24/7 LIVE STAFF — Compassionate help, any time day or night
CALL NOW 1-888-ATTY-911
Legal Resources

Blog

Legal insights, case updates, and resources from our Houston attorneys.

28657 Articles

Stone Foltz Hazing Wrongful Death in Bowling Green, Wood County, Ohio — Attorney911 Pursues Pi Kappa Alpha’s National Organization and the University’s Negligent Supervision of Greek-Life Hazing, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Case, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Values and Denies Hazing Deaths, We Preserve Fraternity Communications, University Conduct Board Files, and Toxicology Evidence Before Witnesses Graduate and Records Are Purged, Ohio’s Wrongful Death Act and Collin’s Law Anti-Hazing Framework, Millions Recovered in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

The Night That Should Never Have Happened: Bowling Green’s Hazing Death and What It Means for Every Family If you are reading this page, you are probably in one of two places. Either you have lost someone to a hazing incident at a college or university in Ohio, and you are trying to understand whether what happened to your child was a tragedy or a crime — or both. Or you are a parent whose child survived a hazing event and you are only now learning how close you came to the phone call the Foltz family received in March of 2021. Either way, you are here because something broke, and you need to know whether the people who let it break can be held accountable. They can. We are going to tell you exactly how, and exactly what the law in Ohio gives your family the power to do about it. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes wrongful death and catastrophic-injury cases in Ohio and across the country, and we currently lead active hazing litigation against a university and a national fraternity. We know what these cases look like from the inside because we are living one right now. What happened at Bowling Green State University is not an isolated event. It is part of a pattern that has killed at least one college student every year in this country for over sixty years. The only question that matters…

Stone Foltz Hazing Wrongful Death in Bowling Green, Ohio: A 20-Year-Old BGSU Pledge Forced to Drink a Liter of Bourbon at a Pi Kappa Alpha Ritual, Three Days in a Coma, Fatal Alcohol Poisoning — Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity and Its Insurer Behind These Initiation Rituals, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice and Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Secure the Fraternity Communications, National Risk-Management Files and Criminal Conviction Records Before They Are Purged, Ohio’s Collin’s Law and Wrongful-Death Doctrine, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

When They Said “We’ll Take Care of Him” — The Night That Killed Your Son at Bowling Green Your child went to college to learn. He joined a fraternity to belong. He was told to drink a liter of bourbon, and he was told that the young men handing it to him would take care of him. Then they watched him lose consciousness, and they did nothing that mattered in time to save his life. He spent nearly three days in a coma on a ventilator while you stood at his bedside, and on March 7, 2021, he died from alcohol poisoning in a hospital in Ohio — killed by a ritual that has a name, that has a law against it, and that has been killing college students for generations. We need you to hear this first: your son’s death was not his fault. He was a 20-year-old sophomore who wanted what every 20-year-old wants — community, belonging, a place in the world. The system that killed him exploited that desire, and the law in Ohio now says exactly that. What happened to your child in Bowling Green was not an accident, not a prank gone wrong, not “kids being kids.” It was hazing. It was a crime. Eight of the young men who participated were convicted of it. And the civil law gives your family a separate, powerful path to hold every layer of that system accountable — the local chapter that ran the ritual, the national fraternity…

Parents of Roswell teen who died during alcohol-related incident at LSU excited about new anti-hazing legislation – 11Alive.com

Hazing Wrongful Death: Your Legal Rights When a Fraternity Takes a Student’s Life If you are reading this page, you may be living through something no parent should ever have to survive. Your child went to college — maybe just weeks or months ago — and a fraternity ritual turned a night that should have been about belonging into the last night of their life. The criminal case may be over. The news cameras may be gone. The legislation may carry your child’s name. And still, you are sitting at a kitchen table trying to understand what comes next. What comes next is this: the civil justice system. It is a separate, powerful avenue of accountability that does not replace criminal prosecution or legislative advocacy — it runs alongside them, and it reaches people and institutions that criminal courts never touch. The local fraternity chapter that organized the hazing. The national fraternity organization that was supposed to prevent it. The individual members who handed your child the alcohol and then walked away while he lay dying. The university that knew this culture existed and failed to stop it. Each of these is a separate defendant with a separate insurance policy and a separate reason to answer for what happened. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We handle hazing wrongful death cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and we are currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university…

Penn State Fraternity Hazing & Wrongful Death: Timothy Piazza, 19, Died After Beta Theta Pi Fed Pledges Vodka to a BAC of 0.28-0.36 in University Park, Centre County, Pennsylvania, and He Fell Repeatedly Down Stairs While Fraternity Leadership Waited Until Morning to Call 911 — Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity, the Local Chapter and the University Behind Hazing Rituals That Turn a Pledge’s Quest for Belonging Into a Fatal Night, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Move to Preserve the Surveillance Footage, Cell Phone Records and Fraternity Risk-Management Documents Before They Disappear, Pennsylvania’s Wrongful Death and Survival Acts Impose No Damages Cap and Punitive Damages Apply When Fraternity Leadership Shows Reckless Indifference to a Pledge’s Life, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Your Son Went to College to Find Community — Not to Die in a Fraternity Basement Nobody sends their child to a university expecting that the organization promising brotherhood would instead be the thing that kills him. The guilty pleas in the Penn State hazing case — fourteen counts of hazing and a single count of reckless endangerment against the fraternity’s president and pledge master — represent a measure of individual accountability. They are not the full measure of justice. The criminal system can send people to prison. It cannot send a check to replace a lifetime of earning power. It cannot order a national fraternity to change how it trains every chapter across the country. It cannot compensate a family for the empty chair at every future holiday table. That work belongs to the civil justice system — and if you are reading this because someone you love was hurt or killed by a fraternity’s hazing, that system is yours to use. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We take catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases in Pennsylvania, working with local counsel where required. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is lead counsel in an active multi-million-dollar hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity right now. Our associate, Lupe Peña, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — before coming to…

Final two criminal defendants in Timothy Piazza hazing case sentenced in Centre County Court – fox43.com

Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death: What the Piazza Sentencing Means for Civil Liability The criminal sentencing of the final two defendants in the Timothy Piazza hazing case closes one chapter. It opens another. If your family lost a son or daughter to a fraternity hazing event — whether at Penn State or anywhere else in this country — the criminal system did its job, and it was never going to do the whole job. Criminal court puts people in prison. Civil court makes the institutions that profited from the culture that killed your child pay for what they built. Those are two different fights, and the second one is the one that forces change. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes hazing wrongful death cases. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court, and is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like you — and now sits on your side of the table. We work in English and in Spanish. The call is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. Here is what the Piazza sentencing means, what the civil system can do that the criminal system cannot, and what the clock is doing right now while…

Timothy Piazza Fraternity Hazing Death at Penn State: Attorney911 Litigates Hazing Wrongful Death in Centre County, Pennsylvania — We Pursue the National Fraternity Organization Behind the Alcohol-Fueled Pledge Initiation and the Stairway Fall, the Local Chapter That Delayed 911 While a Survivable Head Injury Became Fatal, the University’s Greek-Life Oversight Failures and Sovereign-Immunity Defenses of a State-Related Institution, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice and Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Hazing Institutional-Liability Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Preserve the Surveillance Footage, Cell-Phone Records and Toxicology Reports Before They Are Lost and the Statute of Limitations Runs, Pennsylvania’s Wrongful-Death and Survival Statutes With No Caps on Damages, the Timothy Piazza Anti-Hazing Law, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Centre County, Pennsylvania Fraternity Hazing Death: What the Beta Theta Pi Sentencing Exposes About Civil Liability When a Pledge Dies You are reading this because someone you love did not come home from a fraternity event. Maybe it was a fall down stairs. Maybe it was alcohol apledge was pressured to drink until he could not stand. Maybe it was the hours that passed while people who could have called 911 did not. What happened at the Beta Theta Pi house at Penn State in 2017 — and what played out in a Centre County courtroom seven years later — is not an isolated tragedy. It is a pattern. And the law has more to say about it than the criminal sentencing captured in a headline. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm that takes catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases, including fraternity and sorority hazing deaths, anywhere the harm occurred. Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue people exactly like the reader — and now sits on your side of the table. We are writing this page as the resource we wish every family in this situation could find at 2 a.m., when the grief is raw and the questions are unanswered. Here is the first thing you need to hear: the criminal sentencing of two…

WSU Freshman Sam Martinez Died of Alcohol Poisoning at an Alpha Tau Omega Hazing Ritual in Pullman, Whitman County, Washington — Hazing Wrongful Death Attorneys at Attorney911 Pursue the National Fraternity and the University That Knew of 70 Prior Interventions at the Chapter House and Did Nothing, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Hazing Institutional-Liability Lawsuit, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Claims Machine Values and Denies These Cases, We Move to Preserve the Student-Conduct Records, Police Call Logs and Fraternity Communications Before They Are Purged, Washington’s Wrongful-Death Act and Anti-Hazing Statute With No Caps on Non-Economic Damages, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

The 70 Interventions They Knew About: Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death in Pullman If you are reading this page, you may be standing where Jolayne Houtz and Hector Martinez stood after losing their 19-year-old son Sam — a Washington State University freshman who died from alcohol poisoning at an Alpha Tau Omega fraternity hazing event in 2019. You may be a parent who searched for safety information about a fraternity and found nothing, the way Sam’s mother searched and found nothing. You may be learning, only after the worst has already happened, that the danger was documented — that authorities had intervened at that same chapter house nearly 70 times in the six years before your child died, and that the university and the national fraternity knew it at their highest leadership levels and did nothing effective to stop it. We are Attorney911. We are a trial firm that takes Washington wrongful-death and fraternity-hazing cases, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We currently litigate a \$10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity — so the machinery of these cases, the defendant structures, the insurance towers, and the institutional excuses are not abstract to us. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting us is free and confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case. What happened at WSU is not an isolated tragedy. It is a documented pattern of institutional failure — 70 interventions over six years,…

Fraternity Hazing & Catastrophic Brain Injury Attorneys: Danny Santulli Was Forced to Drink Until Hypoxic Brain Injury Left Him Blind, Unable to Walk or Speak After Phi Gamma Delta’s Pledge Father Reveal Night in Columbia, Boone County, Missouri — Attorney911 Brings Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice and Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, We Pursue the National Fraternity Organization, the Local Chapter and the House Corporation Behind Forced Intoxication and the Decision to Withhold 911 Rather Than Risk Repercussions, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider Who Knows How the Fraternity’s Liability Insurers Value and Deny These Claims, We Move to Preserve the BAC and Toxicology Records, Neuroimaging, Surveillance Footage and Member Group Chats Before They Are Lost, TBI ($5M+ Recovered) and $50M+ Total Recovered for Injury Victims, Missouri’s Comparative-Fault Rule and Anti-Hazing Statute Govern Your Civil Claim, the Statute of Limitations Is Running — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Columbia Fraternity Hazing Injuries: Legal Rights After Catastrophic Harm If you are reading this page, your family has already lived through the worst night of your lives. A child left for the University of Missouri, joined a fraternity, and came home with a catastrophic brain injury — or did not come home at all. The phone call from Columbia came at an hour no parent should have to answer. The doctors used words like “hypoxic” and “permanent.” The fraternity has already called its insurance company. The university has already issued a statement. And you are sitting at a kitchen table at 2 a.m. trying to understand how a young person who left for Mizzou six weeks ago came back unable to see, walk, or speak. We are Attorney911. We handle fraternity and sorority hazing cases, and we are currently litigating a $10 million hazing lawsuit against a national fraternity at a major university. We know what these cases look like from the inside — the evidence that is already disappearing, the insurance tower that sits behind the local chapter, the playbook the defense runs to minimize what happened. This page is the education we wish every family had before the fraternity’s lawyer called them. What Happened at Mizzou: The Incident Behind Danny’s Law In October 2021, a University of Missouri freshman attended a “Pledge Father Reveal” event at the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity house on Greek Row in Columbia. That event is the kind of ritual universities and national fraternities…

Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death: Caleb Wilson, a 20-Year-Old Southern University Junior and Human Jukebox Trumpet Player, Died of Commotio Cordis From Repeated Chest Blows at a Baton Rouge Warehouse Pledging Ritual, and the Delayed 911 Call and False Information to Hospital Staff May Have Cost Him His Only Chance of Survival — Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity, the University, and Every Individual Behind the Ritual, We Move to Preserve Warehouse Surveillance, Pledge Communications and Hospital Intake Records Before the Evidence Window Closes, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Institutional-Liability Lawsuit, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Louisiana’s Max Gruver Act Makes Consent No Defense to Hazing Harm, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Baton Rouge Hazing Death: What the Law Says About the Southern University Omega Psi Phi Wrongful Death Lawsuit If you are reading this because someone you love was hurt or killed in a fraternity hazing ritual in Baton Rouge, you need to hear three things before anything else. First: what happened was not an accident. The East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner ruled this death a homicide — a medical and legal determination that a human act, not misfortune, stopped a 20-year-old’s heart. Second: Louisiana law strips away the oldest excuse in the hazing playbook. Under the Max Gruver Act, the fact that a pledge chose to be there is not a defense — consent does not shield the people who struck him, the organization that sanctioned the ritual, or the university that failed to stop it. Third: the minutes that passed between his collapse and the moment anyone called for real medical help may have been the difference between a funeral and a recovery, and that delay is its own separate claim. We are writing this as the senior trial team at Attorney911 — a firm that currently litigates a ten-million-dollar hazing lawsuit against a fraternity at a major university, and that takes wrongful death cases in Louisiana. We are not the counsel of record on the Southern University case — this page is the education, the governing law, the evidence clocks, and the honest evaluation of what a case like this is worth, written by people who fight this…

Hazing Wrongful Death of Southern University Student Caleb Wilson in Baton Rouge: Commotio Cordis from Repeated Chest Punching at an Off-Campus Warehouse, Attorney911 Pursues the National Fraternity and the University Behind a Known and Pervasive Hazing Risk, Lead Counsel in the Active $10M+ Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi Hazing Lawsuit, Ralph Manginello’s 27+ Years of Federal-Court Trial Practice, Avvo-Rated Excellent, Lupe Peña the Former Insurance-Defense Insider, We Preserve the Warehouse Footage, Fraternity Oversight Records and University Hazing Complaint Files Before They Disappear, Louisiana’s One-Year Prescriptive Period Is Already Running, the Firm Has Recovered Millions in Wrongful-Death Cases — Free 24/7 Consultation, No Fee Unless We Win, Hablamos Español, 1-888-ATTY-911

Baton Rouge Hazing Death: What the Autopsy Means and What Your Family Can Do The coroner’s report came back on a Monday. Seven months after a young man from Kenner stopped breathing at an off-campus warehouse in Baton Rouge, the East Baton Rouge Coroner put two words on paper that change everything: homicide and commotio cordis. Those words are not a medical curiosity. They are the foundation of a wrongful death case, and they eliminate every defense the other side was building while your family was burying your son. If you are reading this because someone you love was killed in a fraternity hazing ritual, or because you are a parent watching a child pledge and you are terrified, we are writing this for you. We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We take hazing wrongful death cases. We are currently litigating a $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity in Harris County, Texas. We know this fight because we are in it right now. And we know what the coroner’s words mean for a family in Baton Rouge who just received the single most important piece of evidence they will ever hold. Wilson’s manner of death was ruled a homicide, and his cause of death was commotio cordis, or blunt force trauma to the chest. That sentence is the autopsy result released on September 29, 2025. It is a permanent public record. It cannot be retracted, reinterpreted, or explained away. And it does something no…

Need Legal Help Today?

Free consultation. No upfront costs. We don't get paid unless we win your case.

Call 1-888-ATTY-911