Ohio State Alpha Tau Omega Hazing Lawsuit: What the 2029 Suspension Means for Victims and Families
If you are reading this page, your son came home from Ohio State different — or he did not come home at all. Maybe he called you at 3 a.m. from a bathroom floor. Maybe the university called you instead. Maybe you found out through the news that Alpha Tau Omega has been suspended until 2029, and you are only now connecting that announcement to the night your child stopped being himself. We are going to tell you exactly what that suspension means, what your rights are under Ohio law, and what to do in the hours and days ahead — because the decisions you make right now will decide whether the people who hurt your son ever answer for it.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are a trial firm that takes hazing cases, and we are currently litigating a hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity — a $10 million case filed in Harris County, Texas, in November 2025. The medicine of hazing injuries, the corporate-accountability fight against a national fraternity, and the evidence-preservation work do not change because the campus is in Columbus instead of Houston. Our hazing practice handles exactly this kind of case, and we work with Ohio local counsel as required so your son’s case is filed by attorneys who know this court system. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win.
What the 2029 Suspension Actually Means for Your Case
Ohio State University did not suspend Alpha Tau Omega for a semester or a year. The university suspended the chapter through 2029 — a four-year ban. That is not a routine disciplinary action. A suspension of that length is reserved for conduct the university’s own investigation concluded was severe, dangerous, and corroborated by evidence. The university’s internal fact-finding process — witness statements, incident reports, and the evidence file that justified a four-year expulsion of the chapter — is the single most powerful document in your son’s civil case, and it already exists.
Here is what that suspension does for a civil lawsuit: it is not automatic proof that the fraternity is legally liable for what happened to your son. But it is official, documented findings by a major university that investigated the chapter and concluded the conduct was serious enough to remove ATO from campus for four years. In a courtroom, that carries enormous weight. The defense will try to minimize it as an “administrative action.” A jury will hear it for what it is — the university’s own conclusion that this chapter was a danger to its students.
The strategy is to use the university’s suspension as what lawyers call offensive collateral estoppel — or, at minimum, as powerful evidence that the fraternity breached the standard of care. The university already found what it found. The fraternity should not get to relitigate whether the hazing happened. The fight shifts from “did they do it” to “how much harm did it cause and who pays.”
That shift matters. It means the timeline compresses. It means the evidence the university already gathered becomes your evidence. And it means the fraternity’s lawyers know, before they ever sit across a table from your family, that the conduct has already been adjudicated by the institution that chartered their chapter.
Understanding Collin’s Law: Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Statute and Your Rights
Ohio wrote its anti-hazing law in blood. Collin’s Law — Senate Bill 126 — is named after Collin Wiant, an 18-year-old Bowling Green State University student who died in 2018 during a fraternity hazing ritual. The law transformed hazing from a minor offense into a serious crime and created institutional duties that every Ohio university, including Ohio State, must follow.
Under Collin’s Law (SB 126), hazing is elevated to a second-degree misdemeanor, or a third-degree felony if it causes serious physical harm.
The statute lives at Ohio Revised Code § 2903.31 (the definition of hazing) and § 2903.311 (the institutional reporting requirements). Together, these provisions do three things that matter to your case:
First, they create a criminal standard. Hazing is no longer a campus conduct violation — it is a crime. A second-degree misdemeanor for the act itself, and a third-degree felony when it causes serious physical harm. That criminal classification creates a clear standard of care that the civil case borrows: if the conduct was criminal, it was negligent — and likely worse.
Second, they define hazing broadly. Ohio’s statute covers acts done as a condition of joining or maintaining membership in an organization — including forced consumption of alcohol or drugs, physical brutality, whipping, beating, calisthenics, exposure to weather, forced deprivation of sleep or food, and any other forced activity that subjects a person to a substantial risk of physical harm. The breadth of this definition closes the “it was just tradition” defense before it starts.
Third, they mandate transparency. Collin’s Law requires universities to post hazing violations on their websites and to maintain anti-hazing education programs. It requires staff and students to report hazing. These reporting requirements create a paper trail — and where there is a paper trail, there is evidence of who knew what and when.
Beyond Collin’s Law, the Fraternal Information and Programming Group (FIPG) guidelines serve as the industry standard for risk management in Greek organizations. Every major national fraternity, including Alpha Tau Omega’s national organization, is expected to follow FIPG guidelines — which prohibit hazing, regulate alcohol at fraternity events, and require specific risk-management protocols. When a chapter violates FIPG guidelines, the national organization that sets those standards cannot honestly claim it had no framework for knowing what was dangerous. The framework it wrote is the evidence against it.
Ohio also follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar. This means your son can recover damages as long as he is not more than 50% at fault — and his recovery is reduced by his percentage of fault. The defense will work relentlessly to push his fault above 50% by arguing he “chose to participate.” This is the single most important legal fight in a hazing case, and the answer is the same every time: hazing is, by definition, coerced. The legal definition of hazing — acts required as a condition of membership — means the victim did not volunteer in any meaningful sense. A pledge who is told he must drink until he passes out or he will never be a brother is not making a choice. He is surviving a system designed to strip choice away.
Who Can Be Held Liable: The Fraternity Defendant Stack
A fraternity hazing case is never one defendant. It is a stack — and each layer has its own insurance, its own lawyers, and its own incentive to point at the layer above or below it. Naming only the obvious defendant leaves money on the table and accountability unenforced. Here is the full map.
Alpha Tau Omega National Fraternity. The national organization charters the chapter, collects dues, sets the ritual, writes the risk-management policies, and claims to supervise its chapters. When a hazing incident occurs, the national’s first move is always the same: “the local chapter is autonomous; we did not control their day-to-day operations.” That argument is designed to sever the national from the liability — and it is exactly the argument the evidence is built to defeat. The national organization wrote the pledge program. The national organization set the standards the chapter violated. The national organization collected the insurance premiums and the per-capita dues from every member of that chapter. The national organization’s own audit records — if they show prior warnings, prior incidents, or prior complaints at the Ohio State chapter — are the proof that the national knew this chapter was a rogue actor and kept cashing the checks.
Alpha Tau Omega — Ohio State Chapter. The local chapter is the entity that actually orchestrated and executed the hazing. Its officers — the president, the pledge educator, the risk manager, the vice president — are the individuals who designed the rituals, enforced them, and created the culture that made refusing impossible. The chapter itself, through its officers and members, bears direct liability for the acts of hazing.
Individual Fraternity Members and Officers. The students who actually poured the alcohol, administered the beatings, imposed the sleep deprivation, or created the psychological torment are personally liable. In Ohio, intentional torts — battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment — are not covered by the fraternity’s insurance in many cases, which means the individual members’ personal assets are exposed. This is not a theoretical threat. A college student facing personal liability for battery has a powerful incentive to cooperate, tell the truth, and stop protecting the organization.
The Fraternity House Corporation. The entity that owns or manages the physical house where the hazing occurred is a separate defendant with premises liability. If the hazing happened in the fraternity house — in the basement, the chapter room, the backyard — the house corporation allowed illegal and hazardous activities on property it controls. Many fraternity house corporations are separate LLCs from the chapter itself, with their own insurance and their own duty to keep the premises safe.
The shell game works like this: the national says “talk to the chapter,” the chapter says “talk to the members,” the members say “talk to the national,” and the house corporation says “we just own the building.” Every one of them is counting on you to give up before you untangle the web. We do not give up. We name every layer, serve every entity, and let discovery sort out who knew what and who paid whom. The fraternity’s insurance carrier — which is usually a single national carrier that insures the national organization and its chapters — has one set of lawyers for all of them, and that lawyer’s job is to minimize the payout. Our job is to make sure the payout matches the harm.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists and How Fast It Disappears
Hazing cases are won and lost on evidence that has a terrifyingly short shelf life. The records that prove what happened to your son are being deleted right now — not by accident, but on schedule, by people who know an investigation is coming. Here is every piece of evidence that matters, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
The University Investigation File. Ohio State’s Office of Student Conduct conducted the investigation that led to the 2029 suspension. That file contains witness statements, incident reports, physical evidence, and the findings that justified a four-year ban. It is the single most important document in your case. But university records are governed by FERPA, student-privacy law, and the university’s own retention policies — which means this file can be archived, restricted, or made difficult to obtain without a subpoena. The preservation demand that freezes this file has to go out before the university closes the file and shelves it.
Social Media and Group Chats. The planning and execution of hazing happens on GroupMe, Snapchat, Instagram, and text-message threads. The pledges are added to group chats where the “assignments” are posted — how much to drink, what to wear, when to show up, what they will be forced to do. The active members coordinate in their own threads, sharing photos and videos of the hazing as entertainment. Once a member knows an investigation is underway — and by the time the university announced the suspension, every member knew — the first instinct is to delete. Accounts are wiped. Group chats are dissolved. Snapchat messages disappear by design. This evidence is dying as you read this. A preservation letter to the fraternity, the chapter officers, and the individual members freezes these records before they are gone forever. If they delete after receiving the letter, that destruction is called spoliation — and a judge can instruct the jury to assume the deleted evidence was as damaging as you say it was.
Fraternity Pledge Books and Ritual Manuals. Every fraternity has a pledge education program — a written or oral curriculum that dictates what pledges must do, learn, and endure. The pledge book, the ritual manual, and the chapter’s internal rules prove the hazing was not a few bad actors acting spontaneously. They prove the hazing was systematic, organized, and built into the structure of the chapter. These are physical documents that can be hidden, destroyed, or “lost” — and they must be demanded specifically, by name, in the preservation letter.
National Office Audit and Compliance Records. The national fraternity organization maintains records of every chapter — audits, incident reports, compliance reviews, and communications between the national office and the local chapter. If there were prior complaints, prior suspensions, or prior warnings at the Ohio State ATO chapter, the national office’s files are where that history lives. These records are the proof of “prior notice” — that the national organization knew this chapter was dangerous and did nothing effective to stop it. They are preserved through formal discovery, but the demand must go out early because the national office will resist producing them.
Medical Records. If your son was taken to the hospital — for alcohol poisoning, a head injury, a fracture, or psychological emergency — the medical records from that visit are contemporaneous, objective evidence of the harm. Emergency-department records, toxicology screens, nursing notes, and psychiatric evaluations document exactly what was done to him and what it cost his body. These records are on the hospital’s retention schedule, which is longer than the social-media clock, but they should still be requested early.
The evidence clock is why the first thing we do — the day you call, not the week after — is send preservation letters to every person and entity that holds evidence. The letter puts them on legal notice that the records must be saved. If they delete after that letter, they have committed spoliation, and the court can punish them for it. Every day that passes without that letter is a day the proof gets thinner.
Hazing Injuries: The Medicine and the Harm That Lasts
Hazing is not a prank that went too far. It is a deliberate campaign of physical and psychological assault, and the injuries it produces are real, documented, and often permanent. We bring the medicine to this fight because the defense’s favorite move is to minimize — “he was fine the next day,” “it was just a hangover,” “he chose to drink.” Here is what the medical record actually shows.
Alcohol Poisoning and Forced Consumption. The most common hazing mechanism is forced or coerced alcohol consumption — “lineups” where pledges must drink until they vomit, pass out, or both. The medical consequences are not a hangover. Acute alcohol poisoning causes respiratory depression, aspiration (choking on vomit while unconscious), hypothermia, cardiac arrhythmia, and death. A blood-alcohol concentration above 0.30 is life-threatening; above 0.40 is potentially fatal. Survivors of severe alcohol poisoning can suffer hypoxic brain injury — brain damage from oxygen deprivation during the period of unconsciousness. The damage may not be visible on a standard CT scan, but it shows up in neuropsychological testing as memory loss, executive dysfunction, and personality change. The family sees it across the dinner table before any scan sees it.
Physical Trauma. Beatings, paddling, forced calisthenics to exhaustion, and “pledge games” that involve physical abuse produce real injuries — fractures, internal organ damage, rhabdomyolysis (muscle breakdown that poisons the kidneys), and compartment syndrome where swelling crushes the blood supply to a limb. A traumatic brain injury from a blow to the head or a fall during intoxication can leave lasting cognitive deficits even when the initial scan looks normal. The word “mild” in “mild traumatic brain injury” is a triage word, not a prognosis — more than a third of patients scored at the top of the “mild” range have life-threatening intracranial bleeding.
Psychological Trauma. The psychological injuries of hazing are often the deepest and the longest-lasting. Hazing is, by design, a program of humiliation, degradation, and coercion designed to break down a person’s sense of self and rebuild them in the organization’s image. The medical name for what follows is post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD is not a mood — it is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with eight separate diagnostic criteria, including intrusive memories, nightmares, flashbacks, avoidance of reminders, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and hyperarousal. The DSM-5 expressly recognizes “delayed expression” — full criteria not met until six months or more after the event — which means the symptoms your son is showing now, weeks or months later, are the injury declaring itself on schedule, not out of nowhere. Tonic immobility — the involuntary freeze response where the body cannot move or speak during an assault — is a documented physiological reaction, not consent. Most survivors of sexual or physical assault during hazing experienced some degree of this paralysis, and it is one of the strongest predictors of later PTSD.
The Proof Problem. The defense in a hazing case exploits the invisibility of these injuries. “He looked fine.” “The CT was normal.” “He went to class the next day.” Every one of those arguments has a medical answer: a normal CT does not rule out a brain injury; the symptoms of PTSD emerge over weeks and months; and the fact that a traumatized person functions in public tells you nothing about what happens to them at 3 a.m. in a dark bedroom. The proof is built from the contemporaneous medical record — the ER visit, the toxicology screen, the first therapy intake — and from expert testimony: a neuropsychologist who documents the cognitive deficits, a psychiatrist who maps the PTSD against the diagnostic criteria, and a psychologist who explains the coercive group dynamics that made the hazing possible and the freeze response that made it inescapable.
What Your Case May Be Worth
Every hazing case is different, and the value depends on the specific harm, the specific defendants, and the specific evidence. But the framework for valuing an Ohio hazing case is built from three categories of damages — and the numbers are real.
Economic Damages. These are the calculable losses: past and future medical bills (the ER visit, the hospitalization, the ongoing therapy, the psychiatric medication, the neurologist, the neuropsychological testing), the cost of withdrawing from school (lost tuition, lost semester, the delay in graduation), and the loss of earning capacity if the injury affects your son’s ability to work at the level he was track for before. If your son was forced to leave Ohio State, the lost tuition and the lost semester are economic damages. If a brain injury means he can no longer perform at the academic level he was capable of before the hazing, the lifetime loss of earning capacity is an economic damage calculated by a forensic economist.
Non-Economic Damages. These are the human losses no receipt can measure: pain and suffering, emotional distress, loss of enjoyment of life, the loss of the college experience your son was promised, the nightmares, the anxiety, the relationships that fractured, the trust that was destroyed. Ohio caps non-economic damages — but the cap has a critical exception. Under Ohio Revised Code § 2315.18, non-economic damages are generally limited to $250,000 or three times the economic loss, whichever is greater, up to a maximum of $350,000 per person. However, if the injury is catastrophic — which Ohio law defines to include permanent and substantial physical deformity, loss of use of a limb, or loss of a bodily organ system — the cap does not apply. A severe alcohol-poisoning brain injury, a permanent injury from a beating, or a wrongful death would likely clear the catastrophic threshold and remove the cap entirely.
Punitive Damages. Ohio allows punitive damages when clear and convincing evidence shows the defendant acted with malice or aggravated fraud. Hazing is, by its nature, intentional. The people who designed the ritual, the officers who enforced it, and the national organization that failed to stop it all made choices — choices to subject a human being to known dangers for the purpose of “tradition.” That is the predicate for punitive damages, and a Franklin County jury that hears the evidence — the planning, the group chats, the prior warnings ignored — is a jury that can punish the conduct, not just compensate the victim.
The case-value range for an Ohio fraternity hazing case, based on the severity of the harm and the defendants involved, runs from approximately $250,000 on the low end — significant psychological trauma with minor physical injury — to $5,000,000 or more on the high end, reached when the hazing caused permanent organ damage, severe brain injury from alcohol poisoning, or a wrongful death, combined with the national fraternity’s documented failure to intervene despite prior warnings at the chapter.
These are not promises. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is valued on its own evidence, its own injuries, and its own defendants. What we can tell you is that we build the number from the ground up — medical records, life-care plans, forensic economics, and expert testimony — so the demand reflects the actual cost of what was done to your son, not a round number pulled from the air.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook in Fraternity Hazing Cases
The fraternity’s insurance carrier — and yes, the national fraternity carries liability insurance, usually through a single national carrier that covers the organization and its chapters — has a playbook for cases exactly like yours. It was written before your son was ever hazed, and the plays are designed to minimize the payout, not to make your family whole. Here is what they will do and how each move is countered.
Play 1: “He consented. He chose to participate.” This is the defense’s foundation. The adjuster will point to the fact that your son signed up for the fraternity, attended the events, and “volunteered” for the pledge program. The counter is the law itself: Ohio’s hazing statute defines hazing as acts done “as a condition of” joining or maintaining membership. By definition, the acts were not voluntary — they were required. The power imbalance between a pledge and the active members, the social pressure, the threat of blackballing and social ostracism, and the documented psychology of group coercion make “consent” a legal fiction. A psychologist who specializes in group dynamics and coercive behavior testifies to the jury about why a pledge cannot truly consent to his own abuse — and the statute backs it up.
Play 2: “It was tradition. Everyone went through it.” The defense tries to normalize the hazing by framing it as a decades-old practice that “everyone experienced.” The counter: tradition is not a legal defense. Collin’s Law was written specifically because tradition was being used to justify death and injury. The FIPG guidelines that the national fraternity adopted prohibit hazing regardless of how long the chapter has been doing it. And the university’s four-year suspension is the institution’s own answer to the “tradition” defense — if it were acceptable, the chapter would still be on campus.
Play 3: The fast settlement with a non-disclosure agreement. Within weeks — sometimes days — of the incident, a representative of the fraternity or its insurance carrier may contact your family offering a check. The check will come with a release and a non-disclosure agreement. The release closes the case forever. The NDA silences your family. The amount will sound significant to a family in shock, and it will be a fraction of what the case is worth. The counter: never sign anything from the fraternity or its insurer without a lawyer. The first offer is the floor, not the ceiling, and an NDA is designed to protect the fraternity’s reputation, not your son’s future. Once the release is signed, the case is over — permanently — no matter what symptoms emerge months later.
Play 4: “The national organization isn’t responsible for the local chapter.” The adjuster will argue that the national fraternity merely licenses the name and sets broad standards, and that the Ohio State chapter is an independent entity. The counter: discovery. The national organization’s own audit records, compliance files, and communications with the OSU chapter will show the degree of control the national actually exercised — and whether it had prior notice of problems at this chapter. The national collects the dues. The national writes the risk-management policies. The national’s insurance carrier covers the chapters. The control is in the paper trail, and the paper trail is what discovery is designed to find.
Play 5: Delay. The adjuster will string the case out, hoping the family’s emotional reserves run out before the evidence is assembled. The clock is the friend of the defense — the six-month log retention, the disappearing social media, the witnesses who graduate and move away. The counter: the preservation letter goes out the day you call. The case is built fast. The demand is issued early. And every day the carrier delays after a written settlement demand is on the table is a day that increases the pressure, because the policy limits are finite and the exposure is not.
The First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
What you do in the first three days after learning your son was hazed will shape the case more than anything that happens later. Here is the hour-by-hour, day-by-day plan.
Medical care first — and why symptoms lie. If your son was hospitalized, get the complete medical record — the ER notes, the toxicology screen, the nursing flow sheet, the discharge summary, the imaging reports. If he was not hospitalized but you suspect he was hazed, take him to a doctor now. Alcohol poisoning can cause delayed organ damage. A head injury can produce symptoms days after the impact. Psychological symptoms — nightmares, panic, withdrawal, flashbacks — may not fully emerge for weeks, but early documentation of any symptom is critical evidence. A “clean” ER visit does not mean your son is fine. It means the ER did not find a reason to admit him overnight. The harm may still be there, and the record of the visit is the proof that the symptoms were connected to the event from the beginning.
Document everything. Photograph every physical injury — bruises, scrapes, swelling — before they heal. Screenshot every text message, every GroupMe post, every Snapchat, every Instagram story that references the hazing. Write down the names of every person who was present, every person who participated, and every person who witnessed. Get the timeline on paper while your son’s memory is fresh — the date, the time, the location, what he was told to do, what he was forced to consume, who was present, who was in charge.
Do not sign anything. If the fraternity, the university, the fraternity’s insurance company, or anyone representing any of those entities asks your son or your family to sign a document — a release, a settlement, a statement, a “waiver” — do not sign it. Anything that is put in front of you in the immediate aftermath of a hazing incident is designed to protect the fraternity, not your son. A release signed in the first weeks can permanently extinguish your son’s right to recover, even if his injuries turn out to be far worse than anyone initially realized.
Do not delete anything. Your son may be ashamed, angry, or afraid, and his first instinct may be to delete the group chats, the photos, the text messages. Tell him to stop. Every one of those records is evidence. Deleting them — especially after the fraternity knows an investigation is underway — can look like destruction of evidence and can damage the case. The preservation letter we send will freeze those records on the fraternity’s end, but your son’s own copy is irreplaceable.
Warn your son not to communicate with fraternity members or alumni. After a hazing incident becomes public, fraternity members and alumni may reach out to your son — to “check on him,” to “apologize,” to “reconcile,” or to pressure him to drop the matter. These conversations are not friendship. They are evidence-gathering for the defense, and in some cases they are intimidation. Your son should not communicate with any fraternity member, officer, or alumni without going through counsel. Every text, every call, every social-media message from a fraternity member should be preserved and brought to us.
Contact a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the university finishes its process. Now. The evidence clock is running. The social-media records are being deleted. The university investigation file will be archived. The witnesses will graduate, scatter, and forget. The day you call is the day the preservation letters go out, the evidence is frozen, and the clock starts working for your son instead of against him. The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win.
How We Build the Case
Here is how a hazing case is actually built, from the first call through resolution. The process is not a mystery — it is a sequence, and each step feeds the next.
Week one: the preservation letter. The day you call, we send written preservation demands to the fraternity’s national organization, the local chapter, the chapter officers, the house corporation, the university, and every individual member we can identify. The letter names the specific records that must be saved: the university investigation file, the social-media accounts, the group chats, the pledge books, the ritual manuals, the national office’s audit and compliance records, the insurance policies, and the incident reports. Once the letter is received, destruction of any named record is spoliation — and a court can impose sanctions, including an adverse-inference instruction that tells the jury to assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as we say it was.
Weeks two through four: the investigation. We pull the medical records. We request the university’s investigation file. We identify every defendant entity — the national organization, the local chapter, the house corporation, the individual officers. We trace the insurance coverage: who insures the national, who insures the chapter, what are the policy limits, is there a self-insured retention. We begin identifying witnesses — pledges who were hazed alongside your son, active members who participated, former members who left the chapter and may be willing to talk.
Months one through three: the lawsuit and discovery. We file the complaint — naming every defendant, pleading every theory (negligence, negligent supervision, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, violation of Collin’s Law’s standard of care). We serve written discovery: interrogatories, document requests, requests for admission. We take depositions — the chapter officers, the pledge educator, the members who were present, the national organization’s risk-management director, the university officials who investigated. Under oath, in a room with a court reporter, the witnesses tell the truth or expose their lies for a jury to see.
Months three through six: the experts. We retain the experts who turn the evidence into proof: a neuropsychologist who documents the brain injury through testing, a psychiatrist who maps the PTSD against the diagnostic criteria, a psychologist who explains the coercive group dynamics that made the hazing possible, a forensic economist who calculates the lifetime loss of earning capacity, and — if needed — a Greek-life administration expert who explains what the national organization should have done and when. The expert reports are the ammunition for the demand.
Month six and beyond: the demand and resolution. With the evidence assembled, the experts retained, and the damages quantified, we issue a settlement demand to the fraternity’s insurance carrier — a demand that lays out the full case, the full harm, and the full number. In Ohio, this demand functions like a Stowers demand in Texas: once the carrier has the demand in writing and refuses, any subsequent verdict above the policy limits creates exposure for the carrier that refused to settle. That pressure — the carrier’s own financial risk from refusing a reasonable demand — is what drives resolution. If the carrier will not settle within the limits, we try the case in Franklin County, in front of a jury of your son’s neighbors — Columbus residents who know the university, who know Greek life, and who have shown, through Collin’s Law itself, that Ohio has no patience for “tradition” that kills.
Who We Are
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years of trial practice, including federal court, and the lead counsel in our currently active hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he was trained to dig — to find the document nobody asked for, to interview the witness nobody else thought to call, to build the narrative from the facts up. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, and he takes Ohio cases with local counsel as required. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — and his background is the advantage your son’s case depends on. Before he joined this firm, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He knows how the fraternity’s insurance carrier will set its reserve, how it will value the claim, which doctors it will send your son to for an “independent” examination, and how it will mine his social media for anything that can be used against him. Now he uses that knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and our staff is bilingual. Read more about Lupe here.
We work on contingency. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your son’s case. The consultation is free. The call is free. Our staff is live, 24/7 — not an answering service. We have recovered millions for injured clients, including a $5 million brain-injury settlement, a $3.8 million amputation settlement, and a $2.5 million truck-crash recovery. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the capability that produced those results — the investigation, the medicine, the corporate-accountability fight, the evidence preservation — is the same capability we bring to a hazing case.
If your family speaks Spanish, we serve you fully in Spanish. Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts the entire consultation in Spanish, and our staff is bilingual. Your son’s case does not lose anything in translation.
How Long You Have to File: Ohio’s Statute of Limitations
Ohio’s personal injury statute of limitations gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit. For a hazing incident, the clock generally starts on the date the hazing occurred — the night of the ritual, the date of the forced consumption, the day of the beating. If the injury was not immediately apparent — for example, if PTSD symptoms emerged weeks or months later — the discovery rule may apply, meaning the clock starts when the plaintiff knew or reasonably should have known that the injury was connected to the hazing.
Two years sounds like a long time. It is not. The evidence dies faster than the statute. Social media is deleted in days. Group chats dissolve in hours. The university investigation file is archived within months. The witnesses graduate and scatter within a year. The two-year deadline is the legal floor — but the practical deadline for preserving evidence is measured in days and weeks, not years. The preservation letter that freezes the proof has to go out long before the statute of limitations becomes the concern.
If your son’s hazing resulted in a death, Ohio’s wrongful-death statute of limitations is two years from the date of death, which may be different from the date of the hazing. A wrongful-death claim lawyer can guide you through the specific timeline and the persons entitled to bring the claim.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the ATO suspension until 2029 actually mean for my son’s case?
The suspension is the university’s official conclusion — after investigation — that Alpha Tau Omega’s Ohio State chapter engaged in conduct serious enough to warrant a four-year removal from campus. It is not a civil judgment, but it is powerful evidence that the hazing occurred and that it was severe. In your son’s civil case, the suspension and the underlying investigation file become evidence of a breach of the standard of care. The fraternity cannot credibly argue that nothing happened when the university has already concluded otherwise and acted on it.
Can I sue the national fraternity, or just the local chapter?
You can sue both — and you should. The national organization chartered the chapter, set the standards the chapter violated, collected the dues, and claims to supervise its chapters. The local chapter executed the hazing. The individual officers and members who participated are personally liable for their intentional acts. The house corporation that owns or manages the building where the hazing occurred has premises liability. Every layer is a separate defendant with separate exposure, and naming all of them is how a case captures the full picture of who was responsible.
My son says he “chose” to participate — does that kill our case?
No. Ohio’s hazing statute defines hazing as acts done “as a condition of” joining or maintaining membership. By legal definition, the acts were required, not voluntary. The power imbalance between pledges and active members, the threat of social ostracism, and the documented psychology of group coercion make “consent” a fiction. Ohio’s modified comparative negligence rule (51% bar) means your son can recover as long as he is not more than 50% at fault — and the coercion inherent in hazing makes it very difficult for the defense to push a pledge’s fault above that line. A psychologist who specializes in coercive group dynamics testifies to the jury about why a pledge cannot truly consent to his own abuse.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s personal injury statute of limitations is two years from the date of the injury. If the harm was not immediately apparent — for example, if PTSD symptoms emerged later — the discovery rule may extend the clock to run from when the injury was discovered or reasonably should have been discovered. For a wrongful death, the deadline is two years from the date of death. But the practical deadline is much shorter: the evidence that proves your son’s case — social media, group chats, the university investigation file — is disappearing now. The preservation letter that freezes that evidence should go out within days, not months.
What if my son was not physically injured but has nightmares and anxiety?
Psychological injuries are real, compensable injuries. Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal psychiatric diagnosis with specific diagnostic criteria, and hazing is a qualifying traumatic event under the DSM-5. The nightmares, the anxiety, the withdrawal, the inability to concentrate, the hypervigilance — these are symptoms of a documented medical condition, not weakness. A psychiatrist or psychologist who diagnoses PTSD and maps the symptoms to the hazing event provides the medical proof. The defense will argue the symptoms are pre-existing or exaggerated. The counter is the contemporaneous record — the first therapy intake, the first psychiatric evaluation, the timeline that connects the symptoms to the hazing.
The fraternity’s insurance company already called and offered money — should we take it?
No. Do not accept any offer, sign any release, or agree to any non-disclosure agreement without a lawyer. The first offer from an insurance company is the floor, not the ceiling — it is designed to close the case cheaply and quietly before the family understands the full extent of the harm. A release signed in the early weeks can permanently extinguish your son’s right to recover, even if his injuries turn out to be far worse than anyone initially knew. A non-disclosure agreement protects the fraternity’s reputation, not your son’s future. Call us first. The consultation is free, and we will tell you honestly whether the offer is fair or a fraction of what the case is worth.
Will my son have to testify against his “brothers”?
If the case goes to trial, your son may need to testify. But most hazing cases resolve before trial — through settlement, mediation, or a pre-trial demand that the insurance carrier meets. If your son does testify, he is telling the truth about what was done to him. The people who hazed him are not his brothers. Brothers do not poison, beat, and traumatize each other and call it tradition. The witnesses who matter — the pledges who were hazed alongside him, the members who have already cooperated with the university investigation — have already started telling the truth. Your son would be joining his voice to theirs, not standing alone.
What is Collin’s Law and how does it affect our case?
Collin’s Law (Senate Bill 126) is Ohio’s anti-hazing statute, named after Collin Wiant, an 18-year-old Bowling Green State University student who died during a fraternity hazing ritual in 2018. The law elevated hazing to a second-degree misdemeanor — or a third-degree felony when it causes serious physical harm. It expanded the definition of hazing, required universities to post hazing violations publicly, mandated reporting, and created anti-hazing education requirements. For your son’s civil case, Collin’s Law creates a clear standard of care: the conduct the fraternity engaged in was not just a campus violation — it was a crime. That criminal standard is powerful evidence of negligence, and in cases involving intentional, deliberate hazing rituals, it is the predicate for punitive damages.
Can my son still stay at Ohio State if he files a lawsuit?
Yes. Filing a civil lawsuit against a fraternity does not affect your son’s status as a student. The university and the fraternity are separate entities, and the fraternity’s suspension is the university’s action against the chapter — not against the pledges who were hazed. Your son is the victim, not the defendant. Retaliation against a student for filing a lawsuit or reporting hazing is itself a violation of university policy and potentially federal law (Title IX, if the hazing involved sexual elements). We will advise you on any specific concerns about your son’s campus situation.
How much does a hazing lawyer cost?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win. The consultation is free. The call is free. There is no hourly billing, no retainer, and no out-of-pocket cost to your family for the investigation, the experts, the discovery, or the trial. The firm advances the costs of building the case, and those costs are recovered from the recovery — not from your family’s pocket. If there is no recovery, you owe us nothing.
Call Now — The Evidence Clock Is Running
Your son was hurt by a system that was designed to hurt him. The people who built that system have lawyers, insurance, and a playbook that was written before your son ever set foot on campus. The evidence that proves what happened to him is being deleted right now — group chats dissolving, social media wiping, witnesses coordinating their stories. Every day you wait is a day the proof gets thinner and the fraternity’s defense gets stronger.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. The call is free. We do not get paid unless we win. Our staff is live 24/7 — not an answering service. Hablamos Español — Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. Legal Emergency Lawyers. We take Ohio hazing cases, we work with local counsel as required, and we build the case from the evidence up. The day you call is the day the preservation letters go out and the clock starts working for your son instead of against him.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.