Bowling Green Hazing Wrongful Death: What the $2.9 Million BGSU Settlement Means for Families Across Ohio
If you are reading this, you are likely a parent, a sibling, or a friend of a young person harmed or killed in a fraternity hazing event at Bowling Green State University or another Ohio campus. You may still be in shock. You may be hearing from the university’s lawyers, the fraternity’s insurance representatives, or a prosecutor’s office, and you may not know who is on your side and who is building a defense against you. We are. We are Attorney911, and we build wrongful death and catastrophic injury cases against the institutions that let hazing happen on their watch. The call is free. The conversation is confidential. You will hear the truth from the first minute, and that truth starts here.
What happened at Bowling Green State University in March 2021 is not an isolated tragedy. It is the predictable result of a system that has killed at least one college student every year in this country for over sixty years. A 20-year-old student died of acute alcohol poisoning after a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity initiation event where the tradition was for new members to finish or attempt to finish an entire bottle of whiskey. He was 20 years old. The university’s own investigation confirmed this was a sanctioned fraternity ritual involving excessive alcohol consumption. Eight former fraternity members were convicted on charges ranging from hazing to reckless homicide. The family’s settlement with the university — $2.9 million — was reported as the largest ever paid by a public university in a hazing wrongful death case. On top of that, the fraternity and the individuals involved paid more than $7 million. The total recovery approached $10 million.
That number is not a windfall. It is the legal system’s best attempt to put a dollar figure on a life that should not have been lost, and to force the institutions that allowed it to happen to pay a price they cannot ignore. We know this fight because we are in it right now. Ralph Manginello is lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing wrongful death lawsuit against a major university and its fraternity chapter — a case that is, right now, moving through the courts. When we tell you we know how these cases are built, we mean it is what we do.
What Happens to the Body When Someone Is Forced to Drink a Bottle of Whiskey
A standard bottle of whiskey holds 750 milliliters at roughly 40 percent alcohol — about 80 proof. That is approximately 17 standard drinks concentrated into one container. The human liver metabolizes alcohol at roughly one standard drink per hour. When 17 drinks are poured into a person in minutes or even a half hour, the liver cannot keep up. The blood alcohol concentration does not rise gradually. It spikes. Ethanol is a central nervous system depressant. At low doses it lowers inhibitions. At high doses it shuts down the brainstem functions that keep a person breathing, that maintain their heart rate, that trigger the gag reflex that stops them from drowning in their own vomit while unconscious.
The body has defenses — vomiting is one of them, the gag reflex is another — but those defenses are themselves suppressed by the alcohol that caused the crisis. A person who has consumed a lethal dose rapidly loses the ability to protect their own airway. They lose consciousness. They may aspirate. Their breathing slows to the point of stopping. Their heart may develop an irregular rhythm and arrest. The medical term is acute ethanol toxicity. The human term is that a young person who walked into a fraternity event on their own two feet is carried out on a stretcher, or does not come home at all.
The defense will say he chose to drink. We have heard that argument before, and we know what to do with it. A 20-year-old standing in front of a room full of older “brothers” who are watching to see whether he finishes the bottle is not making a free choice. Social coercion in a fraternity pledging context is documented, studied, and recognized by psychologists who specialize in group dynamics. The power imbalance between pledges and active members, the manufactured pressure of a ritual, the threat of rejection — these are the forces that turn “voluntary” into coerced. A jury that understands what pledging actually looks like will understand the difference.
Who Can Be Held Accountable in a Hazing Wrongful Death Case
A hazing death is never one person’s fault. It is a chain of failures running from the individual members who ran the event all the way up to the university that licensed the fraternity to operate on its campus. The defendant structure in a case like this is layered, and identifying every layer is how a family’s recovery goes from a fraction of what it should be to a number that reflects the true loss.
The University
Bowling Green State University is a public university, which means claims against it in Ohio are typically brought in the Ohio Court of Claims rather than in the ordinary civil courts. The legal theory is negligent supervision — the university owed a duty to its students to oversee the organizations it recognized and allowed to operate, and it failed to intervene despite being aware, or having reason to be aware, that hazing was occurring within its Greek life system. The question is never whether the university knew about this specific event. The question is whether the university knew, or should have known, that hazing was a problem in its fraternities and failed to take meaningful action. Discovery — the legal process of forcing the university to produce its internal communications — is where that answer lives. Emails between student affairs administrators, Greek life oversight reports, disciplinary records from prior incidents at the same chapter, and complaints filed by students or parents are the documents that prove institutional indifference.
In this case, the university settled for $2.9 million and, in a joint statement with the family, acknowledged they would be “forever impacted by his death.” The university expelled Pi Kappa Alpha permanently. It hired a prevention coordinator. It overhauled its anti-hazing policies. Those are real actions — and they are also admissions that the prior system was not enough.
The National Fraternity and the Local Chapter
Pi Kappa Alpha — both the national organization and the local BGSU chapter — paid more than $7 million to the family. The national fraternity bears vicarious liability for the actions of its members during a sanctioned fraternity event, and it carries its own insurance. The national organization sets the rules, charters the chapter, collects dues, and claims credit for the character development its membership provides. When a pledge dies at a chapter event, the national organization cannot credibly argue it had no role and no responsibility. The local chapter and its members are the direct actors — the people who organized the event, bought or provided the alcohol, watched a young man consume a lethal dose, and failed to get him medical help in time.
Individual Fraternity Members
Eight former members were charged criminally. Their convictions ranged from hazing to reckless homicide. Two were acquitted of the more serious charges — involuntary manslaughter and reckless homicide — after their defense attorneys argued the victim was not forced to finish the bottle and made the decision on his own. That defense is the playbook. It is the argument every fraternity defense lawyer reaches for. We prepare for it from the first day we take a case, and the preparation is in the evidence: the group chats that established the “tradition,” the testimony of other pledges who felt the same pressure, the expert testimony of psychologists who can explain to a jury why a 20-year-old in that room was not free to say no.
The Fraternity Housing Entity
Fraternity houses are often owned or controlled by a housing corporation or alumni board that is legally separate from the chapter itself. Where hazing events occur on property controlled by a housing entity, that entity may face premises liability for allowing dangerous and illegal activities to occur on its property. The housing entity is another layer in the defendant stack, and identifying it is part of building a complete case.
Ohio’s Legal Framework for Hazing Wrongful Death
Ohio law provides specific tools for families who have lost someone to hazing. Understanding these tools is the difference between a case that is filed correctly and one that is dismissed before it begins.
Wrongful Death Under Ohio Law
Ohio Revised Code Section 2125.02 governs wrongful death actions in Ohio. It allows the family of a person whose death was caused by the wrongful act or neglect of another to recover damages for the loss of support, services, society, companionship, and the inherent value of the life that was taken. A wrongful death claim in Ohio must be filed within two years of the date of death. That clock is short. It is shorter than most families expect, because most families are still grieving when it begins to run.
“This resolution keeps the Foltz family and BGSU community from reliving the tragedy for years to come in the courtroom and allows us to focus on furthering our shared mission of eradicating hazing in Ohio and across the nation.”
That joint statement — from the family and the university together — captures something rare in litigation. It reflects a recognition by both sides that the real work is not in the courtroom. But the settlement only happened because the family had lawyers willing to take the case to the point where the university decided settlement was the better path. Without a law firm prepared to try the case, there is no settlement. There is only silence.
Collin’s Law: Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Statute
Before 2021, Ohio’s anti-hazing law was weak. After the death of Collin Wiant at Ohio University in 2018 and the death of Stone Foltz at BGSU in 2021, the Ohio legislature passed Collin’s Law (Senate Bill 126), which significantly strengthened Ohio’s anti-hazing statutes. Collin’s Law upgraded hazing to a felony in certain circumstances, created a mandatory reporting requirement for university officials who become aware of hazing, and required universities across the state to create more stringent anti-hazing policies.
This matters for a civil wrongful death case because a violation of Ohio’s anti-hazing statutes can serve as negligence per se — meaning the violation of the statute itself establishes the standard of care that was breached, rather than requiring the family to prove from scratch that the defendants acted unreasonably. When a fraternity member is convicted of hazing, that conviction is powerful evidence in the civil case that the conduct was not just wrong but illegal.
Comparative Negligence in Ohio
Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51 percent bar. This means that if the injured person is found to be more than 50 percent at fault for their own injury or death, they cannot recover anything. If they are 50 percent or less at fault, their recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault. This is the legal mechanism behind the defense argument that “he chose to drink.” Every percentage point of fault the defense can pin on the victim is money off the recovery. This is exactly why the defense works so hard to frame hazing as voluntary social drinking. And it is exactly why we work so hard, from the first day, to build the evidence that proves it was not voluntary — that the power dynamics, the ritual, the tradition, and the social consequences of refusal made the “choice” anything but free.
Claims Against Public Universities in Ohio
Because BGSU is a public university, claims against it are typically brought in the Ohio Court of Claims rather than in the ordinary county court system. The Court of Claims has its own procedures and its own judges who handle cases against state entities. This is a jurisdictional detail that a generalist personal injury lawyer may miss, and missing it can sink a case before the facts are ever heard. We know this court. We know its rules. And we know how to build a case that survives its procedural thresholds.
The Evidence That Disappears: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
Every hazing wrongful death case lives or dies on evidence that has an expiration date. The faster a lawyer sends preservation letters, the more of that evidence survives. Here is what exists, who controls it, and how fast it can legally vanish.
Fraternity Group Chats and Social Media
The group chats, text threads, Snapchat messages, and social media posts where fraternity members discussed the event, organized it, and documented it are the single most important evidence in a hazing case. They establish that the event was planned, that it was a “tradition,” that new members were expected or required to participate, and that members knew the risks. This is the evidence that destroys the “he chose to drink” defense. But it is also the most fragile evidence in the case. Digital evidence can be deleted with a single keystroke. Group chats can be dissolved. Social media posts can be set to private or deleted. The preservation letter that demands the fraternity, its members, and their social media providers freeze this evidence must go out in days, not weeks. Once it is gone, it may be gone forever.
Internal University Communications
The university’s own internal communications — emails, memos, incident reports, Greek life oversight documents, disciplinary files, and student affairs correspondence — are the evidence of institutional negligence. They show what the university knew about hazing in its Greek system, when it knew it, and what it did or did not do in response. Prior complaints about the same fraternity, prior hazing investigations, prior disciplinary actions — these are the documents that prove the university was not blindsided. These records are held by the university and are subject to legal discovery, but they are also subject to routine retention and destruction policies. A public records request under Ohio’s public records laws can obtain some of these documents. A preservation letter locks down the rest.
Toxicology and Autopsy Reports
The coroner’s report and toxicology findings are officially documented and relatively stable — they do not disappear in the way digital evidence does. But they require expert interpretation. A toxicology report shows the blood alcohol concentration at the time of death. An autopsy confirms the cause and manner of death. These documents are the medical foundation of the case, and they must be obtained and reviewed by a forensic pathologist who can translate the numbers into the story of what happened to the victim’s body in the hours before death.
Security and Dashcam Footage
Security cameras on campus, in the fraternity house, on nearby buildings, and on police vehicles may have captured the events of the evening — who entered the fraternity house, who carried the victim out, how long it took for someone to call for help, and what condition the victim was in. This footage is typically on a rolling overwrite cycle. Campus systems and local business systems often overwrite within 14 to 30 days. Police dashcam and bodycam footage has its own retention schedule. If no one demands that this footage be preserved, it records over itself and the visual record of the evening is gone.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook in a Hazing Wrongful Death Case
When a student dies in a fraternity hazing event, the insurance machinery starts moving before the family has finished making funeral arrangements. Here are the plays we have seen, and here is what we do about each one.
Play 1: “He Drank Voluntarily”
This is the defense that was actually raised in this case. Two of the eight charged fraternity members were acquitted of the most serious charges after their attorneys argued the victim “was not forced or required to finish the entire bottle and made that decision on his own.” The insurance adjuster and the defense lawyer are building this narrative from the first day. They will look for any evidence that the victim had consumed alcohol before, that he was enthusiastic about joining the fraternity, that he seemed willing. Our counter is the evidence of coercion: the group chats that establish the tradition, the testimony of other pledges who felt the same pressure, the expert testimony of psychologists who study group dynamics and social coercion in fraternity settings. A 20-year-old standing in front of a room full of older members who are watching to see if he finishes the bottle is not making a free choice. The law recognizes coercion that does not involve physical force, and we prove it through the evidence of the environment that was created around him.
Play 2: The Quick Settlement Offer
A settlement check may arrive fast — with a release attached — before the family has had time to understand what the case is actually worth. In a hazing wrongful death, the initial offer from the fraternity’s insurance carrier may be a fraction of the case’s true value. The adjuster is betting that a grieving family will accept whatever number is put in front of them to make the process end. We have seen this play. The counter is simple: do not sign anything, do not accept anything, do not talk to the insurance company, until you have a lawyer who has evaluated the full scope of the loss. The $2.9 million university settlement in this case and the $7 million from the fraternity did not come from accepting the first offer. They came from building a case strong enough that the other side chose to settle rather than face a jury.
Play 3: Pointing at the Individual Members
The university and the national fraternity will both try to distance themselves from the individual members who organized the event. The university will say it cannot control what students do in a private fraternity house. The national fraternity will say the local chapter acted outside its rules. Each defendant points at the others, and each hopes the family will sue only the individuals — who may have no assets and no insurance worth pursuing. Our counter is the full defendant map. The university licensed the fraternity to operate on its campus. The national fraternity chartered the chapter, set its rules, collected its dues, and claimed credit for the character of its members. The housing entity owned or controlled the property where the event occurred. Every one of these entities is a potential source of recovery, and naming all of them is how a family’s case moves from a small settlement against an individual to a recovery that reflects the true loss.
Play 4: The “We Already Changed” Defense
The university will point to the steps it took after the death — expelling the fraternity, hiring a prevention coordinator, adopting new policies — and argue that it has already done the right thing. This is a narrative defense, not a legal one. The changes the university made after a death are an admission that the prior system was inadequate. They do not undo the failure. They do not bring the person back. And they do not absolve the institution of liability for what it allowed to happen on its watch before the death forced the change.
How a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Built
Here is how a case like this is actually won. The process begins the day a family calls, not the day a lawsuit is filed.
Week One: Preservation
The first move is a preservation letter — a formal legal demand that the university, the national fraternity, the local chapter, the housing entity, and every individual involved preserve all evidence related to the event. This letter names the specific records: group chats, text messages, social media posts, internal university emails, Greek life oversight reports, disciplinary files, security footage, police bodycam footage, the coroner’s report, the toxicology report, the fraternity’s own risk management files, the national organization’s incident reports, and the housing entity’s maintenance and security records. Once the letter is on file, any destruction of that evidence is spoliation — and a court can impose sanctions, including instructing the jury to assume the lost evidence was as damaging as the plaintiff says it was.
Weeks Two Through Eight: Investigation
While the evidence is frozen, the investigation builds. We obtain the coroner’s report and the toxicology findings. We retain a forensic pathologist to interpret them. We obtain the police investigation file. We identify every witness — pledges who were at the event, members who organized it, students who lived in the house, EMS personnel who responded, hospital staff who treated the victim. We pull the university’s public records — its Clery Act crime statistics, its prior disciplinary actions against the fraternity, its anti-hazing policies as they existed at the time of the death. We pull the fraternity’s national risk management policies and compare them to what actually happened. We identify the insurance coverage — the university’s self-insured retention and excess layers, the national fraternity’s liability coverage, the housing entity’s policy, and any individual policies that may apply.
Months Two Through Six: Discovery and Depositions
Once the lawsuit is filed, the legal process of discovery begins. We serve written questions and document demands on every defendant. We take depositions — sworn, recorded testimony — from the university administrators who oversaw Greek life, the fraternity officers who organized the event, the pledges who witnessed it, the national fraternity’s risk management staff, and the housing entity’s property managers. The deposition of the university administrator who was responsible for supervising the fraternity system is often the single most important testimony in the case. That is where the question gets answered: how many red flags were ignored, how many prior complaints were filed, how many times this same fraternity was investigated and allowed to continue operating?
The Expert Case
We retain experts who can translate the evidence into language a jury can act on. A campus safety consultant who can testify about what a reasonable university’s anti-hazing program should look like and how the defendant university’s program fell short. A psychologist who specializes in group dynamics and social coercion who can explain why a pledge in that room was not free to refuse. A forensic economist who can calculate the lifetime earnings the victim would have earned, the value of the household services he would have provided, and the present value of the full loss. A forensic pathologist who can explain the mechanism of alcohol poisoning death and the timeline of the victim’s decline.
Mediation and Settlement
Most wrongful death cases settle before trial. The settlement in this case — $2.9 million from the university and $7 million from the fraternity and individuals — was the result of a case built strong enough that the defendants chose to pay rather than face a jury. In mediation, the leverage is the strength of the evidence, the reputational risk to the institution, and the legislative momentum of Collin’s Law, which signaled that Ohio was done tolerating hazing. A case that is prepared for trial is the case that settles on the best terms. A case that is not prepared for trial settles for whatever the insurance company offers.
What a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Worth
The $2.9 million settlement with BGSU, combined with the more than $7 million from the fraternity and individuals, brings the total recovery in this case to approximately $10 million. This is consistent with high-profile student wrongful death cases involving institutional negligence and egregious fraternity conduct.
The value of a hazing wrongful death case is built from several categories of damage. Economic damages include medical costs prior to death, funeral and burial expenses, and the projected lifetime earnings of a young person whose working life was cut short. A 20-year-old college student has decades of earning capacity ahead — the forensic economist calculates what that would have been, reduced to present value. Non-economic damages include the loss of society, companionship, guidance, and the inherent value of the life itself. The loss of a child is not just a financial loss. It is the loss of every future moment, every milestone, every conversation that will never happen. Survival damages compensate for the conscious pain and suffering the victim experienced between the ingestion of the alcohol and the time of death. In an alcohol poisoning death, that period may include hours of declining consciousness, vomiting, seizures, and the physical distress of respiratory depression. Punitive damages — while often limited against public entities — may be available against the fraternity and its members to punish and deter conduct that was reckless, intentional, or done with conscious disregard for the safety of others.
Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the framework is the same: build the evidence, name every defendant, calculate every category of loss, and prepare the case so thoroughly that the other side chooses to settle rather than risk a jury verdict that could be even larger.
The Federal Clery Act and What Universities Must Report
The federal Clery Act requires universities that receive federal funding to report campus crime statistics, including hazing-related incidents. This is not a suggestion. It is a federal legal requirement. When a university fails to report hazing incidents accurately, that failure is itself evidence of institutional indifference. The Clery Act reports are public records. They can be pulled and compared against the university’s internal disciplinary records. If the university’s internal files show hazing complaints that never made it into the Clery report, that gap is evidence.
After the passage of Collin’s Law, Ohio universities were required to create more stringent anti-hazing policies, including anti-hazing education and mandatory reporting by university officials. The university that fails to train its staff on the mandatory reporting requirement, or that fails to report a hazing incident it knew about, is not just violating state law — it is building the plaintiff’s case.
Your First 72 Hours: A Practical Roadmap
If your family is facing the death or serious injury of a child in a hazing event, here is what needs to happen in the first 72 hours — and what you should not do.
Do
Seek medical information first. If your child survived, make sure every symptom is documented. Alcohol poisoning can cause brain damage, organ failure, and cardiac injury that may not be immediately obvious. If your child did not survive, obtain the coroner’s report and the toxicology findings as soon as they are available.
Preserve everything. Do not delete any text messages, group chats, social media posts, or emails from your child’s phone or accounts. Screenshot everything. Back it up. If you have access to your child’s phone, do not return it, wipe it, or allow anyone else to handle it. It is evidence.
Call a lawyer. The preservation letter must go out fast. Every day that passes is a day the fraternity members can delete group chats, the university can cycle through its security footage, and witnesses can coordinate their stories. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you. We send preservation letters the same day we are retained.
Keep a record. Write down everything you remember about the event — what you were told, by whom, when. Keep a timeline. Save every communication from the university, the fraternity, the police, and the hospital.
Do Not
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no settlement agreement, no acknowledgment from the university or the fraternity. Do not sign a medical release for the insurance company. Do not agree to let the fraternity “investigate” the incident through its own process.
Do not give a recorded statement. The university’s risk management office, the fraternity’s insurance adjuster, or the fraternity’s attorney may call you and ask you to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is designed to be used against your family. Say nothing. Refer them to your lawyer.
Do not post on social media. Nothing about the event, nothing about the fraternity, nothing about the university, nothing about your grief. Everything you post can be used by the defense. Let your lawyer speak for you.
Do not wait. The statute of limitations for wrongful death in Ohio is two years from the date of death. That sounds like a long time when you are in the first weeks of grief. It is not. Evidence disappears in days. Witnesses’ memories fade. The preservation letter and the investigation need to begin immediately.
Why This Firm
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. We work with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We do not maintain an office in Ohio and do not claim Ohio bar admission — we bring the case through the proper legal channels, and we bring the full weight of a firm that has spent decades in courtrooms.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner. He has been licensed and practicing law for 27+ years, including in federal court. He is the lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing wrongful death lawsuit against a major university and its fraternity chapter — a case that is moving through the courts right now. When we tell you we know how to build a hazing case, we are not speaking theoretically. We are speaking from a file that is open on our desk. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer. He knows how to find the documents that institutions would rather keep hidden, and he knows how to tell a jury the story those documents tell.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims like yours. He knows the playbook from the inside because he used to run it. Now he uses that knowledge for injured families. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. Our staff is live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service, real people who can take your information and get it to an attorney.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit for hazing in Ohio?
Ohio’s wrongful death statute of limitations is two years from the date of death. This is a hard deadline. If you miss it, the case is gone — no matter how strong the evidence is. But the evidence clock runs much faster than the legal clock. Group chats can be deleted in seconds. Security footage overwrites itself in weeks. The preservation letter needs to go out in days, not months. The two-year deadline is the floor. The urgency is measured in hours.
Can I sue the university if my child died during a fraternity hazing event?
Yes. A public university in Ohio can be sued in the Ohio Court of Claims for negligent supervision — the failure to oversee and control the student organizations it recognizes and allows to operate on its campus. The university owes a duty to its students to take reasonable steps to protect them from known dangers, and hazing in the Greek system is a known danger. The question is never whether the university knew about this specific event. The question is whether the university knew, or should have known, that hazing was a problem in its fraternities and failed to take meaningful action. The $2.9 million settlement in this case is proof that this theory works.
Can I sue the national fraternity organization, or only the local chapter?
You can sue both. The national fraternity bears vicarious liability for the actions of its members during a sanctioned fraternity event. The national organization charters the chapter, sets the rules, collects dues, and claims credit for the character development its membership provides. When a pledge dies at a chapter event following a “tradition” the national organization should have known about, the national organization cannot credibly argue it had no role. The local chapter and its members are the direct actors. The housing entity that owns or controls the fraternity house may face premises liability. Every layer of the structure is a potential source of recovery.
What if the fraternity members say my child drank voluntarily?
This is the standard defense, and it was raised in this case. The counter is evidence. The group chats that establish the “tradition.” The testimony of other pledges who felt the same pressure. The expert testimony of psychologists who study social coercion in group settings. The power dynamics of fraternity pledging — where young men seeking acceptance are told to consume dangerous amounts of alcohol by older members who control their admission — are not the same as a free choice at a bar. The law recognizes coercion that does not involve physical force. We prove it through the evidence of the environment that was created around the victim.
What is Collin’s Law and how does it affect my case?
Collin’s Law (Senate Bill 126) is Ohio’s strengthened anti-hazing statute, named for Collin Wiant, who died under similar circumstances at Ohio University in 2018. It upgraded hazing to a felony in certain circumstances, created a mandatory reporting requirement for university officials, and required universities to adopt more stringent anti-hazing policies. For a civil wrongful death case, a violation of Ohio’s anti-hazing statutes can serve as negligence per se — meaning the violation of the statute itself establishes the standard of care that was breached. Criminal convictions of fraternity members for hazing are powerful evidence in the civil case.
How much is a hazing wrongful death case worth?
The total recovery in this case was approximately $10 million — $2.9 million from the university and more than $7 million from the fraternity and individuals. The value of a case depends on the victim’s age and earning capacity, the severity of the institutional failure, the strength of the evidence, the number of defendants, and the insurance coverage available. A 20-year-old college student has decades of projected earnings ahead. The loss of society and companionship is real and compensable. The conscious pain and suffering in the hours before death is compensable. Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What evidence do I need to preserve?
Everything. Group chats and text messages between fraternity members. Social media posts. The victim’s phone and accounts. Internal university communications — emails, incident reports, disciplinary files, Greek life oversight documents. Security footage from campus, the fraternity house, and nearby buildings. Police investigation files and bodycam footage. The coroner’s report and toxicology findings. The fraternity’s risk management policies and incident reports. The housing entity’s records. Do not delete anything. Do not return the victim’s phone. Screenshot and back up everything. Then call a lawyer who can send the preservation letter that locks it all down legally.
Do I have to go to court, or will the case settle?
Most wrongful death cases settle before trial. The settlement in this case — $2.9 million from the university and $7 million from the fraternity and individuals — was a settlement, not a verdict. But settlements happen because the case is built strong enough that the defendants choose to pay rather than face a jury. A case that is not prepared for trial settles for whatever the insurance company offers. A case that is prepared for trial settles for what it is actually worth. We prepare every case for trial from the first day, whether it ultimately settles or not.
How much does it cost to hire a hazing wrongful death lawyer?
We work on contingency. There is no upfront cost. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. You will talk to a real person, not an answering service, any hour of the day or night. Hablamos Español. If your family has lost a child to hazing, the cost of not calling is far higher than any fee.
Call Now: 1-888-ATTY-911
If your family has been affected by hazing — whether at Bowling Green State University, at another Ohio campus, or anywhere in this country — the time to call is now. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Now. Because the evidence that will prove your case is disappearing on a clock that does not wait, and the defense is already building its narrative.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911 — that is 1-888-288-9911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win your case. We serve your family fully in English or in Spanish. Our staff is live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting the firm is free and confidential. But the call is not just a formality. It is the first step in building the case that holds the people who did this accountable — and the first step in making sure no other family has to sit where you are sitting now.
Learn more about our hazing litigation practice. Contact us. The call is free. The fight is real.