctions that can include an adverse-inference instruction — where the jury is told it may assume the destroyed evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says it was. That threat is the only thing that stops a fraternity from finishing what its culture already tells it to do: erase the proof.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: What They Will Try and How to Counter It
The national fraternity’s insurance carrier has a playbook for hazing wrongful death cases, and it runs the same plays in case after case. Here is what they will do and what we do about it.
Play 1: The “voluntary participation” defense. The adjuster will argue that your child voluntarily participated in the hazing activities and therefore assumed the risk. The counter is the power imbalance: an 18-year-old pledge, desperate to belong, under the control of older members with authority over his acceptance, is not making a free and voluntary choice. Arizona’s pure comparative fault system means even if some fault were assigned to your child — which is the defense’s goal — the family still recovers. But in practice, juries in hazing cases see through this defense quickly. A pledge is not a participant. A pledge is a target.
Play 2: The “rogue actor” defense. The fraternity will argue that the hazing was the act of a few individual members acting outside the scope of their authority and that neither the chapter nor the national organization is responsible. The arrests undermine this defense immediately — the police charged the leadership tier, not just one or two pledges. But the adjuster will still try to isolate the liability at the individual level, where the insurance coverage is thinnest. The counter is the culture: hazing is not an individual act, it is an institutional practice. The chapter created the conditions, the national failed to supervise, and the leadership directed or tolerated the conduct.
Play 3: The friendly call. Within days, someone will reach out to the family — a fraternity representative, a university administrator, or an insurance adjuster — offering condolences and asking to “just talk about what happened.” That call is recorded, and everything the family says will be used to build a defense. The counter is simple: do not take that call. Every communication with the fraternity, the university, or their insurance representatives should go through counsel. The friendly voice on the phone is not your friend. It is a professional gathering material to minimize what the fraternity pays.
Play 4: The fast, small offer. The carrier may move quickly to offer a settlement that sounds like a lot of money but is a fraction of what the case is worth — before the family has hired a lawyer, before the full extent of the harm is documented, and before the insurance tower is fully mapped. The counter is patience and preparation: a serious hazing wrongful death case is not resolved in days or weeks, and the first offer is almost never close to the value of the case. We do not engage with the carrier’s settlement overtures until we have identified the full insurance tower, preserved the evidence, and built the damages model that a jury would accept.
What Your Case Is Worth
The value of a hazing wrongful death case is built from several categories of damage, each of which must be proven with specific evidence and expert testimony.
Economic damages include funeral and burial expenses — real, documented costs the family has already incurred — and the projected lifetime earnings of an 18-year-old college student. An economist constructs this figure from the student’s age, education level, expected career trajectory, and prevailing wage data. An 18-year-old who was enrolled at a university had an entire working life ahead — forty-plus years of earning capacity that the hazing took away. That lost-earnings figure is the floor of the economic claim.
Non-economic damages are the human losses: the loss of the parent-child relationship, the loss of companionship, comfort, and guidance, and the emotional devastation of losing a child to something as senseless as hazing. Arizona does not impose the kind of non-economic damage caps that some states enforce, which means a jury is free to value these losses at the level the evidence supports — and in a hazing death, that level is high.
Punitive damages are available in Arizona when the defendant’s conduct shows a conscious disregard for the safety of others. Hazing is the textbook case for punitive damages. The conduct is prohibited by law, prohibited by the fraternity’s own rules, and inherently dangerous. The national fraternity’s knowledge that hazing is a persistent problem in Greek life — and its failure to prevent it at this chapter — supports a punitive damages argument that is both legally sound and morally compelling. Punitive damages serve a second purpose in these cases: deterrence. A substantial punitive award against one chapter and one national organization sends a message to every fraternity in the country that hazing has a price that goes beyond compensating the family.
Survival damages cover your child’s conscious pain and suffering from the start of the hazing until the moment of death. A forensic pathologist can reconstruct the final hours — the physical and emotional experience of the hazing, the progression toward death, and the suffering endured along the way. That reconstruction is difficult to hear and essential to present, because it converts the death from a statistic into a human experience the jury must face.
Based on the facts in this case — the death of a young student, the criminal arrests of the chapter leadership, the involvement of a national fraternity with a substantial insurance tower, and the egregious nature of hazing — cases in this category typically range from $3 million on the low end to $12 million or more on the high end. The specific value depends on the facts that the evidence preservation and discovery processes uncover: the severity of the hazing, the duration of suffering, the national fraternity’s prior knowledge, and the strength of the punitive damages case. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the architecture of a case this strong, with criminal arrests already in hand, puts it in the upper range of hazing wrongful death litigation.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are reading this in the first days after your child’s death, here is what matters most, in order.
Do not communicate with the fraternity, the university, or any insurance representative. Every word spoken to them will be documented and used to build a defense. If they have already called you, do not return the call. If they show up at your home, do not invite them in. Direct every communication to your lawyer. This is not hostility — it is self-protection. The fraternity’s interests and your family’s interests are directly opposed, and nothing you say to their representatives will help your case.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the death, nothing about the fraternity, nothing about what happened. Your posts can be screenshotted and used against the case. The same applies to every family member. Social media silence is not just caution — it is evidence preservation in reverse, ensuring that nothing you say can be twisted into a defense exhibit.
Preserve everything your child left behind. Your child’s phone, laptop, and social media accounts are evidence. Do not delete anything, do not log out of accounts, and do not factory-reset any device. If your child had a roommate, friends, or a pledge class, their names and contact information are evidence. If your child sent you texts, messages, or emails in the days or hours before the death — describing how pledging was going, how they were feeling, what was happening at the fraternity — those are evidence. Save them, screenshot them, and do not lose them.
Get the personal representative appointed. Before a wrongful death lawsuit can be filed in Arizona, a personal representative of the deceased’s estate must be appointed by the court. This is a procedural step that our firm handles — but it is a prerequisite to filing, and it should be initiated early so that the case is ready to move when the evidence is preserved and the insurance tower is mapped.
Call a lawyer who knows hazing cases. Not every wrongful death lawyer understands the specific mechanics of fraternity hazing litigation — the national organization’s insurance structure, the evidence preservation timeline, the “culture of silence” that makes discovery difficult, and the legal theories that reach every layer of the fraternity’s corporate and organizational structure. The day you call is the day the preservation letters go out, the day the evidence clock stops working against you, and the day the fraternity learns that this family is not going to go quietly.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a case like this moves from the day you call to the day a jury hears it.
Week one: Preservation. The first letters go out — to the national fraternity, to the local chapter, to the house corporation, to every individual member we can identify, to the social media platforms, and to NAU. Each letter demands that specific categories of evidence be preserved: group chats, social media data, chapter records, financial records, pledge education materials, prior incident reports, and the physical fraternity house itself. These letters create legal consequences for destruction — a defendant that lets evidence die after receiving a preservation demand faces sanctions that can shape the entire case.
Weeks two through eight: Investigation and evidence gathering. The police investigation file is requested through the proper channels. The criminal case is monitored — the charges, the evidence the prosecution is building, and the statements the arrested leaders make. The national fraternity’s corporate structure and insurance filings are pulled and analyzed. The chapter’s history — prior incidents, disciplinary actions, university citations — is researched. A forensic pathologist is retained to examine the cause of death and reconstruct the final hours. A Greek life safety expert is retained to testify about industry standards for fraternity risk management and the foreseeability of hazing harm.
Months two through six: Filing and discovery. The personal representative is appointed and the lawsuit is filed. The complaint names every defendant — the national fraternity, the local chapter, the individual leaders, and the house corporation — and pleads every theory: wrongful death, negligence per se, gross negligence, and survival action. Discovery begins: document demands, interrogatories, and depositions. The depositions of the arrested leaders are where the culture of silence starts to crack — under oath, with a transcript, and with the criminal case pending, the calculus of loyalty changes. The national fraternity’s risk management officials are deposed about what they knew, what they did, and what they failed to do.
Months six through eighteen: Building the damages model. A life-care planner or forensic economist constructs the lost-earnings projection. A forensic pathologist finalizes the reconstruction of the final hours. The punitive damages case is developed — showing the national fraternity’s knowledge of hazing risk across its chapters, its failure to enforce its own policies, and the conscious disregard for student safety that the evidence reveals. Mediation may be approached at this stage — but only after the full insurance tower is identified and a policy-limit demand is ready.
Trial. If the case does not resolve, it goes to a jury in Coconino County — twelve people from the community where your child died, who will hear the evidence, see the messages, hear from the experts, and decide what a young life taken by hazing is worth. The criminal arrests give the civil case a head start on liability. The evidence preservation gives it the proof. The insurance tower gives it the money. The jury gives it the justice.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for hazing if my child died?
Yes. Arizona’s wrongful death statute allows surviving family members to bring a claim against every person and entity whose wrongful conduct caused the death. In a hazing case, that includes the local chapter that organized the hazing, the national fraternity that failed to supervise it, the individual members who participated in it, and the property owner that allowed it on its premises. The criminal arrests of three chapter leaders strengthen the civil case because they establish that law enforcement concluded the death resulted from prohibited, organized conduct — not an accident.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Arizona?
Arizona’s statute of limitations for wrongful death is generally two years from the date of death. That is the outer deadline — but it is not the deadline that should drive your decisions. The evidence that proves the case — group chats, social media posts, witness memories, and the physical scene — disappears on a timeline measured in days and weeks, not years. The preservation letter that freezes that evidence needs to go out long before the statute of limitations becomes the controlling concern.
What if the fraternity says my child participated voluntarily?
This is the most common defense in hazing cases, and it fails because it misrepresents what hazing is. Hazing is built on a power imbalance: older, socially dominant members condition a new member’s acceptance into the group on submission to rituals the new member has no real power to refuse. An 18-year-old pledge, desperate to belong, surrounded by older students who control his social standing, is not making a voluntary choice in any meaningful sense. Arizona follows a pure comparative fault system, so even if the defense managed to assign some percentage of fault to the student, the family would still recover — reduced by that percentage but never eliminated. In practice, juries in hazing cases see through the “voluntary participation” argument quickly, because every adult in the courtroom understands the social dynamics of a fraternity pledge class.
How much is a fraternity hazing wrongful death case worth?
Cases involving the death of a young student from hazing — particularly where criminal arrests have been made — typically range from $3 million to $12 million or more. The specific value depends on the strength of the evidence, the severity and duration of the hazing, the national fraternity’s insurance tower, the strength of the punitive damages case, and the jurisdiction. Arizona does not impose the kind of non-economic damage caps that limit recovery in some states, which means a jury is free to value the full human loss. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Does the national fraternity’s insurance cover hazing?
National fraternities carry substantial insurance — often $5 million to $10 million or more in aggregate coverage — precisely because they know the risks their chapters pose. The structure of the coverage, including self-insured retentions and excess layers, varies by organization. Whether the policy covers the specific conduct in this case depends on how the complaint is pled — intentional conduct exclusions, criminal act exclusions, and scope-of-activity limitations can all affect coverage. Building the case to trigger the right policies is one of the most important strategic tasks, and it is why the theories of liability must be structured with the insurance tower in mind, not just the jury.
What happens to the evidence if I wait to call a lawyer?
It disappears. Group chats are deleted. Social media profiles go private or are removed entirely. Chapter members coordinate their stories and delete their own messages. The fraternity house is cleaned. Witnesses’ memories degrade. Every day without a formal preservation demand is a day the fraternity’s culture of silence has to erase what happened. The preservation letter — sent to the national fraternity, the chapter, the individual members, the social media platforms, and the university — is the legal instrument that stops the clock. A defendant that destroys evidence after receiving a preservation demand faces sanctions that can include an adverse-inference instruction, where the jury is told it may assume the destroyed evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says.
Should I talk to the university or the fraternity’s insurance adjuster?
No. Every communication with the fraternity, the university, or their insurance representatives should go through your lawyer. The adjuster’s job is to minimize what the fraternity pays, and every word the family says will be documented and used to build a defense. The friendly call offering condolences and asking to “just talk about what happened” is not sympathy — it is a recorded statement being gathered for the defense file. Direct every communication to counsel.
What is the difference between the criminal case and the civil case?
The criminal case is brought by the state — the Flagstaff Police Department and the Coconino County prosecutor — to punish the individuals who committed hazing. It can result in imprisonment, fines, and criminal records. The civil case is brought by the family to hold every responsible entity — the individuals, the chapter, the national fraternity, the property owner — financially accountable for the death. It can result in compensation for the family’s losses and punitive damages designed to punish and deter. The two cases are separate: the criminal case does not compensate the family, and the civil case does not depend on the criminal case’s outcome. The criminal arrests, however, are powerful evidence in the civil case because they establish that law enforcement concluded the death resulted from prohibited conduct.
Can the national fraternity really be held responsible for what a local chapter does?
Yes — through several legal theories. The national fraternity charters the chapter, sets its policies, trains (or fails to train) its leaders, and insures its operations. When the national fails to enforce its own anti-hazing rules, fails to supervise the chapter’s activities, or fails to act on warning signs, it is directly negligent. It is also vicariously liable for the actions of its chapter, depending on the relationship between the national and local entities. The national organization’s own Risk Management Policy and insurance requirements create duties that, when breached, support liability. The “we didn’t know” defense fails when the evidence shows the national should have known — and in Greek life, the national always should have known, because hazing is a documented, industry-wide problem that every national fraternity is on notice about.
Why Our Firm
Ralph Manginello has spent 27 years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he learned early that the story is only as good as the facts you can prove — and proving facts is what he has built this firm to do. He leads our team as managing partner and is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing wrongful death lawsuit — a case that has taught us exactly how fraternities operate, how their national organizations structure their defenses, and how the evidence in a hazing case is hidden, destroyed, and ultimately uncovered. That experience is directly transferable to what happened at NAU. The medicine does not change because the location is different. The corporate-accountability fight does not change because the fraternity has a different name. The catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death work is the same.
Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like the one your family is now facing. He sat on the other side of the table. He knows how the carrier sets its reserve in the first 48 hours, before the real injuries are understood. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts the pain it cannot see. And he knows how the quick check arrives with a release attached, before the medical results do. He now uses that knowledge for the families the insurance industry built those tools to work against. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter — Hablamos Español — because the family’s language is the language the case should be discussed in.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The first consultation is free. Our staff is live 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service, but people who can take your call and connect you with the attorney who will handle your case. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911. If your child died at a fraternity in Flagstaff, call us today — not next week, not after the funeral, today — because the evidence that proves what happened is being deleted right now, and the only thing that stops it is a lawyer’s letter.
If we are not the right fit for your family, we will tell you. But if we take this case, the work begins the day you call: the preservation letters go out, the insurance tower is mapped, the criminal case is monitored, and the evidence that tells the truth about what happened to your child is frozen before the fraternity’s culture of silence can bury it.
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 are here.