Pennsylvania Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death Lawyers
You are reading this because something happened to your child at a fraternity in Pennsylvania — or because you are afraid it is about to. Maybe your son came home from a pledge event and could not tell you what went on. Maybe he is in a hospital bed right now and the brothers are telling you it was “just an accident.” Maybe you are grieving, and the university has already sent you a letter of condolence that says nothing about what actually happened inside that house. The news that Congress is moving to pass the Stop Campus Hazing Act tells you one thing the country is finally starting to admit: what happened to your child was not a prank gone wrong. It was a foreseeable, preventable harm that the adults who run these organizations either knew about or should have known about — and the law gives you a way to hold them answerable for it.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases, including fraternity hazing cases, in Pennsylvania and across the country. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a national fraternity and a major university. Our associate, Lupe Peña, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their lawyers decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours — before he came to our side of the table. We know how the other side prices your child’s life, because Lupe sat in the chair where they do it.
What follows is everything we know about how a fraternity hazing wrongful death case is built in Pennsylvania — the law, the defendants, the medicine, the evidence that is already dying, the money, the defense playbook, and the first steps a family must take. This is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts. But if your child was hurt or killed in a hazing ritual, the information below may be the most important thing you read before you call anyone.
What Happened at Penn State — and Why It Was Not an Accident
In February 2017, a Penn State pledge fell down a flight of stairs into a basement during a hazing ritual the brothers called “The Gauntlet” — an alcohol-fueled obstacle course designed to push new members past their limits. He suffered a traumatic brain injury. The fraternity members carried him back upstairs, put him on a couch, poured water on his face, and slapped him to try to wake him up. They did not call 911. Not for twelve hours. By the time someone finally did, he was breathing heavily, had blood on his face, and his skin had turned gray. He died two days later.
That same year, at a university in Louisiana, an 18-year-old pledge’s blood alcohol level was still 0.495% the day after he died — more than six times the legal driving limit. He had been forced to drink through a hazing ritual at a different national fraternity’s chapter. A former student was sentenced to five years in prison in connection with his death.
Both families became advocates. Both pushed for the laws that now bear their sons’ names. And both have said, in plain language, what every family in this situation eventually discovers: the danger was hidden in plain sight.
“When my son said he wanted to join, I looked it up and it said it was a non-drinking, non-hazing fraternity, and I thought he was making a good choice. Come to find out after the fact that that chapter had been suspended a few years prior for hazing.”
That quote — from a mother who did everything a careful parent could do — captures the entire legal case in one sentence. The national fraternity advertised itself as safe. The local chapter had a documented history of hazing. The parent relied on the representation. The child died. The gap between what the organization said it was and what it actually allowed to happen inside its walls is the gap a wrongful death lawsuit forces open.
These deaths were not accidents. They were the predictable result of organizations that recruit young people into coercive power structures, ply them with dangerous quantities of alcohol, and then — when the predictable harm occurs — choose self-preservation over a 911 call. The fathers and mothers who lost their children have said it themselves: this is not swallowing goldfish and streaking across campus. It is not like the movies. It is finishing a handle of alcohol because you cannot leave, wall sits on broken glass, and a basement floor where no one comes for twelve hours.
Can I Sue a Fraternity for a Hazing Death in Pennsylvania?
Yes. Pennsylvania law gives families the right to bring two separate claims after a hazing death: a wrongful death action — filed by the surviving family for the loss of their loved one’s life, future earnings, and companionship — and a survival action — filed by the estate for the conscious pain and suffering the victim endured between the onset of injury and the moment of death. These are two distinct legal claims with two distinct damage recoveries, and a family that files only one leaves money on the table.
The defendants in a Pennsylvania hazing wrongful death case are not just the individual students who handed your child the bottle or failed to dial 911. The defendants include:
- The national fraternity organization — for negligent supervision of its local chapter, for failing to enforce its own risk-management policies, and for marketing itself as a safe organization when it knew or should have known that its chapters were engaging in dangerous hazing rituals.
- The local chapter — for directly organizing the ritual, providing the alcohol, creating the coercive environment, and failing to summon medical aid.
- Individual fraternity members — for battery, hazing, and what Pennsylvania law would recognize as reckless or depraved indifference through the failure to call for help while a human being was dying on a couch.
- The university — for potential premises liability and failure to protect students under its own safety protocols and federal law.
The national fraternity is almost always the deepest pocket. But it is also the defendant that fights hardest to escape — arguing it did not control the local chapter, did not know about the ritual, and cannot be responsible for the voluntary acts of adult students. The answer to that defense is the same answer those grieving parents delivered to Congress: the organization knew, because its own chapters had been suspended for the same conduct before, and it held itself out to parents as safe.
Pennsylvania Hazing Law: The Framework That Exists Because Families Fought for It
Pennsylvania’s legal landscape for hazing cases was built in the aftermath of a Penn State student’s death. The Timothy Piazza Antihazing Law strengthened criminal penalties for hazing in Pennsylvania and, critically for civil litigation, created a framework where a criminal hazing violation can serve as the foundation for a negligence per se theory — meaning that if the fraternity’s conduct violated the criminal hazing statute, the civil jury can treat that violation as proof of negligence, not just evidence of it.
Pennsylvania also operates under a 51% modified comparative negligence rule. This is the rule the defense will use to try to destroy your case: if the jury finds your child more than 50% responsible for their own intoxication or injury, your recovery is completely barred. The fraternity’s lawyers will argue your child chose to drink, chose to participate, and voluntarily assumed the risk.
The answer — and it is a powerful one — is that the coercive nature of hazing negates the voluntary consumption defense. A pledge who is told he cannot leave until he finishes a bottle is not voluntarily consuming alcohol. A young person who is subjected to a structured ritual of submission and endurance is not assuming a risk in any meaningful legal sense. The entire mechanism of hazing is coercion, and the law is increasingly recognizing that coercion strips the “voluntary” label off the defense’s favorite argument.
The federal overlay matters too. The Clery Act (20 U.S.C. § 1092(f)) requires colleges and universities that receive federal student aid to report campus crime statistics and publish security policies. The Stop Campus Hazing Act, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously in September 2024 and was heading to the Senate, would for the first time require colleges to report hazing incidents specifically and to publish the names of organizations that have violated anti-hazing policies — expanding the Clery Act’s transparency regime to the exact conduct that killed these young men.
That federal framework matters for civil cases because it creates a duty of disclosure — and the failure to disclose, or the disclosure that a chapter had a prior hazing history that the university or the national fraternity failed to act on, is the notice that powers a negligent supervision claim.
“It comes in very, very different forms. It could be, ‘Oh, you can’t leave until you finish this handle of alcohol or wall sits or planks on broken glass.’ It is not swallowing goldfish and streaking across campus. It’s not like the movies.”
The families who have lived through this have said it in plain language: hazing is not what people think. It is coercion disguised as tradition. And the law — both the criminal statutes and the civil tort system — is catching up to what these families already know.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: The Fraternity Defendant Structure
A national fraternity is not one organization. It is a deliberate stack of entities, each designed to put distance between the parent corporation and the conduct that happens inside a chapter house. Understanding this structure is the first step in knowing who actually pays.
The national fraternity organization — the entity with the brand name, the national convention, the insurance program, and the risk-management policies — is the deep pocket. It collects dues from every chapter, sets the rules the chapters must follow, and maintains a national insurance program. It also, critically, maintains compliance records: the history of which chapters have been disciplined, suspended, or closed for hazing or alcohol violations. When a national organization tells you its chapter was “non-hazing and non-drinking,” but that same chapter had been suspended years earlier for hazing, the gap between the public representation and the internal compliance file is the case.
The local chapter is usually a separate entity — often an unincorporated association or a local LLC — that operates the chapter house, collects local dues, and runs the day-to-day activities. The local chapter is the entity that directly organized the ritual, provided the alcohol, and failed to call 911. Its insurance is often thinner than the national organization’s, but its direct liability is clearer.
Individual fraternity members face personal liability for their own conduct — the physical battery of forcing alcohol on a pledge, the hazing itself, and the depraved indifference of watching a human being deteriorate for hours without calling for help. Individual members often carry homeowners or renters insurance that may provide some coverage, though these policies frequently have exclusions for intentional or criminal acts. The personal liability of individual members is also the most powerful leverage point: a member facing personal ruin has every incentive to cooperate and testify about what the chapter and the national organization knew.
The university is the most complex defendant. Pennsylvania universities that receive federal student aid are bound by the Clery Act’s reporting and disclosure requirements. A university that knew about prior hazing at a fraternity on its campus — through its own conduct office, its campus police, or its Greek-life oversight office — and failed to act bears its own share of responsibility. University liability is often fought on premises and duty-to-protect theories, and the university’s own insurance tower is typically substantial.
The defense’s first move is always to separate these defendants from each other: the national says it did not control the chapter, the chapter says it followed national’s policies, the individuals say they were just participating in tradition, and the university says it did everything it could. The plaintiff’s job is to weld them back together — to show that the national organization’s policies were paper-only, that the chapter’s conduct was known and tolerated, and that the university looked the other way because Greek life was good for enrollment and alumni donations.
The Evidence Clock: What Proof Exists and How Fast It Dies
In a fraternity hazing case, the evidence that proves your case is held by the very organizations that do not want you to have it — and much of it is on a clock.
Surveillance footage. The Penn State case was won on surveillance video from inside the fraternity house — the footage that showed the twelve-hour delay in calling 911, the moment your child fell, and every minute that the brothers walked past him without picking up a phone. Fraternity house security systems overwrite on rolling loops, often within 7 to 30 days. If a preservation letter does not go out immediately, the video that proves everything records over itself and is gone forever. This is the single most time-critical evidence in any hazing case.
Internal fraternity communications. GroupMe threads, text messages, Snapchat groups, and email chains among fraternity members are where the ritual was planned, where the coercion was organized, and where the “code of silence” was enforced after the injury. These messages are the planning documents of the hazing — and they are the first things individual members delete when they realize someone is seriously hurt. A preservation and spoliation letter sent to the national fraternity, the local chapter, and the individual members — ordering them to preserve all electronic communications — is the first legal step. If they delete after receiving that letter, the jury can be instructed to assume the deleted messages contained evidence harmful to the fraternity.
Toxicology and medical records. The hospital records from the night of the incident establish the blood alcohol level, the timeline of intoxication, and the physiological window in which a 911 call would have saved your child’s life. These records are stable — hospitals maintain them for years — but they must be subpoenaed early, because the emergency department’s chart is the independent corroboration of what the fraternity’s own internal story will try to minimize.
National fraternity compliance records. This is the evidence that proves the national organization knew. Every national fraternity maintains internal records of chapter discipline — suspensions, conduct reviews, risk-management audits, and alcohol-policy violations. When a chapter had been previously suspended for hazing, as the article about this case revealed, and the national organization still told parents its fraternity was “non-hazing and non-drinking,” the compliance file is the proof that the representation was false. These records are held by the national organization and must be demanded in discovery; they will resist producing them with every tool available.
University conduct records. The university’s own student-conduct office, Greek-life oversight office, and campus police maintain records of prior incidents at the fraternity — noise complaints, alcohol violations, medical transports, prior hazing reports. These records establish that the university had notice of the danger and failed to act. They are subject to their own retention schedules, and a public-records demand may be needed to pry them loose.
The master move is this: the day you call a lawyer is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you. A preservation letter — sent within days, not months — freezes the surveillance video, locks down the GroupMe threads, and puts every potential defendant on notice that destroying evidence will have consequences. The fraternity is counting on you to wait. The evidence is counting on you not to.
The Medicine of Hazing: What “The Gauntlet” Does to a Human Body
A fraternity hazing death is not a single injury. It is a cascade — and the defense will try to fragment that cascade into separate, disconnected events to dilute liability. The medicine tells one continuous story.
Traumatic brain injury from the fall. When a heavily intoxicated pledge falls down a flight of stairs — as happened at Penn State — the brain does not just strike the inside of the skull once. The rotational and deceleration forces tear the brain’s white-matter tracts, the wiring that connects regions, in a process called diffuse axonal injury. The damage is microscopic, often invisible on a standard CT scan, and progressive — meaning the injury keeps developing over hours after the impact. A traumatic brain injury that might have been survivable with immediate emergency care becomes fatal when no one calls 911 for twelve hours. During those twelve hours, the swelling compresses the brainstem, the breathing centers fail, and the injury that emergency surgery could have relieved becomes irreversible.
Alcohol poisoning and the coercive consumption mechanism. At a blood alcohol concentration of 0.495% — the level documented in the Louisiana case — the brainstem’s respiratory centers are shutting down. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant; at sufficient doses it suppresses the gag reflex, the respiratory drive, and ultimately the heart. A person at this level does not “sleep it off.” They aspirate, they stop breathing, and they die — unless someone calls for help. The entire mechanism of hazing-alcohol poisoning is that the coercive environment forces consumption past the point of voluntary control, and then the social structure of the fraternity prevents the one intervention — a 911 call — that would save the life.
The twelve-hour window. In the Penn State case, the survival action — the claim for the victim’s own conscious pain and suffering between injury and death — is the primary value driver. Your child was alive, injured, and suffering for hours while the people who called themselves his brothers walked past him, poured water on his face, slapped him, and chose not to call for help. That is not a quick death. That is a prolonged, conscious ordeal — and the surveillance footage proves every minute of it.
The defense will argue the injury was “unavoidable” or that your child’s “pre-existing condition” contributed. The answer is the same answer the medicine provides: a traumatic brain injury is survivable with prompt intervention, and acute alcohol poisoning is treatable with emergency medical care. The death was caused not by the injury alone but by the failure to summon help — a failure that was not an accident but a choice, repeated every minute for twelve hours, by every person in that house who could see your child was dying.
What a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Worth
Fraternity hazing wrongful death cases carry what the insurance industry calls “nuclear verdict” potential — and for good reason. The defendants are high-profile national organizations. The victims are high-achieving young people with decades of earning potential ahead of them. The suffering was extreme and documented. And the “bad actor” narrative — fraternity members ignoring medical distress while a human being died on their couch — is the kind of conduct that juries punish.
Based on our analysis of comparable hazing wrongful death litigation, the case value range in Pennsylvania runs from approximately $2,000,000 on the low end to $15,000,000 or more on the high end. The variables that drive the number include:
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The survival action. In a case where death was not instantaneous — where the victim was alive and suffering for hours — the survival action is the primary value driver. The conscious pain and suffering of a young person who knows they are hurt, who cannot get help, and who deteriorates for hours while the people who caused the injury watch, is among the most powerful damage categories a jury can be asked to value.
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Lost future earnings. A college student’s lost earning capacity is calculated using forensic economics — worklife expectancy tables, projected career trajectories, fringe benefits, and household services. A young adult with decades of working life ahead represents a substantial economic loss, and a life-care plan and forensic economist build the number.
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Punitive damages. The willful and wanton nature of delaying medical aid — the choice to protect the fraternity’s reputation rather than save a human life — is the predicate for punitive damages. The defense will fight this hard, but the surveillance footage of a twelve-hour delay, paired with the fraternity’s own compliance history, is the kind of evidence that puts punishment damages on the table.
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The insurance tower. National fraternities carry liability insurance — often layered, with the national organization’s policy as the primary deep pocket. The coverage limits of the national policy, the local chapter’s coverage (if any), and any excess or umbrella layers determine the practical recovery ceiling. Settlements in these cases are often capped only by the limits of the fraternity’s national insurance program. The Piazza family’s 2018 settlement with Beta Theta Pi’s national organization included a 17-point reform agreement — demonstrating that these cases can force systemic change, not just financial compensation.
These figures are honest assessments based on the case type. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The specific value of your case depends on the specific facts — the documented delay, the surveillance evidence, the fraternity’s prior history, your child’s earning potential, and the jurisdiction where the case is filed.
The Defense Playbook: What the Fraternity’s Lawyers Will Do
The national fraternity and its insurance carriers have a playbook. They have used it before. Here are the moves you should expect, and the counter to each.
Play 1: “Voluntary consumption.” The defense will argue your child chose to drink, chose to participate, and voluntarily assumed the risk of harm. This is the 51% comparative negligence weapon — if they can pin more than half the fault on your child, your recovery is barred under Pennsylvania law.
The counter: the coercive nature of hazing negates voluntariness. A pledge who is told he cannot leave, who is subjected to a structured ritual of forced consumption, and who faces social ostracism and rejection if he refuses is not acting voluntarily. Expert testimony on the psychology of hazing — the power imbalance between actives and pledges, the group-pressure dynamics, the documented phenomenon of pledge subservience — reframes the “choice” as what it actually was: coercion. We use human-factors experts to explain to a jury what the fraternity already knows: the entire point of hazing is that it is not voluntary.
Play 2: “The code of silence.” The fraternity’s members will close ranks. They will delete messages, coordinate stories, and tell investigators they “do not remember” what happened. The national organization will argue it had no notice of the specific conduct.
The counter: the code of silence is itself evidence. A preservation letter sent immediately freezes the electronic communications before they can be deleted. If messages are destroyed after the letter is received, the spoliation doctrine allows the jury to infer the deleted evidence was harmful. And the national organization’s own compliance records — the prior suspensions, the prior hazing citations, the risk-management audits — establish notice regardless of what the local members now claim they do not remember.
Play 3: “The fast settlement check.” Within days or weeks, someone may approach your family with a check and a release. It will come wrapped in sympathy and urgency. It will arrive before you know the full extent of what happened, before the surveillance video has been preserved, before the toxicology is fully understood. The amount will seem significant to a grieving family. It will be a fraction of what the case is worth.
The counter: no check signed in the first weeks is worth what your family will eventually need. The fraternity’s insurance company is offering it because they know what the surveillance footage shows, and they want to buy your silence before you see it. A free consultation with a trial lawyer who has litigated hazing cases — before you sign anything, before you cash anything — is the single most protective step a family can take.
Play 4: “Blame the university.” The fraternity will point at the university — arguing the school should have supervised Greek life more closely, should have enforced its own anti-hazing policies, should have known what was happening inside the chapter house. This is the empty-chair defense: shift fault to a defendant who may or may not be in the case.
The counter: the university’s fault does not erase the fraternity’s fault. Pennsylvania’s comparative negligence framework apportions fault among all defendants — and the fraternity’s direct conduct (organizing the ritual, providing the alcohol, failing to call 911) is the primary cause. The university’s failure to supervise is an additional layer of fault, not a substitute for the fraternity’s own choices.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Not to Do
If your child has been injured or killed in a fraternity hazing incident in Pennsylvania, the first 72 hours are when the evidence that decides your case is either preserved or destroyed.
Do not sign anything. Do not sign a release, a waiver, a settlement agreement, or any document the fraternity, the university, or any insurance representative places in front of you. Do not accept a check. Do not agree to keep anything “confidential.” Every document you sign in the first days — when you are exhausted, grieving, and have no lawyer — is a document the other side drafted to protect itself, not you.
Do not give a recorded statement. Someone friendly — a fraternity representative, a university official, an insurance adjuster — may ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is built to be quoted against you later. You are not obligated to give it. Decline, politely, and call a lawyer.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the incident, nothing about your grief, nothing about the fraternity. The defense will mine your social media for any statement that can be taken out of context and used to minimize the harm or suggest you have “moved on.”
Demand preservation of evidence — in writing. This is the most important step. A written letter to the national fraternity, the local chapter, and the university, demanding preservation of all surveillance footage, all electronic communications, all conduct records, and all internal documents, is the legal mechanism that freezes the evidence before it is destroyed. This is not something a family should write alone. This is the first thing a lawyer does.
Request the university’s conduct records. Under Pennsylvania’s public-records framework, you may have the right to obtain the university’s prior conduct findings against the fraternity, prior medical-transport records from the chapter house, and prior complaints. A lawyer can help you navigate this.
Call a trial lawyer who has handled hazing cases. Not a general personal injury lawyer — a trial firm that knows the fraternity defendant structure, the insurance tower, the evidence clock, and the specific legal framework that Pennsylvania’s hazing statute provides. Call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and it costs you nothing to understand your rights.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk of how a fraternity hazing case is built, from the day you call to the day a jury hears the evidence.
Week one. The preservation letter goes out — to the national fraternity, the local chapter, the university, and every individual member we can identify. It demands that they preserve all surveillance video, all GroupMe and text threads, all internal conduct records, and all compliance files. It puts them on notice that destroying evidence will have consequences in court.
Weeks two through four. We pull the medical records — the emergency department chart, the toxicology report, the imaging, the surgical notes if any. We obtain the death certificate and the autopsy report, which together establish the medical cause of death and the timeline of physiological deterioration. We file the public-records requests for the university’s conduct files on the fraternity.
Months one through three. We file the wrongful death and survival action, naming every defendant: the national fraternity, the local chapter, the individual members whose conduct caused the harm, and the university if the facts support it. We begin discovery — demanding the national organization’s compliance records, the chapter’s internal communications, the university’s Greek-life oversight files. This is where the “the chapter was previously suspended for hazing” fact comes out of the internal files and into the light.
Months three through twelve. We take depositions. The national organization’s risk-management director explains under oath what the fraternity knew about this chapter and when. The individual members explain under oath what happened the night your child was injured — the ritual, the coercion, the twelve-hour silence. The university’s Greek-life coordinator explains under oath what the school knew and what it did or did not do.
The trial. If the case does not settle — and many do, because the fraternity’s insurer does not want a jury to see the surveillance footage — the case is tried to a jury of Pennsylvania citizens. The surveillance video plays. The compliance records are displayed. The toxicology is explained. And the jury is asked to do what the fraternity refused to do for twelve hours: recognize that a human being was in trouble and act.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a hazing wrongful death lawsuit in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania’s wrongful death statute of limitations gives families two years from the date of death to file a lawsuit. The survival action — the claim for the victim’s own conscious pain and suffering — runs on the same two-year clock. Two years sounds like a long time when you are grieving, but it is not — because the evidence that wins your case (surveillance footage, electronic communications, witness memory) degrades far faster than the legal deadline. The deadline to sue and the deadline to save the proof are different clocks, and the second one is much shorter.
Can the national fraternity really be held responsible if it did not directly run the hazing ritual?
Yes. The national fraternity can be held liable for negligent supervision of its local chapter — particularly when its own compliance records show it knew or should have known about dangerous conduct at that chapter. When a national organization markets itself to parents as “non-hazing and non-drinking” while its internal files show that the same chapter had been previously suspended for hazing, the gap between the public representation and the private knowledge is the negligent supervision claim. The national organization set the policies, collected the dues, and held itself out as safe — it does not get to disclaim responsibility when the predictable consequence of its own failure to enforce occurs.
What if my child was drinking voluntarily? Does that bar our claim?
It does not. Pennsylvania’s 51% modified comparative negligence rule means your child’s own conduct can reduce a recovery, but only if the jury assigns more than 50% of the fault to your child. The critical counter is that hazing is, by its nature, coercive — a pledge who is told he cannot leave until he finishes a handle of alcohol is not voluntarily drinking. Expert testimony on the psychology of hazing and the power dynamics between actives and pledges reframes “voluntary consumption” as what it actually is: coercion. The defense will push this argument hard. The medicine and the psychology of hazing are the answer.
What is the difference between a wrongful death claim and a survival action?
A wrongful death claim belongs to the surviving family and compensates them for what they lost — the financial support, the companionship, the guidance, and the life their child would have lived. A survival action belongs to the victim’s estate and compensates for what the victim endured — the conscious pain and suffering between the onset of injury and the moment of death. In a hazing case where death was not instantaneous — where the victim was alive and deteriorating for hours — the survival action is often the larger portion of the recovery, because the conscious suffering was extreme and prolonged. Filing only the wrongful death claim and missing the survival action is one of the most common errors a family can make.
Will my child’s name be in the news?
Not necessarily. Many hazing cases are resolved through confidential settlements, and the parties agree to keep the terms private. If a lawsuit is filed, it becomes a public record, but the victim’s privacy can be protected through the use of initials (as is common in these cases) and protective orders governing sensitive evidence. The families who have spoken publicly about hazing deaths — the Piazzas, the Gruvers — did so by choice, as advocates, not because the legal process required it.
How much does it cost to hire a hazing wrongful death lawyer?
We work on contingency. That means you pay nothing upfront and nothing out of pocket. Our fee is 33.33% of the recovery if the case settles before trial, and 40% if it goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and you will talk to a trial lawyer — not an intake screener — who can evaluate your situation.
What if the fraternity has already been shut down by the university?
The fraternity being shut down does not end the legal liability. The national fraternity organization continues to exist and continues to carry insurance. The individual members continue to exist and carry their own potential liability. The university’s decision to revoke recognition is, if anything, evidence that the conduct was serious enough to warrant the most severe disciplinary action the school can take. A shut-down chapter is not a judgment-proof defendant — it is a chapter whose national organization is still on the hook for what it allowed to happen.
Can I sue if my child survived but was seriously injured?
Yes. Wrongful death is not the only path. If your child survived a hazing incident with a traumatic brain injury, organ damage from alcohol poisoning, psychological trauma, or any other serious injury, the same legal theories — negligent supervision, hazing, battery, failure to aid — support a personal injury claim. The survival of the victim does not eliminate the liability of the fraternity; it changes the damages framework from wrongful death to personal injury, and the life-care plan for ongoing medical needs becomes the backbone of the recovery.
Why Attorney911
We are not a firm that discovered hazing cases are profitable and added them to a website. We are a firm that currently litigates hazing cases — right now, in an active $10 million lawsuit against a national fraternity and a major university. Ralph Manginello is lead counsel in that case. He has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, and was a journalist before he was a lawyer — which means he knows how to find the story the fraternity does not want told. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side, inside a national insurance-defense firm, where he learned how adjusters set reserves, how defense lawyers pick expert witnesses, and how the machinery of delay works from the inside. He uses that knowledge for our clients now.
We handle cases on contingency — you pay nothing unless we win. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And when you call 1-888-ATTY-911, you reach a 24/7 live staff — not an answering service, not a voicemail. If your family is in crisis, we treat it like a crisis.
We serve families fully in English and Spanish. Hablamos Español. Lupe Peña conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter, and our bilingual staff ensures that language is never a barrier to understanding your rights.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The information on this page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts, and nothing here creates an attorney-client relationship until a signed agreement is in place. But if your child was injured or killed in a fraternity hazing incident in Pennsylvania, the most important call you can make is the one that preserves the evidence before it disappears and puts a trial team on your side before the fraternity’s lawyers finish building their defense.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win. We are Attorney911 — Legal Emergency Lawyers™.