Las Cruces, Dona Ana County, New Mexico — NMSU Basketball Hazing & Sexual Assault: Your Rights Under Title IX and New Mexico Law
You are reading this at an hour when most people are asleep. Maybe you are the one it happened to — a young athlete who came to New Mexico State University to play the sport you love, and instead was held down on a team bus while teammates who were supposed to have your back did something you cannot unlive. Maybe you are a parent who just learned what your child survived, or what your child is still carrying in silence, months after the news cycle moved on and the program was shut down and the coach was fired and everyone acted like that was the end of it. It is not the end of it. What happened at NMSU between the summer of 2022 and February 2023 — the degrading comments, the forced exposure, the shower assaults, the bus assault on November 12, the hotel room where a freshman was told “this is what we do” — that is not a scandal that closed when the season was cancelled. It is an injury that is still living inside real people, and the law has something to say about it.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are a trial firm that takes New Mexico cases, and we are writing this page for one person: the one who is deciding whether what happened is worth fighting over, whether it is too late, whether anyone will believe them, or whether they should just transfer schools and try to forget. Every one of those questions has an answer, and the answers are better than you think. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and the number is 1-888-ATTY-911. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
What Happened at NMSU — Understanding the Pattern of Harm
According to the lawsuit filed in the Third Judicial District Court in Dona Ana County, the pattern began in the summer of 2022 and did not stop until a police report was filed on February 10, 2023. Two NMSU men’s basketball players — identified in the filed complaint as Player 1 and Player 2 — allege that three teammates subjected them to repeated sexual assault, physical battery, and hazing across locker rooms, team buses, hotel rooms, and road trips over a period of roughly eight months.
The lawsuit describes a progression that is textbook for predatory team environments. It did not start with the worst thing. It started with cruel comments and unwanted touching in the locker room — the kind of behavior that gets dismissed as “boys being boys” until it escalates into something that no one can call by that name anymore. Then came the shower incident, where one player was allegedly forced to spin while teammates hit him and another filmed it on a phone. Then came the bus assault on November 12, 2022, when Player 1 was allegedly held down and sexually assaulted on the team bus traveling to the University of Texas at El Paso for a game. According to the lawsuit, no one on the bus intervened. A coach yelled “stop playing around.”
Player 1 told a former high school coach. That coach told Player 1 to report it to the NMSU coaching staff. Player 1 did. According to the lawsuit, assistant coach Dominique Taylor’s response was to laugh and say “what do you want me to do?” Head coach Greg Heiar allegedly said he was “looking into it” and would issue suspensions. The three players accused of the assaults were never suspended. The behavior continued through February 2023.
A parent tried to call Heiar and NMSU Athletic Director Mario Moccia. The calls were not returned, according to the lawsuit. Player 1 filed a report with NMSU police on February 10, 2023. NMSU police issued a report listing possible criminal charges including false imprisonment, criminal sexual contact, and harassment. On February 12, the university shut down the men’s basketball program for the rest of the season. On February 14, Heiar was fired. The Dona Ana County District Attorney declined to prosecute and sent the case to the New Mexico Attorney General for consideration.
That is what happened, according to the public record and the filed complaint. Now let us talk about what it means under the law — because the law sees this differently than the news cycle does, and the difference is where your rights live.
Can You Sue a University for Hazing and Sexual Assault?
Yes. You can sue the university, the coaches, and the individual perpetrators, and you can do it through more than one legal door. This is the most important thing to understand about a case like this: you are not limited to one claim or one theory. A university hazing and sexual assault case is built on parallel tracks — federal and state — and each track has different rules, different damages, and different strategic value.
The federal track is Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational program receiving federal funding. Sexual harassment and sexual assault are forms of sex-based discrimination under Title IX. When a university with actual knowledge of sexual harassment or assault responds with deliberate indifference — meaning its response is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances — it can be held liable under Title IX. Title IX claims are not capped by state damage limits. That matters enormously in a case like this, because New Mexico’s Tort Claims Act puts a ceiling on what you can recover from the state.
The state track is the New Mexico Tort Claims Act, which governs claims against state entities like NMSU and its Board of Regents. This track has strict notice requirements — typically 180 days — and statutory caps on damages. But it reaches the university’s own negligence in supervising its staff and protecting its students.
The individual track runs against the coaches and the players directly. The coaches face claims for negligent supervision, failure to report, and deliberate indifference. The players face claims for assault, battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Punitive damages are available against individual defendants — the players and the coaches — even though they are generally barred against the state entity.
Each track has a different clock. Each track reaches a different defendant. Each track has a different ceiling on what you can recover. Building the case means running all three in parallel, and the day you call a lawyer is the day all three clocks start working for you instead of against you.
Title IX: The Federal Law That Has No Damage Cap
Title IX is the most powerful tool in a university sexual-assault case, and the reason is simple: it is a federal claim, and federal claims are not bound by state damage caps. New Mexico’s Tort Claims Act limits what you can recover from the state — but Title IX does not. If a jury finds that NMSU was deliberately indifferent to known sexual harassment and assault, the university can be held liable for the full measure of the harm, not a capped fraction of it.
The legal standard comes from the United States Supreme Court. An educational institution that receives federal funds can be held liable for student-on-student sexual harassment when it has actual knowledge of the harassment and responds with deliberate indifference — meaning its response is clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. The institution must have substantial control over both the harasser and the context in which the harassment occurs. A university basketball program — where the university controls the players, the coaches, the locker rooms, the buses, the hotels, the schedule, and the environment — meets that standard.
Look at what the lawsuit alleges through the Title IX lens. Player 1 reported the bus assault to the coaching staff. A former high school coach contacted Heiar directly and demanded action. Heiar said he was looking into it and would issue suspensions. The suspensions never came. The behavior continued. By late November or the first week of December 2022, at least two victims had reported abuse by the same three players. The lawsuit alleges that coach Heiar and his staff “emboldened and empowered” the three players, which allowed them to continue committing acts of sexual assault and battery.
“The victims in this case seek to right the wrong and speak out not only for their own benefit, but to help put an end to such needless and harmful behavior in collegiate athletes.”
That is from the lawsuit itself. Under Title IX, those words describe a claim: actual knowledge, deliberate indifference, and continuing harm. The coaches had actual knowledge — Player 1 reported it directly, more than once. The response — laughter, unfulfilled promises of suspension, no action — was arguably deliberately indifferent. The harm continued because the indifference continued. That is the chain a Title IX claim is built from.
Title IX also reaches the university’s broader institutional failure. The parent who tried to call the athletic director and got no response. The internal investigation that was still “underway” months later. The fact that, according to the lawsuit, Player 1 had not even been questioned by NMSU’s internal investigators by the time the lawsuit was filed. Each of these is a data point in the deliberate-indifference analysis — evidence that the institution knew, and that its response was not just inadequate but clearly unreasonable.
The strategic value of the Title IX claim cannot be overstated. It bypasses the New Mexico Tort Claims Act’s damage caps. It puts the university’s own institutional choices in front of a federal jury. And it frames the case the way a jury needs to hear it: not as an isolated incident, but as a pattern that was reported, known, and allowed to continue.
New Mexico’s Tort Claims Act: The 180-Day Clock and the Damage Cap
The New Mexico Tort Claims Act governs claims against state entities — and NMSU, as a state university, is a state entity. The Act provides the framework for suing the NMSU Board of Regents, and it comes with two features that make it fundamentally different from an ordinary personal injury case: a strict notice requirement and a cap on damages.
The notice requirement is the first trap. Under the Tort Claims Act, a claimant must provide written notice of a claim to the state entity, typically within 180 days of the incident. This is not a statute of limitations — it is a pre-suit notice requirement, and missing it can be fatal to the claim. In a case where the victim delayed reporting — and delayed reporting is the norm in sexual assault cases, not the exception — the 180-day clock may have already started running before the victim even began to process what happened. This is why the timing of legal consultation is not a luxury in these cases; it is the difference between a viable claim and a dead one.
The damage cap is the second limitation. The Tort Claims Act generally limits recovery against a state entity — commonly cited as approximately $400,000 for damages other than medical expenses and loss of income, with a total cap of approximately $750,000 per occurrence. For a catastrophic sexual assault case involving lifelong psychological injury, lost educational opportunity, and permanent trauma, that cap is a fraction of the true harm. That is precisely why the Title IX federal claim is so critical — it is the track that is not capped.
New Mexico also has a general personal-injury statute of limitations that applies to civil claims. For personal injury claims, the filing deadline generally runs three years from the date the cause of action accrues. But claims against the state entity require the Tort Claims Act notice first, and the interaction between the notice deadline and the filing deadline is something that must be handled by a lawyer who understands both clocks and how they run together.
There is an honest limit to what we can tell you on this page about the exact deadline in your specific situation, because the clock depends on when the incident occurred, when it was discovered, who the defendants are, and whether any tolling or exceptions apply. What we can tell you is this: the clock is shorter than you think, it started before you were ready for it to start, and the only safe move is to talk to a lawyer now rather than assuming you have plenty of time.
New Mexico’s Hazing Statute: When “Tradition” Becomes a Crime
New Mexico has a specific statute criminalizing hazing — a law that makes the conduct described in the NMSU lawsuit not just a civil wrong but a potential crime, and that criminal statute becomes the civil standard of care in a negligence case.
New Mexico’s hazing law criminalizes hazing conduct and provides a basis for civil standard-of-care arguments. When a statute is designed to protect a class of persons — and a hazing statute is designed to protect students — a violation of that statute can be treated as evidence of negligence or, in some jurisdictions, negligence per se. The argument is straightforward: the legislature wrote a rule designed to protect students from exactly this harm; the defendants violated that rule; the harm the rule was designed to prevent is the harm that occurred.
The NMSU police report listed possible criminal charges including false imprisonment, criminal sexual contact, and harassment. Those are not hazing charges — they are serious criminal charges that describe the same conduct. The fact that the Dona Ana County District Attorney declined to prosecute and referred the matter to the New Mexico Attorney General does not end the civil case. Civil cases do not depend on criminal convictions. The burden of proof is lower. The standard is different. And the civil case can proceed regardless of what the criminal system does or does not do.
This is one of the most common sources of confusion for victims and families: they believe that if the prosecutor did not file charges, the civil case is dead. It is not. The criminal system and the civil system are separate. The criminal system decides whether the state will punish someone. The civil system decides whether the victim will be compensated. Ours is the civil system, and it is still open.
Who Is Liable — Mapping Every Defendant
A university hazing and sexual assault case is almost never a single defendant. The NMSU lawsuit names multiple defendants across multiple layers, and understanding who is on the hook — and why — is the map that determines the value of the case.
The NMSU Board of Regents is the institutional defendant. As the governing body of a state university, it bears vicarious liability for the acts of its coaching staff, and it faces direct liability under Title IX for deliberate indifference to known sexual harassment. The Board of Regents is the entity with the deepest pockets, but its exposure is split between the capped state-law claims and the uncapped federal Title IX claims. The strategic fight is to maximize the federal track.
Greg Heiar, the former head coach, is named for direct negligence — failure to act on reports of sexual assault, failure to supervise student-athletes, failure to implement promised suspensions. According to the lawsuit, he was told about the abuse by Player 1 on at least three occasions and was contacted by Player 1’s former high school coach, who demanded action. Heiar allegedly said he was looking into it. The suspensions never came. The behavior continued. As an individual defendant, Heiar faces potential punitive damages — and punitive damages are the category that punishes, not just compensates.
Dominique Taylor, the former assistant coach, is named for what the lawsuit describes as gross negligence and deliberate indifference. According to the complaint, when Player 1 told Taylor about the bus assault, Taylor laughed and said “what do you want me to do?” That response — if proven — is the single most powerful piece of deliberate-indifference evidence in the case. A coach who is told that a player was held down and sexually assaulted on a team bus and responds with laughter is not just failing to act. He is demonstrating that the institution’s response is clearly unreasonable. Under Title IX, that is the standard. Taylor’s alleged response is the deposition the case is built around.
The three players — Deshawndre Washington, Kim Aiken Jr., and Doctor Bradley — are named as the direct perpetrators of the assault, battery, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. They face the intentional-tort claims, which carry potential punitive damages. Their individual assets and insurance may be limited, but their conduct is the foundation of the institutional liability — because the university’s duty to protect its students from known predators is what makes the coaches’ and the Board of Regents’ failure to act actionable.
The athletic director, Mario Moccia, is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit as described in the public record, but the lawsuit alleges that a parent tried to contact him and he did not return the calls. That fact — a parent reporting sexual assault and the athletic director not calling back — is evidence in the deliberate-indifference chain even if Moccia himself is not a named defendant.
The defendant map matters because each defendant has a different insurance posture, a different exposure, and a different role in the story. The players are the direct wrongdoers. The coaches are the enablers. The university is the institution that was told and did not do enough. The case is built by connecting all three layers into one narrative of foreseeable harm that was reported, known, and allowed to continue.
The Evidence Clock — What Proof Exists and How Fast It Dies
This is the section that determines whether your case is a verdict or a memory. The evidence in a university hazing and sexual assault case exists right now — some of it sitting on servers, some of it on phones, some of it on bus hard drives — and every day that passes without a preservation letter is a day that evidence can legally disappear.
The cell phones of the three accused players. The lawsuit alleges that at least one incident was filmed — Doctor Bradley allegedly filmed Player 1 in the shower while the assault occurred. If that video exists, it is the single most powerful piece of evidence in the case. It is also the single most vulnerable. Cell phones can be wiped, lost, replaced, or destroyed. The preservation demand to the players and their carriers goes out the day you call, not the month you file. This is a critical, time-sensitive piece of evidence, and the risk of deletion or hardware destruction is the reason the letter goes out before anything else.
The team bus video from November 12, 2022. If the bus that carried the team to UTEP that day had interior cameras or a dashcam, that footage could show the assault, show who was present, and show whether coaches were within earshot. Most transport systems overwrite their data on a rolling cycle — commonly 30 to 90 days. By the time the police report was filed on February 10, 2023, the bus video from November 12 may have already been gone. But if the bus was university-operated or contracted through a specific carrier, there may be archived footage, dispatch records, or GPS data that survived. The preservation demand must target the bus operator, the university’s transportation contractor, and NMSU itself.
Internal NMSU communications. Every email, text, Slack message, or internal memo between Heiar, Taylor, the athletic department, the Title IX office, and university administration about these reports is evidence. These communications establish when the university knew, what it knew, and what it did or did not do. They are subject to litigation holds, but private texts and personal communications can be lost if they are not specifically demanded. The preservation letter must name the individuals, the time period, and the specific types of communications.
Police investigative files. The NMSU police report from February 10, 2023, and any materials collected by the Dona Ana County District Attorney and the New Mexico Attorney General contain witness statements, forensic interviews, and evidence collected closer to the events than anything that can be reconstructed later. These are preserved by the state but require subpoena or public-records requests to access.
The Greenberg Traurig investigation file. NMSU hired the law firm Greenberg Traurig to conduct an internal investigation, which the former chancellor described as “underway” and running “in parallel to our own internal investigation.” The findings of that investigation — and any interviews conducted with players, coaches, and staff — are potentially discoverable. When a university hires outside counsel to investigate its own athletic program, the work product may be shielded by privilege, but the underlying witness statements and factual findings may not be. Demanding this file early and fighting the privilege fight is a critical step.
The evidence preservation letter is the first thing we send. It goes to the university, the coaches, the players, the bus operator, and any third-party data vendor. It demands that they freeze all video, texts, emails, phone data, personnel files, and internal communications. Once that letter is on file, any destruction of evidence becomes a spoliation issue — and the jury can be told that the missing evidence was destroyed after the university was told to preserve it. The preservation letter is not a formality. It is the foundation of the case, and it is the reason the day you call matters more than any other day in the process.
The Invisible Injury — Sexual-Assault Trauma in Male Athletes
The defense in a sexual assault case will always try to minimize the injury. They will point to the absence of broken bones, the absence of visible scars, the fact that the victim “seemed fine” afterward. This is the playbook, and it works because jurors who do not understand trauma expect injuries to look like car-wreck injuries — visible, measurable, and obvious. Sexual-assault trauma does not work that way, and the medical science is clear about what it is and how it manifests.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with specific criteria — eight separate diagnostic gates that a clinician must evaluate. It is not a label a lawyer picks. It is a medical condition with a medical standard: the triggering event, the intrusive symptoms (nightmares, flashbacks, unwanted memories), the avoidance behavior (streets the survivor will not walk, rooms they will not enter), the negative changes in cognition and mood (self-blame, detachment, inability to feel positive emotion), the alterations in arousal and reactivity (hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, concentration problems, sleep disruption), the duration of more than one month, the functional impairment, and the exclusion of other causes. A survivor who meets these criteria has a diagnosable, treatable, but serious medical condition — and that condition has a lifetime cost.
The research on sexual assault and PTSD is unambiguous. In the largest study of its kind, rape was found to carry the highest conditional probability of producing PTSD of any traumatic event measured — more likely to cause lasting psychological injury than combat, than a car wreck, than a natural disaster. When a property owner or a university ignores a known danger and a person is sexually assaulted, the lifelong harm that follows is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
The defense will also try to use the fact that the victims did not fight back, did not scream, did not report immediately, or did not “act like a victim” is supposed to act. The science answers this directly. Tonic immobility — the body’s involuntary freeze response during sexual assault — is a documented, reflexive, brainstem-mediated paralysis. The survivor literally cannot move or speak. It is not consent. It is not a choice. It is a survival reflex, and clinical research has found that a significant majority of sexual assault survivors experienced some degree of this involuntary paralysis during the assault. The ones who froze were not consenting. They were the ones the trauma hit hardest — and they go on to suffer PTSD at far higher rates.
This case also involves male victims, and that adds a layer the defense will exploit. Male sexual assault is underreported, stigmatized, and minimized — by society, by institutions, and sometimes by the survivors themselves. A male athlete who was sexually assaulted by teammates faces a specific kind of shame: the expectation that he should have been able to fight back, that men do not get victimized, that admitting it happened is a weakness. These are cultural myths, not medical facts. The injury is the same. The PTSD criteria are the same. The lifetime cost is the same. And the law treats it the same.
Delayed disclosure is the norm, not the exception, in sexual assault cases. Player 1 did not file a police report until February 10, 2023 — months after the incidents began. That delay is not evidence of a false claim. It is evidence of trauma. The DSM-5 — the diagnostic manual psychiatrists use — expressly recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier for PTSD: full diagnostic criteria can first appear six months or more after the event. The delay is in the medical book. The defense will try to weaponize it. The medicine disarms it.
Federal public-health researchers have estimated the lifetime economic cost of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure only counts what can be put on an invoice: therapy, medical visits, lost work. It does not measure the nightmares, the relationships that strained, the degree that was never finished, the sport that was taken away. In a case involving college athletes whose potential professional careers may have been derailed, the economic loss can be far higher — and the non-economic harm is beyond any spreadsheet.
What This Case Is Worth — Building the Number
The value of a university hazing and sexual assault case is built from multiple layers, and the number depends on which track the case runs on and what the evidence proves. Based on the forensic analysis of this case type, the recovery range runs from approximately $1.5 million at the low end to $15 million or more at the high end, depending on how the claims are structured and what the deliberate-indifference evidence shows.
The low end reflects the New Mexico Tort Claims Act damage caps — if the claims are limited to state law against the university, the recovery is constrained by the statutory ceiling. That ceiling is not adequate for the harm in a case like this, which is exactly why the federal Title IX track is essential.
The high end reflects a federal Title IX verdict or a global settlement where institutional deliberate indifference is proven — especially given the multiple victims, the extreme nature of the sexual assaults, the documented actual knowledge of the coaching staff, and the failure to act. When a jury hears that a coach was told a player was sexually assaulted on a team bus and responded by laughing, the deliberation is not typically long.
The damages in a case like this include:
Economic damages — past and future medical costs, including psychological counseling and psychiatric care that may last for years or decades; lost educational costs, including tuition and fees for an education that was disrupted; lost earning capacity, particularly if the victim’s athletic career or academic trajectory was derailed; and the cost of transferring to another institution and starting over.
Non-economic damages — pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of reputation, and the permanent psychological injury that PTSD represents. These are the damages that no receipt can capture and that a jury must be asked to value.
Punitive damages — available against the individual defendants (the players and the coaches) to punish and deter egregious, intentional, or reckless conduct. Punitive damages are generally not available against the state entity under the Tort Claims Act, but they are available against the individuals — and in a case where a coach allegedly laughed at a report of sexual assault, the punitive argument is strong.
The number is built by a life-care planner who prices out the cost of future treatment, a forensic economist who reduces future losses to present value, and the testimony of treating clinicians and experts who document the injury. The adjuster’s first offer is a fraction of that number. The case is what closes the gap.
The Defense Playbook — What the University’s Lawyers Will Try
The university’s defense team — whether it is the state’s risk-management office, the university’s outside counsel, or the insurance carrier’s lawyers — will run a series of plays designed to minimize the claim, delay the process, and pressure the victim into accepting less. Here are the plays and how to counter them.
Play 1: “The criminal case is still under investigation — you should wait.” The defense will use the ongoing New Mexico Attorney General investigation as a reason to delay. The counter is that the civil case and the criminal case are independent proceedings — the civil clock keeps running regardless of what the prosecutor does. Waiting for the criminal case to resolve can cost you the evidence-preservation window and, in the worst case, the statute of limitations. The civil case proceeds on its own timeline.
Play 2: “Why didn’t you report it sooner?” This is the oldest attack on sexual-assault victims, and it will be deployed against Player 1 and Player 2 for the months that passed between the incidents and the February 10, 2023, police report. The counter is the medical science: delayed disclosure is the norm in sexual assault, not the exception. The DSM-5 expressly recognizes delayed-onset PTSD. Tonic immobility explains why victims freeze rather than fight. And the stigma of male sexual assault in an athletic culture explains why a young man might bury what happened to him rather than report it immediately. The delay is evidence of trauma, not evidence of a false claim.
Play 3: “It was just locker-room behavior — hazing is tradition.” The defense will try to minimize the conduct as roughhousing, team-building, or “boys being boys.” The counter is the law: New Mexico’s hazing statute criminalizes this conduct. The NMSU police report listed possible charges including criminal sexual contact and false imprisonment. When a police report describes “criminal sexual contact,” the conduct is not tradition. It is a crime. And the civil standard of care is set by the criminal statute designed to prevent it.
Play 4: “The university did everything it could — it suspended the program and fired the coach.” The defense will point to the February 2023 actions — shutting down the program, firing Heiar — as evidence that the university responded. The counter is timing: the university acted only after the police report was filed and the allegations became public. The lawsuit alleges that reports were made months earlier — in the summer and fall of 2022 — and the university did nothing until the story broke. Acting after public exposure is not the same as acting on actual knowledge. Title IX deliberate indifference is measured by what the institution did when it knew, not what it did when it was caught.
Play 5: The quick settlement with a non-disclosure agreement. A fast check may arrive with a release attached, before the full scope of the harm is known. The release will include a confidentiality clause designed to keep the victim silent. The counter is that the first offer is always a fraction of the case’s value, and accepting it before the evidence is preserved, the medicine is documented, and the life-care plan is built means accepting pennies on the dollar for a lifetime of harm. A non-disclosure agreement also prevents the survivor from speaking out — which the lawsuit itself says these victims want to do.
Play 6: “You signed a waiver / participated voluntarily / assumed the risk.” In athletic-program cases, the defense may point to team participation agreements, codes of conduct, or waivers the student-athlete signed. The counter is that no waiver can release a university from its Title IX obligations, and no signed form can consent to sexual assault. New Mexico, like most jurisdictions, does not allow a release for intentional torts or gross negligence. The players did not consent to being sexually assaulted, and no document they signed before joining the team changes that.
How a Case Like This Is Actually Built — From First Call to Verdict
Here is how a university hazing and sexual assault case is actually built, step by step, by a trial team that knows this terrain.
Week one: the preservation letter goes out. The day you call, letters go to NMSU, the former coaches, the accused players, the bus operator, and any third-party data vendors. The letters demand preservation of all video, phone data, emails, texts, internal communications, personnel files, investigation reports, and police records. This freezes the evidence before it can be legally destroyed.
Weeks two through four: the records demands begin. Formal demands go out under New Mexico’s Inspection of Public Records Act for NMSU’s records — including the Greenberg Traurig investigation file, the Title IX office’s records, the athletic department’s communications, and any prior hazing complaints at the university. The article notes that IPRA requests for hazing incidents at NMSU over the past ten years had been made and that NMSU was continually asking for more time to respond. Those prior complaints — if they exist — are the pattern that proves the danger was known.
Months one through three: the medical record is built. The victim is connected with a qualified trauma-informed therapist. The diagnosis is documented. The PTSD criteria are evaluated by a clinician using validated instruments. The contemporaneous mental-health records — therapy intake notes, PCL-5 or CAPS-5 scores, treatment plans — are created in real time, pre-dating any “litigation motive” accusation. The life-care planner begins building the cost projection.
Months three through six: discovery and depositions. The coaches are deposed. Dominique Taylor is asked under oath about the alleged laughter — the single most important deposition in the case. Greg Heiar is asked about the promised suspensions that never came. The athletic director is asked about the parent’s calls that went unreturned. The accused players are deposed about each incident. The university’s Title IX coordinator is asked about the response protocol and what was done when.
Months six through twelve: experts are retained. A Title IX compliance expert testifies about what the university should have done when it received reports of sexual assault. A sports psychologist specializing in male sexual trauma testifies about the injury and its progression. A forensic economist calculates the present value of the lifetime cost. A life-care planner prices the future treatment.
The number is built. The demand is not a guess. It is the sum of the economic loss (medical, educational, earning capacity), the non-economic harm (pain, suffering, loss of enjoyment), and — where applicable — punitive damages against the individuals. The demand is presented with the full evidentiary record behind it. The university and its carriers decide whether to pay or face a jury.
The trial. If the case does not settle, it goes to a jury in the Third Judicial District Court in Dona Ana County — twelve people from the community where NMSU sits. The Reptile Theory approach is central: the case is framed around the safety of all students and how the university violated the basic safety protocols that exist to protect them. The question is not just “what happened to this victim” but “what kind of institution allows this to happen on its watch, after it was told, and does nothing until the police are called.”
Your First 72 Hours — What to Do and What Not to Do
If you are a survivor of what happened at NMSU, or a parent of one, here is what matters right now.
Do get medical and mental-health care first. Your health comes before anything else. Find a trauma-informed therapist — not a general counselor, but someone who specializes in sexual-assault trauma. The medical record created now, close to the events, is the strongest evidence that the injury is real and was caused by what happened. If you already have a therapist, tell them what happened. If you do not, we can help connect you with qualified providers.
Do not give a recorded statement to anyone from the university, the athletic department, or any insurance company. A friendly-sounding person may call to “check on you” and ask you to “just tell us what happened.” That conversation is designed to be quoted against you. Decline politely and refer all communication to your lawyer.
Do not sign anything. No release, no settlement, no confidentiality agreement, no waiver, no “statement of facts.” If someone from the university or an insurance company puts a document in front of you, do not sign it. If you already signed something, tell us — it may not be as binding as they want you to believe.
Do not post about it on social media. The defense will monitor your social media accounts. A photograph of you smiling at a family gathering will be presented to a jury as evidence that you are “fine.” Do not give them that tool.
Do preserve everything you have. Text messages with coaches, teammates, or parents. Emails. Screenshots of social-media posts by the accused players. The name of the bus company. The hotel where the road-trip incident occurred. Any photographs. The date and time of every conversation you can remember. Write it all down while it is fresh — a timeline that you create now, in your own words, is invaluable.
Do call a lawyer. This is not a step to take later. The 180-day Tort Claims Act clock may be running. The evidence is decaying. The preservation letter needs to go out. The medical record needs to start being built. Every day that passes before a lawyer is involved is a day the defense gains and you lose. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And the decision to call does not obligate you to file a lawsuit — it simply gives you the information you need to make an informed choice.
Why Our Firm — Ralph Manginello, Lupe Peña, and the Team Behind You
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm based in Houston, Texas, that takes New Mexico cases, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not claim an office in New Mexico, and we will not pretend we do. What we bring is a specific, verified record in exactly this kind of case.
Ralph Manginello is the Managing Partner, licensed in Texas since 1998 — 27 years of trial practice, including in federal court. He is a journalist before he was a lawyer, a competitor who hates losing, and the lead counsel in an active hazing lawsuit against the University of Houston — a $10 million case that is live right now. Ralph knows hazing litigation because he is doing it. He knows how a university defends these cases because he is fighting one. And the strategic instincts that come from that live experience — what to demand, what to freeze, what to depose — are the instincts that apply to what happened at NMSU. You can read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is an Associate Attorney, licensed in Texas since 2012, and a former insurance-defense attorney. That last part is the advantage you need to understand: Lupe spent years inside a national defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like you. He knows how claims are priced from the inside, how reserves are set, how IME doctors are selected, and how surveillance and social-media monitoring are deployed. Now he sits on your side of the table. Lupe is also fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. You can read more about Lupe here.
We handle cases on a contingency fee basis: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And we have a 24/7 live staff — not an answering service — so when you call 1-888-ATTY-911 at any hour, a real person answers.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients over the history of the firm. We have a $5 million brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million amputation settlement, and millions recovered in trucking wrongful-death cases. We currently litigate the $10 million University of Houston hazing lawsuit. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the experience behind those results is the experience we bring to the table for you.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. But the rights described here are real, the deadlines are real, and the evidence is dying. The question is not whether you have a case. The question is whether you are going to let the clock run out before you pick up the phone.
If you or someone you love was harmed in the NMSU men’s basketball program — as a victim, as a witness, or as a family member — call us. The consultation is free. The conversation is confidential. And we handle hazing and sexual-assault cases with the specific experience this moment demands.
1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.
Hablamos Español.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a lawsuit against NMSU for hazing and sexual assault?
The deadline depends on which legal track your claim runs on. Claims against NMSU as a state entity under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act require written notice — typically within 180 days of the incident. The general personal-injury statute of limitations in New Mexico runs three years from the date the cause of action accrues. Federal Title IX claims run on their own timeline, which varies by jurisdiction and may be governed by the state’s personal-injury SOL. Because these clocks interact and because the 180-day notice deadline is unforgiving, the only safe answer is to talk to a lawyer now, while you still have time — not later, when you assume you do.
Does the fact that the DA declined to prosecute mean I cannot sue?
No. The criminal system and the civil system are completely separate. The Dona Ana County District Attorney declining to prosecute means the state chose not to pursue criminal penalties. It does not affect your right to sue for compensation. The civil burden of proof is lower than the criminal standard (“beyond a reasonable doubt” versus “preponderance of the evidence”). The case was referred to the New Mexico Attorney General, which may or may not pursue it — but your civil case does not wait for that decision and does not depend on it.
Can I sue if I did not report the assault right away?
Yes. Delayed disclosure is the norm in sexual assault cases, not the exception. The medical literature — including the DSM-5 itself — recognizes that PTSD symptoms can first appear months or even years after the trauma. The law accounts for this through discovery-rule principles, which in many jurisdictions start the clock when the victim discovered or should have discovered the injury and its cause, rather than on the date of the incident itself. A delay in reporting is not a bar to recovery. It is a feature of the injury, and a qualified trial lawyer knows how to explain that to a jury.
What if I signed something — a waiver, a team agreement, or a release?
No waiver, team-participation agreement, or release can lawfully consent to sexual assault. New Mexico, like most jurisdictions, does not allow releases for intentional torts or gross negligence. If you signed a document that the university or its insurance company is now using to argue you gave up your rights, that document is likely unenforceable as to the sexual-assault claims. If you signed a settlement or release after the incidents occurred, tell a lawyer immediately — it may not be as binding as they want you to believe, and there are legal avenues to challenge releases obtained under duress or without full knowledge of the harm.
Can the university really be held responsible for what players did to other players?
Yes — under two theories. First, Title IX holds the university liable when it has actual knowledge of student-on-student sexual harassment and responds with deliberate indifference. The lawsuit alleges that the coaching staff was told about the abuse and did nothing meaningful — Taylor allegedly laughed, Heiar allegedly promised suspensions that never came. That is the deliberate-indifference chain. Second, under state negligence law, the university owes a duty of reasonable care to supervise its students and protect them from foreseeable harm. When the harm is reported and the university does not act, the harm that follows is foreseeable — and the university is responsible for it.
Are there other victims who can join this case?
The lawsuit states that there are more victims, including another athlete and a member of the staff, who were “subjected to the same or similar treatment.” If you are one of those people, you may have your own claim — and your claim may be on its own clock. Multiple victims strengthen the case against the university because they demonstrate a pattern, not an isolated incident. But each victim’s claim is individual, with its own deadline, and joining an existing lawsuit is not automatic. You need your own lawyer to protect your own rights and your own timeline.
Will I have to talk about what happened in public?
Not necessarily. Civil cases are not always public, and there are mechanisms to protect a survivor’s privacy — including filing under a pseudonym (Jane Doe / John Doe), protective orders sealing sensitive discovery, and confidentiality provisions in settlements. The lawsuit in this case was filed by two NMSU athletes and one of their parents, and the news outlet declined to identify them because they are sexual-assault victims. Your privacy can be protected throughout the process. The decision to speak publicly — as the lawsuit says these victims want to do — is yours, not the court’s and not ours.
What is the case worth?
Based on the forensic analysis of this case type — sexual assault and hazing in a university athletic program with institutional deliberate indifference — the recovery range runs from approximately $1.5 million at the low end (if claims are limited to state law with Tort Claims Act caps) to $15 million or more at the high end (if federal Title IX deliberate indifference is proven and a global verdict or settlement is reached). The actual value depends on the specific facts, the strength of the deliberate-indifference evidence, the number of victims, the severity of the psychological injury, and whether punitive damages are pursued against the individual defendants. No lawyer can guarantee a specific result — past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — but the framework for valuing these cases is well established, and the Title IX track is what makes the high end possible.