Youngstown Ursuline High School Hazing Lawsuit: What Parents Need to Know About School Negligence, Title IX, and Your Child’s Rights
If your child was hazed, harassed, or hurt at a school that was supposed to protect them, you are living in a specific kind of hell. The school you trusted with your child — a place that carried a religious name and a community reputation — became the place where adults looked the other way while kids were hurt. And now you are reading that some families have settled, and you are wondering what that means for your family, whether it is too late, and whether anyone will ever be held accountable for what happened to your child.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are a trial firm that takes cases involving school hazing, institutional negligence, and catastrophic injury. Ralph Manginello has spent 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court, and right now our firm is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity — the kind of case that teaches a firm exactly how hazing litigation works, how institutions circle the wagons, and how to prove what adults knew and when they knew it. Lupe Peña spent years on the other side, inside a national insurance-defense firm, learning the exact playbook adjusters and their lawyers use to minimize and deny claims exactly like yours. He now uses that knowledge for families, in English or in Spanish.
Here is what is happening in the Ursuline hazing litigation in Youngstown, and here is what it means for your family.
What Happened at Ursuline High School: The Hazing and Harassment Lawsuits
The original lawsuit was filed in September 2025, alleging that hazing occurred during a summer football field trip organized by Ursuline High School in Youngstown, Ohio. The case named the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Ursuline High School itself, the school’s principal and assistant principal, the head football coach and multiple assistant coaches, the athletic director, and an individual football player and his parents as defendants.
As of the most recent court filings, most of the player and parent plaintiffs have settled — their agreements are now pending completion of mandatory proceedings in the Mahoning County Probate Court, which must approve any settlement involving a minor before the funds are released. After Probate Court approval, the parties will submit a stipulation and order of dismissal to the federal judge overseeing the case.
But the institutional defendants are still in the case. The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, Ursuline High School, the principal, the assistant principal, the head football coach, three assistant football coaches (one of whom also serves as athletic director), and the individual football player and his parents are all still moving forward toward trial.
And this is not the only litigation connected to the Ursuline football program. Two additional Title IX lawsuits are procedurally connected in federal court — one involving a female student and one involving a gay student, both of whom allege they were harassed by football players. Those cases are awaiting a judge’s decision on whether they will be moved to Mahoning County Court. There are also two separate civil cases pending in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court: one involving a student who says school staff failed to prevent a planned fight in the school cafeteria — a fight that ended with a student suffering a concussion — and another involving a former football player and harassment allegations spanning the 2022–2023 school years.
What this tells us, as trial lawyers who build institutional-negligence cases, is that we are not looking at one bad day or one bad trip. We are looking at a pattern — a pattern that touches hazing, sexual harassment, gender-based harassment, and physical violence in a school cafeteria, all connected to the same football program and the same institutional structure that was supposed to supervise and protect these children.
Who Remains Liable: The Defendants Still in the Case
When a child is hazed on a school-sanctioned trip, the liability does not stop with the kid who did it. Ohio law reaches up the chain — to the adults who were supposed to be supervising, to the school that sanctioned the trip, and to the institution that runs the school. The defendants still in this case represent every rung of that ladder.
The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown is the institutional parent. It is a major landholder and influential entity in the Mahoning County region — a community where the Diocese’s schools carry a reputation built over generations. That community stature is real, and it creates a complex dynamic: the same institution that families trust with their children is the one whose insurance and assets must answer when that trust is broken. The Diocese bears vicarious liability for the acts of school employees and faces direct claims for negligent hiring and retention of coaching staff.
Ursuline High School faces claims of institutional negligence — failure to implement adequate anti-hazing protocols, failure to supervise students during a school-sanctioned event, and breach of the duty of care the school owes every student who walks through its doors.
The school administrators — the principal and assistant principal — face claims of negligent supervision and failure to report or intervene in known patterns of harassment and hazing. When a school has prior complaints of hazing that went unpunished, the administrators who knew and did nothing are personally exposed.
The coaching staff — the head football coach, the assistant coaches, and the athletic director — face claims of direct negligent supervision of minors during the field trip. Coaches who take students on a school-sanctioned trip are standing in the place of parents — what the law calls in loco parentis. When they fail to supervise and hazing occurs, they face potential statutory liability under Ohio’s anti-hazing laws.
The individual football player and his parents face direct liability for intentional torts — assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The player’s parents may face claims under theories of negligent supervision or parental responsibility statutes.
The critical thing to understand is this: the settlement of some plaintiffs does not weaken the claims of those who remain. If anything, the institutional defendants’ willingness to settle with some families while fighting others suggests they are calculating which claims they fear most — and the claims that remain are the ones where the evidence of institutional failure is strongest.
Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Statute: ORC 2307.44 Explained
Ohio has a specific civil cause of action for hazing — a statute that exists precisely because schools and organizations spent decades calling hazing “tradition” and “team-building” when it was actually assault and battery with a culture of silence wrapped around it.
Ohio Revised Code Section 2307.44 is the controlling statute for hazing liability, allowing for broad recovery of damages including mental anguish — and it applies regardless of whether the victim “consented” to the activity.
That last part is critical. Hazing defenses historically leaned on the argument that the victim “went along with it” — as if a teenager surrounded by teammates and coaches, desperate to belong, can give meaningful consent to being physically abused. Ohio law rejects that argument. The statute creates civil liability against any person or organization that permits hazing to occur, and “consent” is not a defense.
What this means for families in Youngstown is that the legal framework already exists to hold the Ursuline football program and its institutional sponsors accountable — not just for the physical act of hazing, but for the mental anguish, the fear, the sleepless nights, the loss of trust, and the lasting psychological harm that follows a child who was targeted by the people who were supposed to be their teammates.
Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence rule — a 51% bar — meaning your own share of fault can reduce your recovery, and if you are found to be 51% or more at fault, you cannot recover at all. But in hazing cases involving minors, this is rarely a meaningful issue. A child who is subjected to hazing by older, stronger teammates, under the authority of coaches who organized the trip, is not the party whose fault the law is designed to measure. The adults who created the conditions and failed to supervise are.
Ohio also has damage caps under ORC 2315.18 that generally limit non-economic damages — things like pain and suffering, emotional distress, and loss of enjoyment of life — to $250,000 or three times the economic damages, whichever is greater. But those caps have exceptions. They can be lifted in cases involving “permanent and substantial physical deformity,” and — critically for hazing cases — they do not apply the same way when the conduct is found to be intentional or malicious. When an institution turns a blind eye to hazing, when coaches knew what was happening and did nothing, when the pattern was so foreseeable that ignoring it amounts to conscious disregard for student safety, the caps can give way. And on top of compensatory damages, Ohio allows punitive damages when “actual malice” or “conscious disregard” for the safety of others is proven — elements that are often present in institutional hazing cases where the adults in charge made a deliberate choice not to intervene.
Title IX Hostile Environment Claims for Harassment in Ohio Schools
The two Title IX cases procedurally connected to the hazing lawsuit involve a female student and a gay student who say they were harassed by football players. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is the federal law that requires schools receiving federal funding to respond promptly to known sex-based and gender-based harassment. When that harassment is so severe and pervasive that it denies a student educational access, the school has violated Title IX.
The standard the school must meet is not perfection — it is not an absolute guarantee that no student will ever be harassed. The standard is deliberate indifference. A school is liable under Title IX when it knew about the harassment and its response was clearly unreasonable in light of the known circumstances. The school does not get to say “we did not know” when the harassment was open and obvious, when other students reported it, when a pattern was visible to anyone paying attention.
What makes the Ursuline Title IX cases powerful is their connection to the hazing litigation. If the football program had a culture that tolerated hazing — that allowed older players to haze younger ones with no consequences — that same culture can produce the harassment of female students and LGBTQ students. The pattern is the proof. The prior complaints that were ignored, the reports that went nowhere, the coaches who looked the other way — all of it establishes that the school’s response to known harassment was not just inadequate but deliberately indifferent.
For the family of a child who was harassed, the Title IX claim is a separate legal track with its own elements, its own proof requirements, and its own damages — but it runs on the same fuel: the institutional failure to act on what the adults already knew.
The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown: Institutional Liability and the Insurance Tower
The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown is not a small defendant. It is a major religious institution with significant assets and insurance coverage. Understanding how that coverage works is central to understanding what a family’s case is actually worth.
Religious institutions like the Diocese typically maintain insurance through specialized religious risk retention groups or high-limit commercial carriers. These policies often feature significant self-insured retentions — meaning the Diocese pays the first layer of every claim out of its own pocket before insurance kicks in — followed by multi-layered excess coverage that can extend into the tens of millions of dollars. The individual staff members — the coaches, the administrators — are likely indemnified by the Diocese’s master policy, meaning the Diocese’s insurance defends them.
But here is where it gets complicated, and where having a lawyer who used to work inside insurance defense matters. Standard insurance policies carry “intentional act” exclusions. If the hazing is deemed a criminal or intentional act — not merely negligent supervision but deliberate participation — the insurance company may argue that coverage does not apply. This creates a tension between the Diocese, which wants its insurance to cover the claims, and the insurance carrier, which wants to exclude them. That tension is leverage for the plaintiff. A lawyer who understands how insurers set reserves, how they value claims, and how they decide whether to settle or fight — like Lupe Peña, who spent years doing exactly that work for the other side — knows where the pressure points are.
Ohio’s charitable immunity doctrine is another battleground. Historically, some states shielded religious and charitable institutions from liability. Ohio’s charitable immunity is significantly limited and typically does not shield religious institutions from liability for the negligent or intentional acts of their employees in an educational setting. A school is not a charity in the way the old doctrine envisioned — it is an institution that charges tuition, employs staff, and takes responsibility for children’s safety. The Diocese cannot hide behind charitable immunity to avoid answering for what happened at Ursuline.
What Your Child’s Case Is Worth: Damages in Hazing and School Negligence Cases
Every case is different, and the value of a school hazing or negligence claim depends on the severity of the harm, the strength of the evidence of institutional failure, and whether the conduct was merely negligent or rose to the level of conscious disregard that opens the door to punitive damages. But the framework for valuation is real, and families deserve to understand it.
Economic damages are the costs you can put on a receipt. They include past and future medical expenses — emergency room visits, specialist appointments, psychological counseling, and, in cases involving physical injury like the cafeteria concussion, the full cost of diagnostic imaging, treatment, and follow-up care. They include the cost of transferring your child to a safe educational environment — new tuition, transportation, the practical price of removing your child from the school that failed to protect them. And they include lost earning capacity if the injuries affect your child’s future ability to work.
Non-economic damages are the human losses no receipt can capture. They include the profound emotional distress, the post-traumatic stress disorder, the loss of enjoyment of life, the anxiety that follows a child who was betrayed by the adults who were supposed to protect them. In hazing cases, the psychological damage is often the deepest wound — the nightmares, the flinching at loud sounds, the child who no longer trusts authority figures, the teenager who quit the sport they loved because the sport became the vehicle for their abuse.
Punitive damages are available under Ohio law when the defendant acted with “actual malice” or “conscious disregard” for the safety of others. In institutional hazing cases, this is often the central question: did the school and its coaches merely fail to supervise, or did they know hazing was happening, know it was dangerous, and make a deliberate choice to ignore it? When the answer is the latter — when prior complaints were filed and nothing changed, when the culture was an open secret — punitive damages are not just available. They are the mechanism by which a jury tells the institution that what happened was not an accident but a choice.
Based on the verified analysis of this litigation, individual claim values in cases of this type can range from approximately $250,000 on the lower end for harassment claims with limited physical injury to $3,500,000 or more for severe hazing and concussion cases where institutional recklessness can be proven. Settlement values for the group of plaintiffs in consolidated litigation of this nature are likely in the mid-seven-figure range in aggregate. These figures are not predictions — they are the range a knowledgeable trial lawyer uses to evaluate a case and to know when an insurance offer is fair and when it is a fraction of what the case is worth.
For the minor plaintiffs, all settlements must be vetted by the Mahoning County Probate Court. This is not a punishment or a judgment on the child — it is a protection. The Probate Court’s job is to ensure that settlement funds are placed in restricted accounts or structured settlements that protect the child’s money from being mismanaged before they turn 18. We explain this process clearly to every family, because the last thing a parent in crisis needs is to be confused by a court proceeding that exists to help their child.
The Concussion Case: When a School Lets Planned Violence Happen
One of the separate civil cases pending in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court involves a student who says Ursuline High School staff failed to prevent a planned fight in the school cafeteria — a fight that ended with a student getting a concussion. This is a premises liability and negligent supervision claim, and it is important because it shows the same institutional failure pattern in a different context.
A concussion is a traumatic brain injury. It is not a “bell ringer” or a “ding.” It is a real injury to the brain, and the word “mild” — which doctors use when a patient can still answer questions — is one of the most dangerous words in medicine. On the Glasgow Coma Scale, a 13, 14, or 15 is classified as “mild,” but more than one-third of patients who score a 13 have potentially life-threatening intracranial lesions. A normal CT scan does not mean the brain is fine — in a so-called mild brain injury, the CT comes back clean about 90% of the time, not because nothing is wrong, but because the damage is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers that a standard scan was never designed to see.
A concussion can produce headaches, dizziness, memory gaps, concentration problems, personality changes, and sleep disturbances. Roughly one in seven people with a mild brain injury never fully recovers — the symptoms persist past three months, sometimes for life. Brain injuries in children and students are especially serious because the developing brain is more vulnerable and the consequences can affect learning, social development, and future earning capacity.
When a school knows about a planned fight — when students have been talking about it, when social media posts foreshadowed it, when the tension was visible to anyone paying attention — and the school does nothing to prevent it, the school has breached its duty to maintain a safe environment. The cafeteria fight that ended in a concussion is not just a fight. It is a premises liability claim and a negligent supervision claim, and it fits the same pattern as the hazing and harassment cases: adults who knew, or should have known, and failed to act.
The Medicine of Hazing: Concussions, PTSD, and the Injuries That Don’t Show on a Scan
Hazing injuries come in two forms — the ones you can see and the ones you cannot. Both are real. Both are compensable. And the ones you cannot see are often the ones that last the longest.
Physical injuries can include bruising, lacerations, fractures, concussions from being struck or forced into dangerous activities, and in severe cases, organ damage or worse. These are the injuries that show up on imaging and in medical records — the ones a defense lawyer has a harder time disputing. But they are often the smaller part of the harm.
Psychological injuries are the signature damage of hazing. Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mood or a label — it is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate criteria under the DSM-5, and a survivor has to meet every one of them. The event itself, the nightmares that will not stop, the avoidance of anything that triggers the memory, the negative changes in mood and cognition, the hyperarousal — the exaggerated startle, the irritability, the sleep problems — and the duration of more than a month that wrecks the ability to function at school or in relationships.
Out of every kind of traumatic event researchers have measured, being subjected to sustained physical and emotional abuse by peers — which is what hazing is — is among the most likely to produce lasting PTSD. When a school ignores the warning signs and the harm follows, the lifelong psychological injury is not a surprise. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
The defense playbook against psychological injuries is always the same: “she’s exaggerating,” “he was already anxious,” “something else caused it.” The answer is the same every time: a diagnosis built on the DSM-5 checklist, validated clinical instruments like the CAPS-5 or PCL-5, contemporaneous mental-health records from the first therapy intake, and the testimony of people who knew the person before. The injury is real. The medicine proves it. The law compensates it.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook: How They Attack School Negligence Claims
When a family files a claim against a school, the Diocese’s insurance carrier does not simply write a check. An adjuster goes to work, and the adjuster’s job is to pay as little as possible. Here are the plays they run — and the counter to each one.
Play 1: The “consent” argument. The adjuster will argue that the student “chose” to participate, that hazing is a “tradition” the student accepted, that the student could have walked away. The counter is Ohio law itself — ORC 2307.44 specifically provides that consent is not a defense to hazing. A minor surrounded by older teammates, under the authority of coaches, on a school-sanctioned trip, cannot meaningfully consent to being abused. The statute was written to close this exact loophole.
Play 2: The “we did not know” argument. The adjuster will argue the school had no notice of the hazing, that this was an isolated incident nobody could have predicted. The counter is discovery — prior complaints, internal investigative reports, coaches’ text messages, student social media posts, and the pattern of connected cases. When the same football program faces hazing claims, Title IX harassment claims, and a cafeteria fight claim, “we did not know” is not a defense. It is a lie the records will expose.
Play 3: The quick settlement offer. A check may arrive fast — before the full extent of the injury is known, before the psychological evaluation is complete, before a life-care plan is built. The offer will come with a release attached, and the release will close every door forever. The counter is simple: never sign a release before a doctor has evaluated your child and a lawyer has reviewed the offer. A quick check from an insurance company is not generosity. It is a business decision to pay less now to avoid paying more later.
Play 4: The “pre-existing condition” attack. The adjuster will comb through your child’s medical history looking for prior anxiety, prior counseling, prior complaints — anything to argue the current harm is not the school’s fault but the result of a pre-existing vulnerability. The counter is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine: a defendant takes the victim as found. A pre-existing vulnerability that made the harm worse does not reduce the school’s liability. It can increase the damages.
Play 5: The recorded statement. Someone friendly will call to “check on” your child and ask them to “just tell us what happened” on a recording engineered to be quoted against them. A teenager who is scared, confused, and eager to be helpful will say things that an adjuster will later twist. The counter is absolute: no recorded statements without a lawyer present. None. Not once. Not ever.
Evidence That Disappears: Records, Footage, and the Clock Running Against You
The proof that wins a school hazing and negligence case is perishable. It disappears on a schedule, and the schedule is not generous. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
Internal school investigative reports prove what the administration knew and when they knew it — about the hazing, about the planned cafeteria fight, about prior complaints. These records are critical, and they are at high risk of “loss” during administrative transitions. A new principal, a coaching change, a restructuring — each is an opportunity for inconvenient records to vanish. A preservation letter from a lawyer freezes these records in place.
Coaches’ digital communications — text messages, emails, group chats between staff — often reveal the culture of the program. Did coaches joke about hazing? Did they acknowledge it and do nothing? Did a coach warn the administration and get ignored? These communications exist on school-issued devices, personal phones, and email servers. They auto-delete on schedules set by the carrier and the school’s IT policy. A litigation-hold letter must go out immediately to prevent auto-deletion.
Student social media records are where hazing lives. Hazing acts are frequently recorded or discussed on platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, or TikTok by the perpetrators themselves. Students who haze tend to document it — they think it is funny, they think it proves their dominance, they think it will never catch up to them. But social media content is often deleted once legal action is threatened. Screenshots, preservation demands to the platforms, and forensic recovery are the tools that save this evidence.
School surveillance footage — cafeteria cameras, hallway cameras, parking lot cameras — can show the planned fight, the physical interactions, the presence or absence of supervising adults. School CCTV systems typically overwrite on a rolling loop — often 30 to 90 days. Once the footage is gone, it is gone. The preservation letter demanding that the school freeze all footage from the relevant dates is one of the first documents a lawyer sends.
The Probate Court settlement filings from the families who have already settled are public records that may contain factual admissions by the Diocese — admissions that can bind the institution in the remaining litigation. These filings are ongoing and should be monitored.
The general rule is this: the day you call a lawyer is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you. Every day before that call, evidence is dying. Every day after, a preservation letter is freezing it in place.
How We Build a School Negligence and Hazing Case
Here is how a case like this is actually built, from the first phone call through the demand that forces a real settlement or a trial.
The process begins with a preservation letter — sent within days of being retained — to the school, the Diocese, and every individual defendant, ordering them to freeze all records, communications, footage, and documents related to the hazing, the harassment, and the supervision of the football program. This letter is the single most important early step. It converts routine deletion into spoliation — the destruction of evidence after notice that it is relevant to litigation — and spoliation carries its own consequences, including the right to ask the jury to assume the lost evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says it was.
Next come the records demands — to the school for its investigative files, its anti-hazing policies, its training records for coaches and staff, its prior complaint history, and its personnel records for the coaches and administrators involved. To the Diocese for its insurance policies, its oversight policies, and its knowledge of prior incidents at any school under its umbrella. To the social media platforms for preserved content. To the Mahoning County Probate Court for settlement filings that may contain admissions.
Then the discovery phase — depositions of the coaches, the administrators, the athletic director, the Diocese’s risk managers. Under oath, the adults who were in charge answer questions about what they knew, when they knew it, and what they did or did not do. The depositions are where the “we did not know” defense either survives or collapses — because the documents, the texts, the emails, and the prior complaints either match the testimony or expose it as false.
Expert witnesses are retained — a school safety and sports administration expert to testify on the deviation from OHSAA and national standards for student safety and hazing prevention. For the concussion case, a neuropsychologist to document the cognitive deficits and a life-care planner to build the lifetime cost of care. For the psychological injuries, a treating therapist or psychiatrist to testify on the PTSD diagnosis and its impact.
Then the demand — a formal settlement demand package, built on the full weight of the evidence, the medicine, and the law, presented to the Diocese’s insurance carrier with a deadline. If the carrier offers a fair number, the case settles — subject to Probate Court approval for any minor. If it does not, the case goes to a Mahoning County jury, and twelve people from the community decide what a child’s safety was worth to the institution that was supposed to protect them.
Your First 72 Hours: A Practical Guide
If your child was hazed, harassed, or injured at school — whether at Ursuline or anywhere in the Youngstown area — here is what to do and what not to do in the first 72 hours.
Do get your child medical care. If there is any physical injury — a concussion, bruising, any pain — take them to an emergency room or an urgent care immediately. If the injury is psychological — nightmares, panic, withdrawal, fear — get them to a therapist or psychiatrist within days, not weeks. The medical record built from day one is the spine of the case. A gap between the incident and the first treatment is the defense’s favorite argument: “if it were really that bad, why did they wait?”
Do photograph everything. Bruises fade. Cuts heal. The locker where it happened gets cleaned. The social media post gets deleted. Take photos of every physical injury, every piece of evidence, and screenshots of every social media post, text, or communication related to the incident. Date-stamp everything.
Do preserve your child’s communications. Save every text, every email, every social media message. Do not delete anything, even if it is painful to read. Your child’s own account of what happened, in their own words, at the time it happened, is evidence.
Do not give a recorded statement to the school, the Diocese, or any insurance representative. Not without a lawyer. Anything your child says will be transcribed, taken out of context, and used to minimize or deny the claim. The school is not investigating to help your child. It is investigating to protect itself.
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no settlement agreement, no acknowledgment. If someone hands you a document and says “just sign this so we can help,” do not sign it. Bring it to a lawyer.
Do not post about it on social media. Your child should not post about the incident. You should not post about the incident. The defense will monitor social media accounts, and a photo of your child smiling at a birthday party will be presented to a jury as “proof” that they are “fine.” Privacy is protection.
Do call a lawyer. Not next month. Not after the school finishes its investigation. Not after you see what the other families got. Now. The evidence is dying. The insurance adjuster is already building a file. The school has already called its lawyers. You need yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean that some families have settled and others have not?
It means that the parties who settled reached a confidential agreement with the defendants, and that agreement is now being reviewed by the Mahoning County Probate Court because minors are involved. The Probate Court must approve any settlement involving a child to ensure the funds are protected and used for the child’s benefit. The families still in the case — and the institutional defendants, including the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown and the school staff — have not reached an agreement and are proceeding toward trial. Settlement by some plaintiffs does not weaken the claims of those who remain. It often means the institutional defendants are reserving their resources to fight the claims where the evidence is strongest.
How long do I have to file a hazing or school negligence lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s statute of limitations for personal injury claims — which includes hazing claims under ORC 2307.44 — generally gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a lawsuit. For wrongful death, the deadline is also two years from the date of death. For minors, the clock may be tolled — meaning it does not start running until the child turns 18 — but you should never assume the deadline is extended without confirming it with a lawyer. Title IX claims have their own procedural deadlines that can be shorter. The safest course is to contact a lawyer immediately, because evidence disappears far faster than legal deadlines expire.
Can I sue the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown even though it is a religious institution?
Yes. Ohio’s charitable immunity doctrine is significantly limited and does not shield religious institutions from liability for the negligent or intentional acts of their employees in an educational setting. The Diocese operates schools, charges tuition, employs staff, and takes responsibility for children’s safety. When that responsibility is breached, the Diocese is answerable in civil court just like any other institution. The Diocese carries substantial insurance coverage, and that coverage — not the Diocese’s religious character — is what answers for the harm.
What if my child “went along” with the hazing?
Under Ohio’s anti-hazing statute, consent is not a defense. A minor who is surrounded by older, stronger teammates, under the authority of coaches, on a school-sanctioned trip, cannot meaningfully consent to being abused. The law recognizes this. The statute was written specifically to close the “they agreed to it” loophole that protected hazing culture for decades. Your child’s participation under pressure, fear, or the desire to belong does not bar a claim.
What is Title IX and how does it apply to my child’s harassment case?
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school receiving federal funding. It requires schools to respond promptly to known harassment based on sex or gender. When harassment is so severe and pervasive that it denies a student educational access, the school has violated Title IX. A school is liable when it knew about the harassment and its response was clearly unreasonable — what the law calls “deliberate indifference.” If your child was harassed by football players and the school knew or should have known, you may have a Title IX claim alongside any state-law negligence claims.
What happens in Probate Court with my child’s settlement?
When a minor receives a settlement, the Mahoning County Probate Court must approve it before the funds are released. This is not a punishment or a judgment on your child — it is a protection. The court reviews the settlement to ensure it is fair, determines how the funds should be held (often in a restricted account or a structured settlement that pays out over time), and ensures the money is used for the child’s benefit. The court is not judging your child. It is protecting their money from being mismanaged before they are old enough to manage it themselves. We handle this process for every family, and we explain every step.
How much is my child’s hazing case worth?
The value depends on the severity of the harm, the strength of the evidence of institutional failure, and whether the conduct was negligent or rose to the level of conscious disregard that opens the door to punitive damages. Based on verified analysis, individual claim values in cases of this type can range from approximately $250,000 for harassment claims with limited physical injury to $3,500,000 or more for severe hazing and concussion cases where institutional recklessness can be proven. These are not predictions — they are the range a knowledgeable trial lawyer uses to evaluate a case and to know when an offer is fair and when it is a fraction of what the case is worth.
Do we have to go to trial?
Most cases settle before trial — but the cases that settle for the right amount are the ones prepared for trial. An insurance company offers a fair settlement when it believes the alternative — a trial in front of a Mahoning County jury — will cost more. If the case is not prepared for trial, the insurance company knows it, and the offer reflects it. We prepare every case as if it is going to trial, and that preparation is what produces fair settlements. If the insurance company will not offer what the case is worth, we try the case, and let a jury of people from this community decide what a child’s safety was worth to the institution that was supposed to protect them.
Why Our Firm
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are Legal Emergency Lawyers. We take school hazing, institutional negligence, and catastrophic injury cases, and we build them the way a trial requires — with preservation letters in the first days, expert witnesses retained early, and a willingness to walk into a courtroom if the insurance company will not pay what the case is worth.
Ralph Manginello is our managing partner — 27+ years of trial practice, including federal court, a journalist before he was a lawyer, admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association and the Houston Bar Association, and lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity. He knows hazing litigation — how the culture of silence works, how institutions protect themselves, and how to prove what the adults knew.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — a former insurance-defense attorney who spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how Colossus and similar claim-valuation software works, how reserves are set in the first 48 hours, how IME doctors are selected, and how surveillance is deployed. He uses that knowledge for families now, and he conducts full consultations in Spanish — no interpreter needed.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33% before trial and 40% if the case goes to trial. Your consultation is free, and it is confidential. Our emergency hotline is staffed 24/7 by live people — not an answering service. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911).
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Every case is different. But the urgency of acting now — to freeze the evidence, to build the medical record, to protect your child’s rights before the clock runs — is the same in every case.
Hablamos Español. If your family prays in Spanish, we can help in Spanish.
If your child was hazed at Ursuline, or at any school in the Youngstown area, or anywhere in Ohio — if they were harassed, if they were hurt, if the adults who were supposed to protect them looked the other way — call us. The evidence is dying. The insurance adjuster is already at work. Your child deserves someone who knows this fight, who has fought it before, and who will fight it now.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win.