Ocala Fire Rescue Hazing Waterboarding at Station 21 — Your Civil Rights After a First-Responder Assault
You went to work at Fire Station 21 in Ocala on November 16 like any other shift. You did your job. And then the people who were supposed to have your back — the ones you’d trust in a burning building — smeared grease on you, threw your boots in the woods, held you down, stripped you, beat you with your own belt, and waterboarded you with a towel and water until a call came in and they let you go. That is not a hazing. That is not a prank. That is kidnapping, robbery, battery, and an act of torture committed by people wearing the same uniform as you. And the fact that four of them have been arrested and terminated does not mean the system worked — it means the criminal system caught what the civil system still has to address. We are the trial team that handles cases like this, and we are going to tell you exactly what the law does and does not protect, who can be held accountable, what the evidence clock looks like, and what the fight ahead actually involves. We do not sugarcoat this. We arm you with the truth.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts, and the deadlines governing claims against a Florida county are shorter and more complex than most people realize. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The consultation is free and confidential. Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — we have live staff 24 hours a day, not an answering service. And Hablamos Español.
What Happened at Station 21 — and Why the Word “Hazing” Is a Legal Trap
The facts as reported by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office are these: On November 16, you were working at Station 21 when colleagues began smearing grease and food on you. You ignored it and continued your duties. The aggression escalated. One threw your boots into the woods. When you went to retrieve them, another grabbed you from behind and took you to the ground. Two of them held you down while a third removed your belt. Your pants were pulled down. They demanded your phone passcode — they wanted a TikTok video on your phone. You refused. One whipped you with the belt. They pulled your boxers down and struck you again. Then they dragged you to a different area, held you down again, covered your face with a towel, and poured water over it. They were waterboarding you. The only reason it stopped is that a service call came into the station and they released you to respond.
Here is the first thing you need to understand, and it is the thing the county’s lawyers are already building toward: they will call this “horseplay.” They will call it a “prank that went too far.” They will try to push it into the workers’ compensation system, where your recovery is capped, your pain and suffering is not compensated, and the county is shielded from a civil tort lawsuit. That framing is the enemy. Waterboarding is not horseplay. Stripping a colleague and beating them with a belt is not a prank. Holding someone down and simulating drowning is an intentional act of violence — and under Florida law, intentional acts of violence fall outside the workers’ compensation system entirely. That legal fork — between “workplace injury” and “intentional tort” — is where this case is won or lost, and it is the first thing we talk about when you call.
The Difference Between Hazing and Criminal Battery
Hazing is a word people use to make violence sound less violent. In Florida, the criminal code does not have a “hazing” charge that covers waterboarding — it has kidnapping, robbery, and battery, which is exactly what the Marion County Sheriff’s Office charged these four with. Edward Kenny III, Seth Day, and Tate Trauthwein each face kidnapping, robbery, and battery. Kaylee Bradley faces robbery and principal/accessory to robbery. These are felonies. The sheriff’s office did not call this a prank. The state attorney is not treating it as a joke. And neither should the civil system.
In the civil context, what happened to you satisfies every element of multiple intentional torts. Battery: harmful or offensive contact with your person — the belt strikes, the physical restraint, the waterboarding. Assault: the threat of imminent harmful contact that put you in reasonable fear. False imprisonment: the complete confinement of your movement — you were held down, dragged, and prevented from leaving. Intentional infliction of emotional distress: conduct so outrageous it exceeds all bounds of decency — and waterboarding a colleague at a fire station clears that bar by a mile. Robbery: the taking of your property by force — they seized your phone and tried to force your passcode by violence. Each of these is a separate civil cause of action, and each carries its own measure of damages.
“Let me be absolutely clear, from the board of county commissioners, what occurred is absolutely unacceptable. It’s disappointing. It makes me sick to my very stomach.”
— Marion County Commissioner Carl Zalak III
That statement from a county commissioner is not just political talk. It is an admission — by the governing body of the entity that employed your attackers — that what happened was beyond the pale. And in a courtroom, that kind of public acknowledgment by the defendant’s own leadership strips away the defense’s ability to frame this as a misunderstanding.
Can You Sue a Florida County for Employee Actions? — The Sovereign Immunity Problem
Yes — but the path is unlike suing a private company, and the rules are stacked to protect the government’s wallet. Florida’s sovereign immunity statute, Section 768.28 of the Florida Statutes, waives the state’s historic immunity from suit for the negligence of its employees acting within the scope of their employment. That waiver is what lets you file a civil claim against Marion County for what its firefighters did. But the statute comes with two walls you have to know about from day one.
The first wall is the damages cap. Under Section 768.28, recovery against the county is capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence — no matter what a jury awards. If your damages exceed those caps, the only way to collect the excess is through a claims bill passed by the Florida Legislature. A claims bill is a political process, not a legal one. It requires a state representative or senator to sponsor legislation authorizing payment of the excess amount. It takes time, it takes advocacy, and it takes a level of public pressure that only a well-prepared case can generate. But the egregiousness of waterboarding — the fact that this story is already public — creates exactly the kind of political pressure that makes a claims bill achievable.
The second wall is the scope-of-employment question. The county will argue that waterboarding a colleague is outside the scope of employment — that no firefighter was hired to assault coworkers, and therefore the county should not be liable for their criminal acts. This is the gate where cases against government employers live or die. Our answer runs through two theories: first, that the county is directly liable for negligent supervision, training, and retention — for allowing a station culture where this could happen, for failing to monitor what was happening on shift, for keeping employees who were capable of this. Second, that the assault occurred on county property, during a work shift, while all participants were on duty and ostensibly performing their employment — and under the doctrine of respondeat superior, the question of whether criminal conduct falls “within the scope” is one a jury can answer against the county when the acts occurred on its premises during working hours.
If you were hurt by a government employee’s intentional misconduct, our Florida government vehicle and entity accident lawyers understand the sovereign immunity framework and the claims-bill process — though the mechanics differ from Texas, the strategic challenge is the same: piercing the government’s liability shield.
The Intentional Tort Exception to Workers’ Compensation
This is the single most important legal fight in your case, and we want you to understand it completely. Florida’s workers’ compensation statute, Section 440.11 of the Florida Statutes, makes workers’ comp the exclusive remedy for workplace injuries — meaning you generally cannot sue your employer for negligence, you can only file a comp claim, which pays medical bills and a portion of lost wages but no pain and suffering, no punitive damages, and no full compensation.
But Section 440.11 contains an intentional tort exception. When the employer — acting through its agents and employees — engages in conduct that is substantially certain to result in injury, the workers’ comp bar does not apply, and you can sue in civil court for the full measure of damages. Waterboarding is not a workplace accident. Holding someone down, covering their face, and pouring water over it is substantially certain to cause injury — physical injury from the restraint and the suffocation, and psychological injury from the terror. The belt whipping, the stripping, the forced restraint — each of these is an intentional act substantially certain to cause harm.
The county’s lawyers will fight this frame with everything they have. They will argue it was “horseplay” — a recognized category that comp courts sometimes treat as accidental rather than intentional. They will argue the participants didn’t “intend” to cause serious injury, just to scare you. They will try to characterize the waterboarding as a “brief” incident that didn’t cause lasting physical harm. Every one of these arguments fails against the facts: four people coordinated to restrain you, used your own belt as a weapon, stripped your clothing, and simulated drowning. That is not horseplay. It is a planned, coordinated, intentional assault, and Florida’s intentional tort exception was written for exactly this kind of conduct. If you want to understand how the workers’ comp system works and why we fight to get out of it, our workers’ compensation practice page walks through the exclusivity bar and its exceptions in detail.
Florida’s Individual Liability Statute — Section 768.28(9)(a)
There is a provision in Florida’s sovereign immunity statute that the individual defendants in this case should already be worried about. Section 768.28(9)(a) provides that individual employees of a government entity can be held personally liable — meaning their own assets, not the county’s — for acts committed with wanton and willful disregard for human rights, safety, or property. Waterboarding a restrained, partially disrobed colleague with a towel and water is wanton and willful by any definition. The belt whipping is wanton and willful. The kidnapping — holding you down and preventing you from leaving — is wanton and willful.
This matters for two reasons. First, the sovereign immunity damages caps ($200k/$300k) apply to the county, not to the individual defendants. The individuals’ personal liability is uncapped. Second, punitive damages — which are not available against the county under Florida law — are available against the individual defendants. Punitive damages are the jury’s tool to punish and deter conduct that is so outrageous it shocks the conscience, and a jury in the Fifth Judicial Circuit hearing that four firefighters waterboarded a colleague at a fire station will have no difficulty finding the conduct qualifies.
The practical question, of course, is whether the individual defendants have assets or insurance to satisfy a judgment. Twenty-two, twenty-two, nineteen, and twenty-five years old — they may not have deep pockets. But their personal liability is real, it is uncapped, it includes punitive exposure, and it is a lever that drives the county toward a settlement that accounts for the full scope of the harm. If you were assaulted in the workplace, our workplace accident lawyers can help you understand the full liability map.
The Defendant Structure — Who Actually Pays
A case like this has multiple layers of potential defendants, and naming the right ones — and pursuing the right theories against each — is what separates a real recovery from a moral victory. Here is the map:
Marion County Board of County Commissioners — as the governing body for Marion County Fire Rescue, the county is the entity that employed your attackers, owned the station where it happened, and is responsible for supervising its workforce. The county is liable for negligent hiring, training, supervision, and retention, and potentially vicariously liable for the employees’ acts under respondeat superior. Recovery against the county is capped at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence under the sovereign immunity statute, unless a claims bill is passed. The county’s liability insurance — typically through a self-insurance pool or commercial carrier — is the primary source of recovery, but the caps apply regardless of available insurance limits.
The four individual defendants — Edward Kenny III, Seth Day, Tate Trauthwein, and Kaylee Bradley — are personally liable under Section 768.28(9)(a) for their wanton and willful conduct. Their personal liability is not capped by the sovereign immunity statute, and punitive damages are available against them. The practical recovery from individuals this young may be limited, but the leverage of personal, uncapped, punitive exposure is what forces the county to the table with a number that reflects the full harm.
The station culture and supervision chain — Fire Station 21 is not an unmonitored space. It has a command structure, shift supervisors, and standard operating procedures. Marion County Fire Rescue’s own internal SOPs strictly prohibit hazing and workplace violence. The question of who in the chain of command knew about prior hazing, who allowed a culture to develop where this could happen, and who failed to supervise is central to the negligent supervision claim against the county. Fire stations, by their nature, can become fiefdoms — semi-secluded environments where shifts work, eat, and sleep together for extended periods, and where lack of direct oversight from headquarters can erode professional standards. When that erosion produces waterboarding, the county answers for the culture it allowed to fester.
The Evidence Clock — What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Disappears
Evidence in a case like this is perishable, and the perishability runs on multiple clocks simultaneously. Understanding these clocks — and acting before they run out — is why the preservation letter goes out the day you call, not the week the county’s lawyer decides to respond.
Internal Station Surveillance — Fire stations have internal camera systems covering common areas, apparatus bays, and exterior approaches. The footage from November 16 would capture the duration of the incident, the identities of everyone present (including any bystanders who failed to intervene), and the sequence of events from the initial grease-smearing through the waterboarding. This is the single most important piece of evidence in the case. It is also the most fragile: digital surveillance systems commonly overwrite on a rolling loop of 7 to 30 days, meaning the footage may already be gone or may be days from disappearing. A preservation letter demanding the county freeze all surveillance from November 16 and the surrounding dates must go out immediately. If the footage is overwritten after the county receives a preservation demand, the jury can be instructed to assume the lost recording would have helped your case. That is a powerful lever.
Defendant Cell Phones — The motive for the entire assault was a TikTok video on your phone. That means digital evidence is at the heart of this case. The defendants’ own phones may contain text messages, Snapchat conversations, or recordings discussing or planning the assault — and there is a high probability the incident itself was recorded or discussed via messaging apps. Cell phone data is uniquely vulnerable to remote wiping and intentional destruction. A preservation letter to each individual defendant (and, if possible, through their criminal defense attorneys) demanding preservation of all digital communications from November 16 and the surrounding period is essential. If the criminal investigation has already seized the phones, the data may be preserved through the Marion County Sheriff’s Office evidence chain — but civil counsel needs to act to ensure the civil case has access.
Personnel Files of the Defendants — The county controls the personnel files of all four defendants. These files may reveal prior hazing incidents, prior complaints, disciplinary records, or training deficiencies that establish a pattern the county knew about and failed to address. Under Florida’s public records framework, these files may be partially accessible, but the full disciplinary history typically requires litigation discovery. The county’s own records of prior incidents at Station 21 — if they exist — are the backbone of the negligent supervision claim. Request them early.
Your Physical Clothing and Belt — The clothing you were wearing, the belt that was used as a weapon, and any items that retain physical evidence of the assault (grease stains, water damage, DNA, fiber transfer) are forensic evidence. These items should be held by the Marion County Sheriff’s Office as part of the criminal evidence chain, but civil counsel needs to confirm their location and preservation status immediately. If the items were returned to you, photograph and preserve them in their current condition — do not clean them.
“Today, I want to address the arrest and termination of four first responders from our department. Their actions, now the subject of serious felony charges, represent a disturbing violation of everything this profession stands for. What occurred was unacceptable, inexcusable, and fundamentally contrary to the core values of our fire department.”
— Marion County Fire Chief James Banta
Fire Chief Banta’s public statement is an admission by the department’s own leadership that the conduct was beyond the pale. In a civil case, the chief’s words are admissible as an admission of a party opponent — the county’s own fire chief calling the conduct “unacceptable” and “inexcusable” makes it nearly impossible for the county’s civil defense lawyers to argue it was mere horseplay.
The Medicine — What Waterboarding Does to the Body and the Mind
Waterboarding is internationally recognized as torture. It has been classified as such by the United Nations, by international human rights bodies, and by the United States’ own historical prosecutions of enemy forces who used it on American prisoners. It is not a simulation of drowning — it is the controlled induction of the drowning reflex. When a towel or cloth is placed over the face and water is poured over it, the cloth saturates, the airway fills with water, the gag reflex triggers, and the body’s autonomic drowning response activates. The person being waterboarded does not merely fear death — the body believes it is dying. The suffocation reflex is involuntary and overwhelming, and the psychological experience is one of imminent, certain death.
For a person trained as a first responder — someone who has studied the physiology of drowning, who has responded to water rescue calls, who knows exactly what drowning looks like and how it kills — being waterboarded carries an additional layer of horror. You know what is happening to your body. You know the mechanism. And the people doing it to you are your colleagues — the people whose training you share, whose company you keep on 24-hour shifts, whose hands you trust to pull you out of a collapsing building.
The psychological injuries from this event are severe and diagnosable. Post-traumatic stress disorder is the expected outcome, not a possible one. The diagnostic criteria under the DSM-5 require exposure to a traumatic event involving actual or threatened death, and waterboarding meets that threshold on its face. Intrusion symptoms — nightmares, flashbacks, the inability to stop reliving it — are the signature presentation. Avoidance — of the station, of fire service, of the people who did this, of anything that reminds you of being restrained — is the expected response. Negative alterations in cognition and mood — the self-blame, the shame of having been stripped, the loss of trust in a profession you dedicated your life to — are profound. And alterations in arousal and reactivity — hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, sleep disturbance, irritability — will affect every relationship you have.
The defense will exploit the invisibility of these injuries. There is no X-ray for PTSD. There is no blood test for betrayal trauma. The county’s lawyers will point to the absence of broken bones and argue the harm was minor. The answer is the same one trauma medicine has been giving for decades: the injury is real, it is diagnosable through validated clinical instruments (the CAPS-5 and the PCL-5 are the standard structured assessment tools), and the medical literature has long established that rape and assaultive violence produce PTSD at higher rates than any other category of trauma. Waterboarding — a deliberate simulation of death by drowning — sits at the extreme end of trauma severity. A clinician who evaluates you and documents the full PTSD picture is the proof the defense cannot argue away.
The economic cost of this injury is real and ongoing. You need a specialist in trauma-focused therapy — not general counseling, but a clinician trained in evidence-based treatments for PTSD like prolonged exposure therapy or cognitive processing therapy. You may need psychiatric medication management. You may be unable to return to fire service — a career loss that carries not just salary but pension, identity, and the community of the firehouse. If you cannot return, the lost earning capacity is a recoverable damage, and it should be calculated by a forensic economist who can project the full career arc you’ve been deprived of.
What the County’s Lawyers Will Try — and How We Counter Each Play
The county’s civil defense team — likely a private firm that handles government liability or an in-house county attorney’s office — will follow a predictable playbook. Every play has a counter, and knowing the plays in advance is half the fight.
Play 1: “This is a workers’ compensation claim, not a tort case.” The county will file a notice that your claim belongs in the workers’ comp system, arguing the assault was a workplace injury. The counter: we plead the intentional tort exception under Section 440.11, proving through the facts — the coordinated restraint, the stripping, the belt weapon, the waterboarding — that this was substantially certain to cause injury and was not accidental. The criminal charges (kidnapping, robbery, battery) are themselves evidence that the conduct was intentional, not negligent. When the sheriff’s office charges your coworkers with felonies, the comp bar argument collapses.
Play 2: “This was outside the scope of employment — the county isn’t responsible for criminal acts.” The county will argue that waterboarding is so far outside a firefighter’s job duties that respondeat superior does not apply. The counter: we pursue direct negligence against the county — negligent supervision, negligent training, negligent retention, and negligent failure to maintain a safe workplace. The county’s own SOPs prohibit hazing and workplace violence. If the county failed to enforce its own rules, if it allowed a culture to develop at Station 21, if it retained employees capable of this conduct, the county’s own failures — not the individual criminality — are the basis for liability. And the fact that the assault occurred on county property, during a work shift, while all participants were on duty, makes the scope-of-employment question a jury issue, not a dismissal issue.
Play 3: “Damages are capped at $200,000 — take it or leave it.” The county will point to the sovereign immunity caps and offer a settlement at or near $200,000, framing it as the maximum available. The counter: the caps apply to the county, not to the individual defendants under Section 768.28(9)(a), whose personal liability is uncapped and includes punitive exposure. And the caps can be exceeded through a claims bill — a legislative process that the public nature of this case, the criminal charges, and the statements of the fire chief and county commissioner make achievable. The political pressure of a case where firefighters waterboarded a colleague at a fire station is exactly the kind of pressure that moves a claims bill through the Florida Legislature.
Play 4: “The victim provoked it / participated willingly / it was mutual horseplay.” This is the cruelest play, and it is the one defense lawyers reach for when the facts are bad. They will comb through your background, your interactions with the defendants, your social media, anything they can find to suggest you were a willing participant or that the “hazing” was a two-way street. The counter: you refused to give your passcode. You tried to retrieve your boots and leave. You were physically restrained by two people while a third beat you with a belt. You were dragged to a different location. You were waterboarded. The criminal charges — kidnapping, not just battery — establish that the state has already concluded this was not consensual. And the county’s own leadership has publicly called it “unacceptable” and “inexcusable.” The defense cannot simultaneously call it horseplay when their own fire chief has called it a violation of everything the profession stands for.
Play 5: Delay. Government entity defense is slow. The county will take every extension available, file motions to delay discovery, argue the criminal investigation should stay civil proceedings, and try to run the clock. The counter: we push for parallel tracks, we demand evidence preservation immediately, we file early and set the case for trial, and we use the criminal proceedings — which will move faster — to build collateral estoppel for the civil case. If the individual defendants are convicted of kidnapping and battery, those convictions can establish the elements of civil battery and false imprisonment without re-litigating them.
What This Case Is Worth — An Honest Valuation
The forensic case dossier frames the value range at $250,000 on the low end to $2,500,000 on the high end. Let us break down what drives that range honestly.
The $200,000 sovereign immunity cap is effectively a soft floor for settlement with the county — not because $200,000 is adequate, but because it is the amount the county can pay without legislative action. The egregious nature of waterboarding, combined with the public statements from the fire chief and county commissioner, creates immense political pressure for a mid-seven-figure settlement or a legislative claims bill to exceed the cap.
The damages stack includes:
Economic damages — medical bills for physical trauma evaluation, psychiatric evaluation and treatment, ongoing trauma-focused therapy (which may continue for years), medication costs, and any lost wages or lost earning capacity if you are unable to return to fire service. If you cannot return to the firehouse — and many assault survivors in tight-knit first-responder communities find they cannot — the lost earning capacity is a career-long figure that a forensic economist projects based on your salary trajectory, pension benefits, and expected career length.
Non-economic damages — pain and suffering, mental anguish, the humiliation of being stripped and beaten, the terror of the waterboarding, the betrayal by colleagues, and the loss of enjoyment of life. These damages are substantial in any intentional tort case, and in a waterboarding case they are extraordinary. The defense cannot point to a clean scan and say the harm is minor — the entire harm is psychological, and the medical literature supports its severity.
Punitive damages — available against the individual defendants. Florida law permits punitive damages for conduct that is grossly negligent or committed with reckless disregard for human safety. Waterboarding meets that standard without question. While punitive damages against the county are not available under Florida law, the individual defendants’ punitive exposure is a leverage point that drives the overall resolution.
The high end of the range — $2.5 million or beyond — would likely require either a claims bill (to exceed the $200k/$300k caps) or a combination of county settlement at the caps plus individual defendant judgments that include punitive damages. The political facts of this case — criminal charges, public outrage, leadership admissions — are what make the high end achievable rather than aspirational.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We do not promise a number. We promise a fight for the full measure of what happened to you, built on the facts and the law, with no corners cut.
The Proof Story — How a Case Like This Is Actually Built
Here is how the case moves from the day you call to the day a number is on the table.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to Marion County, to the Sheriff’s Office (for the criminal evidence), and to each individual defendant (through their criminal counsel if they have one). The letter demands: all surveillance footage from Station 21 for November 16 and the surrounding week; all personnel files of the four defendants; all internal incident reports, hazing complaints, or prior disciplinary records; all digital communications from the defendants’ county-issued and personal devices; and the physical evidence (your clothing, the belt) held by MCSO. This letter creates the legal duty to preserve. If the county lets footage overwrite after receiving it, the jury hears about it.
Weeks two through four. We obtain your medical records — the emergency evaluation, any psychiatric intake, your baseline clinical assessment with a trauma specialist. We begin building the PTSD diagnosis through validated instruments (CAPS-5, PCL-5) administered by a qualified clinician. We document the physical evidence — photographs of any injuries, the condition of your clothing, any items returned to you. We open the workers’ comp file as a protective measure while we prepare the intentional tort exception argument to remove the case from the comp system.
Months one through three. The criminal case progresses. We monitor it closely — every plea, every conviction, every admission in the criminal proceedings is potential collateral estoppel for the civil case. If the individual defendants are convicted of kidnapping and battery, those convictions establish the elements of civil battery and false imprisonment without re-litigating them. We work with local counsel in the Fifth Judicial Circuit — the Ocala courthouse on Silver Springs Boulevard where your case will be heard by a jury of Marion County residents. These are conservative, law-and-order jurors who respect first responders — and who will be furious at people who abused the badge and the uniform to torture a colleague.
Months three through six. Discovery. Depositions of the individual defendants (if they are not asserting Fifth Amendment privileges, which they likely will be in the criminal case’s shadow — but their silence in the civil case can carry an adverse inference). Depositions of county supervisors, the station captain, anyone in the chain of command who should have known or should have supervised. Requests for production of the station’s training records, hazing policies, prior complaints, staffing schedules. The county’s own records are the backbone of the negligent supervision claim.
Months six through twelve. Expert work. A human factors expert on the psychological impact of waterboarding — to translate the medical reality into terms a jury can feel. A life-care planner to build the cost of your future psychological treatment. A forensic economist to project your lost earning capacity. Your treating clinicians to testify about your diagnosis, your treatment, and your prognosis. The proof is assembled into a demand or a trial presentation that makes the county understand what a jury will do with these facts.
The trial. In voir dire, we screen for jurors with military or first-responder backgrounds — people who understand that hazing is a violation of the brotherhood, not a part of it. A Marine knows what waterboarding is. A retired firefighter knows what a station culture should look like. These are the jurors who carry this case, because they do not need to be taught that what happened was wrong — they already know.
The First 72 Hours — What You Do and What You Do Not Do
Medical first. If you have not already been evaluated by a medical professional, do it now — not because you need it for the case, but because you need it for yourself. Waterboarding can cause aspiration, respiratory irritation, and physical injury from restraint. Belt strikes can cause contusions, lacerations, and deeper injury. And the psychological injuries — the nightmares, the hypervigilance, the inability to sleep, the flinching at sounds that remind you of the station — are already present whether you acknowledge them or not. A trauma specialist can document your baseline, begin treatment, and create the contemporaneous medical record that pre-dates any argument that your symptoms developed later “for the lawsuit.”
Do not give a recorded statement to the county’s investigator or insurance representative. Someone friendly will call you. They will say they just want to hear your side. They will say they want to help. They will record it. And every word will be transcribed and used to minimize your claim. You are under no obligation to give a recorded statement to your employer’s insurance company or risk management office. Politely decline and call us first.
Do not sign anything. No release, no settlement offer, no acknowledgment of facts, no workers’ comp forms you do not understand. A quick check may arrive. A form may be presented as routine. Nothing is routine when the county is defending a waterboarding claim. If something is put in front of you, do not sign it. Call us.
Do not post about the incident on social media. Not a description, not a photo, not an opinion, not a comment on someone else’s post. The county’s lawyers and their investigators will be monitoring your social media, looking for anything — a smiling photo, a night out, a joke — that they can use to argue you are not as injured as you claim. Privacy settings do not protect you; screenshots last forever. Say nothing publicly until the case is resolved.
Do not destroy or alter any evidence. Your clothing, your phone (which they tried to seize), any photos you took, any texts you sent to friends or family about the incident — preserve everything in its current condition. Do not clean the grease off your clothes. Do not delete any messages. Do not “organize” your phone. The physical and digital evidence is the case.
Do call us. The evidence clock is running. The surveillance footage is overwriting. The defendants’ phones can be remotely wiped. The preservation letter that freezes all of it goes out the day you call — not the day you decide whether to hire us, the day you pick up the phone. That first letter is the difference between a case built on solid evidence and a case built on what the county decided to let you see.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue Marion County if the firefighters who attacked me were already arrested and fired?
Yes. The criminal case and the civil case are separate systems with separate purposes. The criminal case — the arrests, the charges, the potential prison sentences — is the state punishing the offenders. The civil case is about compensating you for what was done to you: your medical bills, your therapy, your lost wages, your pain and suffering, the career you may not be able to return to. The arrests and firings do not replace a civil claim; they support it. The criminal charges establish that the state found the conduct serious enough to prosecute, and any convictions can be used as evidence in the civil case to establish that the assault occurred and was intentional.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Florida recently shortened its statute of limitations for negligence claims to two years. For claims against a government entity like Marion County, there are additional notice requirements under the sovereign immunity statute that can operate on shorter timelines. And for intentional torts like assault, battery, and false imprisonment, the applicable deadline depends on the specific theory pursued. The practical answer: do not wait. The evidence is already disappearing — the surveillance footage, the digital communications, the physical evidence — and the legal deadlines are shorter than most people expect. A free consultation with our trial team will identify the specific deadlines that apply to your case based on the facts and the theories we pursue.
Will this go to workers’ compensation or can I sue in civil court?
This is the central legal question, and our position is that this case belongs in civil court, not in the workers’ comp system. Florida’s workers’ compensation statute, Section 440.11, contains an intentional tort exception: when the employer’s conduct is substantially certain to result in injury, the comp bar does not apply, and you can pursue a full civil tort claim. Waterboarding, belt whipping, kidnapping, and robbery are intentional acts substantially certain to cause injury. The county will try to characterize this as “horseplay” to force it into comp — where your recovery is capped, pain and suffering is not compensated, and the county is shielded. We fight that framing from day one using the criminal charges, the facts of the assault, and the county’s own public admissions. If you want to understand the workers’ comp system and why we fight to get out of it, read our workers’ compensation guide.
What is sovereign immunity and how does it affect my case?
Sovereign immunity is a legal doctrine that protects government entities from being sued. Florida’s Section 768.28 waives that immunity — meaning you can sue the county — but caps recovery at $200,000 per person and $300,000 per occurrence. If your damages exceed those caps, the Florida Legislature must pass a claims bill to authorize payment of the excess. The caps are real, but they are not the end of the story. The individual defendants’ personal liability under Section 768.28(9)(a) is not capped. Punitive damages against the individuals are not capped. And the public nature of this case — the arrests, the statements from the fire chief and county commissioner — creates the political pressure that makes a claims bill achievable.
What if I was partly at fault or if I fought back?
Your own conduct does not bar recovery in an intentional tort case. Florida follows a comparative fault system, but for intentional torts like battery and kidnapping, the victim’s conduct is not a defense — it is the victim’s right. You refused to give your passcode. You tried to leave. You were physically restrained. The fact that you may have tried to resist or that you were at the station where it happened does not reduce the defendants’ liability for choosing to assault you. The eggshell-plaintiff doctrine — which we explain on our practice pages — means the defendants take you as they found you, and any vulnerability you had only increases their liability, not decreases it.
What is waterboarding and why is it considered torture?
Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning by placing a cloth over the face and pouring water over it. The cloth saturates, water enters the airway, the gag and drowning reflexes activate, and the body experiences the physiological and psychological reality of suffocating. It is internationally classified as torture by the United Nations and every major human rights body. The United States has historically prosecuted enemy combatants who used waterboarding on American prisoners as war criminals. When four firefighters do it to a colleague at a fire station, the law does not need a special category — the existing categories of battery, assault, false imprisonment, and intentional infliction of emotional distress cover every element of the harm.
Will the people who attacked me go to prison?
That is a question for the criminal courts and the Marion County State Attorney’s Office, not for us. We handle the civil case — your claim for compensation. But the criminal case and the civil case interact in important ways. If the individual defendants are convicted of the felony charges against them, those convictions can be used in the civil case to establish that the assault occurred and was intentional, without requiring you to re-prove those facts to a jury. We monitor the criminal proceedings closely and coordinate with them to build the strongest possible civil case.
How much does it cost to hire Attorney911?
Nothing up front. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We don’t get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free and confidential. We have 24/7 live staff — not an answering service — at 1-888-ATTY-911. And Hablamos Español — if your family speaks Spanish, we conduct the full consultation in Spanish without an interpreter.
Why This Firm — Who We Are and What We Bring
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is admitted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he was a lawyer, he was a journalist — which means he knows how to investigate, how to find the story behind the story, and how to tell it to a jury. Ralph is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston, filed in Harris County in November 2025. He knows hazing litigation. He knows how to frame intentional misconduct as what it is — not a prank, not a tradition, but violence — and he knows how to hold institutions accountable for the cultures they allow. If you want to know more about Ralph, his full bio is here.
Lupe Peña is our Associate Attorney. Before he joined our side of the table, he spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Lupe knows the insurance industry’s playbook from the inside: how reserves are set in the first 48 hours, how recorded statements are engineered, how valuation software discounts injuries it cannot see, and how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical results do. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If you want to know more about Lupe, his full bio is here.
Our firm, Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients over more than two decades of practice. We take cases in Florida, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not have a Florida office, and we do not claim a Florida bar admission — we are honest about our posture, and we bring the depth of a firm that has fought for catastrophically injured people against the largest defendants in the country. Our hazing practice is not a side interest — it is an active, ongoing litigation, and the legal theories we are developing in that case inform the strategy we bring to yours.
We have 24/7 live staff. Not an answering service — live staff who can take your call at 2 a.m. and get a preservation letter moving before sunrise. The evidence in your case is disappearing on a clock. The surveillance footage at Station 21 is overwriting itself. The defendants’ phones can be wiped remotely. The preservation demand that freezes all of it is the first thing we do, and we can do it the day you call.
Call Now — The Clock Is Already Running
If you or a family member was the victim of the hazing at Marion County Fire Station 21 — the grease, the belt, the stripping, the waterboarding — the time to call is now. Not because we want to pressure you. Because the evidence is dying. The surveillance footage that shows exactly what happened, for how long, and who stood by and watched is on a rolling overwrite cycle that may have already erased November 16. The defendants’ text messages and Snapchat conversations that might show this was planned are on phones that can be wiped with a tap. And the legal deadlines — the sovereign immunity notice requirements, the statute of limitations, the workers’ comp filing window — are shorter than anyone has told you.
The consultation is free. The call is confidential. We work on contingency — we don’t get paid unless we win your case. And the first letter — the one that orders Marion County to preserve every piece of evidence before it disappears — goes out the day you call.
1-888-ATTY-911. 24 hours a day. Live staff. Not an answering service.
Hablamos Español. If your family speaks Spanish, the full consultation happens in Spanish — the rights, the deadlines, the playbook, the fight ahead — with no interpreter and no barrier.
You did not deserve what happened to you at Station 21. You did not cause it. You did not consent to it. And the people who did it are not the only ones who answer for it — the county that employed them, supervised them (or failed to), and allowed the culture that produced them answers too. That is what the civil system is for. That is what we do. Call us.