When a Fraternity Kills a Student in Bowling Green, Ohio — What the Family Needs to Know
You are reading this because someone you love is gone. A young man who should be in class at Bowling Green State University, who should be walking across the campus that dominates this town, who should have decades of life ahead of him — is dead because a fraternity decided that forcing alcohol into a new member was a tradition worth more than his life. The university has now permanently banned that fraternity from campus. That ban is not the end of the story. It is the beginning of accountability, and we are going to tell you exactly how that fight works under Ohio law.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. We are a trial firm that takes Ohio wrongful death cases, and right now we are actively litigating a fraternity hazing wrongful death lawsuit. Ralph Manginello, our managing partner, is lead counsel in a $10 million hazing case against a university fraternity. We know this fight because we are in it. This page explains what happened at BGSU, what Ohio law says about hazing and wrongful death, who can be held accountable, what evidence is already disappearing, and what the family’s rights actually are — not in generalities, but in the specific law of this state and the specific facts of this case.
If you are the parent, the sibling, or the estate representative of a student who died from fraternity hazing in Bowling Green, call us at 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And we can talk to you about this today, tonight, at 2 a.m. — that is when these calls usually come.
What Happened at Bowling Green State University
A young man — a student at BGSU — attended a Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity event that the organization called a “new member initiation.” The investigation that followed revealed what that phrase actually means: a hazing ritual built around forced, excessive alcohol consumption. New members were made to drink quantities of alcohol that no human body is designed to process in the timeframe they were given. The alcohol poisoned him. He died.
Bowling Green State University did something that universities rarely do and that speaks volumes about what the investigation found: the university permanently banned the Delta Beta Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha from campus. Not suspended. Not placed on probation. Permanently banned. When a university takes that step, it is because the internal and law enforcement investigations produced findings severe enough that the institution decided this organization could never operate on its grounds again.
This is a small town. Bowling Green, Ohio sits in Wood County, and the university is the center of it. The streets around campus are filled with Greek-letter houses — some university-owned, some controlled by private alumni corporations, all of them part of a system that has operated for generations with a mix of community pride and institutional tolerance for traditions that cross the line into criminal conduct. Wood County courts have handled university-related litigation before, but a student death from hazing at this scale is one of the most significant wrongful death events this jurisdiction has seen. The local police and the Wood County Prosecutor’s Office have a working relationship with the university administration, and the criminal investigation that runs parallel to any civil case is already producing records that matter.
What happened at BGSU is not isolated to BGSU. Hazing deaths have occurred at universities across the country — Penn State, Florida State, Louisiana State, and others — and in each case the pattern repeats: a fraternity organization, a chapter that operated with minimal national oversight, a ritual involving forced alcohol consumption, a young person who dies, and a family that did not know their child was in danger until the hospital called. But the specifics of this case — the permanent ban, the legislative response it triggered in Ohio, and the evidence that exists right now — make it a case that can and should be pursued with everything the law provides.
Ohio’s Anti-Hazing Laws: The Statute That Was Already on the Books — and the One This Death Helped Create
Ohio had an anti-hazing statute before this death occurred. Ohio Revised Code Section 2903.31 defined hazing and made it a criminal offense. The statute established a standard of conduct that fraternity organizations and their members were legally required to meet — a standard that was breached the night this young man died. When a violation of that statute causes injury or death, it becomes more than a criminal matter. It becomes the foundation for a civil wrongful death claim through a legal doctrine called negligence per se — the idea that when someone breaks a law written to protect people from exactly this kind of harm, the breaking of that law is itself proof of negligence.
This death also became a catalyst for legislative change in Ohio. The legislature passed Collin’s Law — Senate Bill 126 — which elevated hazing to a felony in certain circumstances and strengthened the reporting and enforcement framework around it. The law is named for another student whose death exposed how inadequate the prior penalties were. The passage of Collin’s Law is more than background context. It is evidence that the State of Ohio itself recognized that hazing was being treated too lightly and that the consequences needed to be more severe. In a wrongful death case, that legislative judgment matters to a jury — because it shows that the community, through its elected representatives, decided this conduct was serious enough to punish with prison time.
Ohio allows for punitive damages in cases of “actual malice,” which includes a conscious disregard for the safety of others.
That legal standard — “conscious disregard for the safety of others” — is the exact description of what a fraternity does when it forces a new member to consume lethal quantities of alcohol. The members who organized this ritual knew that forcing someone to drink to the point of poisoning was dangerous. They did it anyway. That is not an accident. That is a choice, and Ohio law lets a jury punish that choice with punitive damages designed to hurt the organization enough that it stops happening.
Who Is Liable When a Fraternity Kills a Student
The first mistake families make in hazing cases is thinking the liability stops at the local chapter or the individual members who were in the room. It does not. A hazing wrongful death case has layers of defendants, and each layer represents a different failure and a different source of recovery.
Pi Kappa Alpha International Fraternity is the organization at the top. The international fraternity sets the policies, collects dues, charters the local chapters, and is responsible for supervising what those chapters do in its name. The international fraternity carries liability insurance — sometimes substantial — and it is the deep pocket in this case. The theory of liability against the international is negligent supervision and training: it failed to properly train the local chapter on the dangers of hazing, it failed to enforce its own anti-hazing policies, and it failed to monitor the BGSU chapter’s conduct. Discovery in this case must target the international headquarters to find internal communications, prior complaints about this chapter, risk-management filings, and any “red flags” that were ignored. The international fraternity will argue that the local chapter acted independently. The answer to that is: the local chapter is your agent, operating under your charter, using your name, collecting your dues, and following traditions your organization either knew about or should have known about.
The Delta Beta Chapter of Pi Kappa Alpha — Its Officers are the next layer. The chapter officers organized the hazing ritual, directed the forced alcohol consumption, and created the conditions that led to the death. They are directly liable. In practice, individual chapter officers are usually students with few assets — but their liability is the bridge that connects the local conduct to the international organization’s duty to supervise. The chapter officers’ direct participation is what makes the international’s failure to supervise a proximate cause of the death.
Individual Fraternity Members Who Participated in the Hazing are the third layer. Every member who handed this young man alcohol, who pressured him to keep drinking, who watched him deteriorate and did nothing, who failed to call 911 when he stopped breathing — each one bears legal responsibility. Their individual actions constitute intentional torts and negligence per se for violating Ohio’s anti-hazing statute. Some may face criminal charges. The civil case runs parallel to any criminal prosecution and does not depend on it.
Bowling Green State University may bear responsibility if the university had prior notice of hazing activities within this specific fraternity and failed to act. Universities have a duty to protect students from foreseeable harm on their campus. If BGSU had received prior complaints about PIKE’s hazing practices, had disciplined the chapter before, or had been on notice that this organization was dangerous, the university’s failure to intervene could create liability. However, public universities in Ohio are protected by sovereign immunity, which limits the damages available and the theories that can be pursued against the institution. The university’s role is more likely to be as a source of discovery — its disciplinary records, its prior complaints file, its Greek-life oversight documents — than as a primary defendant.
The Property Owners of the Fraternity House may face premises liability if the fatal event occurred on private property where illegal activity — hazing, furnishing alcohol to minors — was permitted or encouraged. If the fraternity house is owned by a private alumni corporation or a local housing board, that entity may have its own liability for allowing dangerous and illegal conduct on its premises.
The key to maximizing recovery is naming every layer of this structure. The individual members may be judgment-proof students. The local chapter may have limited assets. But the international fraternity — Pi Kappa Alpha International, with its national insurance tower and its duty to supervise every chapter operating under its charter — is where the real accountability lives. That is where we focus, because that is where the money is, and that is where the institutional failure is deepest.
The Medicine of Acute Alcohol Poisoning: How Hazing Kills
We need to talk about what actually happened inside this young man’s body, because the defense will try to minimize it, and the medicine does not allow minimization.
Forced rapid consumption of high-volume alcohol — the kind of drinking that hazing rituals are built around — floods the bloodstream with ethanol faster than the liver can metabolize it. The blood alcohol concentration climbs past impairment, past intoxication, into the zone where the central nervous system begins to shut down. The brain stem, which controls breathing, is suppressed. The person stops breathing effectively. Oxygen levels in the blood drop. Without oxygen, the brain begins to die within minutes.
This is the same mechanism that kills a drowning victim — the brain is starved of oxygen — except the cause is not water in the lungs but alcohol suppressing the drive to breathe. The medical literature on anoxic brain injury is clear: functional failure begins within seconds of the heart stopping, and irreversible damage to the hippocampus, basal ganglia, and cerebral cortex — the parts of the brain that hold memory, control movement, and govern consciousness — develops within four to ten minutes of complete oxygen deprivation.
The toxicology report in this case will show the blood alcohol concentration at the time of admission. The medical records from the ICU — the ventilator settings, the blood gas readings, the neurological exams, the imaging that showed brain swelling or brain death — will document the full course of the injury. Those records are the proof that this was not “just drinking.” This was a poisoning. The fraternity forced a substance into this young man’s body in quantities that were medically certain to cause harm, and then they left him to die.
The survival action — the claim the estate brings for what the decedent experienced between the hazing and his death — covers the conscious pain and suffering of a young man who knew he was in trouble, who may have vomited, who may have aspirated, who may have called for help that did not come, and who ultimately lost consciousness and never woke up. That period — whether it was hours or days in the ICU before brain death was declared — is compensable. The terror, the physical distress, the knowledge that he was dying — all of it is part of the damages in this case, and it is part of the story a jury needs to hear.
For families who have lost someone to catastrophic brain injury or death from oxygen deprivation, the medical reality is that the harm extends far beyond the moment of death. If your loved one survived initially and was on life support, the medical costs from the ICU alone can be staggering — a single day in a neuro-intensive care unit can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, and a multi-day stay on a ventilator before brain death was declared could produce a hospital bill well into six figures. Those costs are recoverable economic damages. The funeral and burial costs are recoverable. And the lost earning capacity — the lifetime of wages a college student would have earned — is recoverable through a forensic economist’s projection using federal labor data, not a guess.
You can read more about how we handle brain injury cases — the mechanisms, the diagnostics, and the proof problems — on our dedicated practice page.
Evidence That Vanishes: The Clock Is Already Running
In a hazing wrongful death case, the evidence that proves intent, planning, and the forced nature of the ritual is the evidence that disappears the fastest. This is not a warning about what might happen. It is a description of what is happening right now, while you read this.
Fraternity Group Chats — GroupMe, Snapchat, Text Messages. This is the most critical evidence in the case and it is the most fragile. The messages between fraternity members — planning the hazing event, discussing what they would force new members to drink, coordinating who would buy the alcohol, joking about what happened during and after the event, and discussing how to cover it up — are the proof that this was an organized ritual, not a spontaneous party. Snapchat messages are designed to disappear. GroupMe messages can be deleted by individual users. Group chats can be wiped. The moment fraternity members realize there is a criminal investigation, the deletion begins. A preservation letter — a formal demand that the organization and its members preserve all digital communications — has to go out immediately. Not next week. Not after the funeral. Now. If you are reading this and you have not yet called a lawyer, the single most important thing you can do is call one today so that letter goes out before those messages are gone.
Toxicology and Medical Records. The hospital’s toxicology report showing the blood alcohol concentration, the ICU records documenting the respiratory failure and brain death, and the medical examiner’s report establishing the cause of death are held by the hospital and the county. These are more stable — they are subject to legal hold once a case is opened — but they should be requested early to ensure they are complete and not “amended” after the fact.
University Disciplinary Records for PIKE. Bowling Green State University’s disciplinary file on the Pi Kappa Alpha chapter is the proof of a “history of notice.” If BGSU had prior complaints, prior sanctions, prior warnings, or prior investigations involving this fraternity, those records show the organization was a known danger — and that the international fraternity knew or should have known its chapter was out of control. These records come through discovery, but the university must be put on notice to preserve them before its own retention schedule allows destruction. The permanent ban is powerful evidence, but the paper trail leading up to the ban is where the pattern lives.
Alcohol Purchase Evidence — Receipts, Store Surveillance, Payment Records. Someone of legal drinking age bought the alcohol that killed this young man. The receipts, the store surveillance footage, and the credit card records that identify who purchased the liquor — and whether they bought amounts consistent with a hazing event — are physical evidence that ties individual defendants to the procurement. Store surveillance systems overwrite on rolling cycles, often within 30 days. Credit card records are more durable but must be specifically requested. The identification of who bought the alcohol is a direct line to negligent furnishing and potential criminal liability, and it is evidence that dies fast.
The preservation letter we send — the day you call — targets every one of these sources. It goes to the international fraternity, the local chapter, the individual members, the university, and any third-party platforms that host the communications. It puts every one of them on formal notice that evidence destruction after that notice is spoliation — and that a court can be asked to instruct a jury that destroyed evidence should be presumed to have been harmful to the party who destroyed it. That is the leverage that freezes the clock. But the letter has to go out before the evidence is gone, not after.
What the Fraternity’s Insurers Will Try — and How We Counter Each Play
The insurance company representing Pi Kappa Alpha International and its members has a playbook. We know it because Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He sat where the other side sits. Now he sits on your side of the table and uses that knowledge for your family. Here are the plays you should expect, and the counter to each.
Play 1: The Sympathy Call. Within days of the death, someone will call the family expressing “deep sympathy” and offering to “help with expenses.” This call may come from a fraternity representative, a claims adjuster, or an attorney. It will feel warm. It is not. It is a fishing expedition designed to get you talking — on a recording — about what happened, and to dangle a small check with a release attached before you have legal counsel. The counter is absolute: do not speak with any fraternity representative, any insurance adjuster, or any investigator without your lawyer present. Everything you say will be used to build a contributory-negligence defense — the argument that your son “chose” to drink.
Play 2: “He Drank Voluntarily” / Assumption of Risk. The fraternity will argue that this was a voluntary event, that no one forced anything, and that your son “assumed the risk” of drinking. Ohio courts and recent legislation have increasingly rejected the assumption-of-risk defense in the context of coerced fraternity rituals. The counter is the reality of hazing: a new member who refuses to participate faces social destruction, humiliation, and expulsion from the brotherhood he has been seeking. That is not a free choice. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute itself recognizes this — it criminalizes the conduct regardless of the victim’s apparent willingness, because the legislature understood that “willingness” under coercion is not willingness. Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar, meaning the family can recover as long as the victim is not more than 50% at fault. In a coerced hazing case, assigning 51% fault to the victim is a defense argument that should fail — but only if the coercion is proven, which is exactly why the group-chat evidence matters so much.
Play 3: Social Media Mining. The fraternity’s investigators will scour your son’s social media for any photo of him drinking at any other time, any post about partying, anything that can be used to argue he had a pre-existing drinking habit. The counter is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine: the defendant takes the victim as found. A prior drinking history does not authorize a fraternity to force lethal quantities of alcohol into someone. And the defense’s attempt to smear a dead young man’s character is itself something a jury will see for what it is — a corporation trying to escape accountability by blaming the person it killed.
Play 4: The Quick Individual Settlement. The fraternity’s lawyers may try to settle quickly with individual members — offering the family small amounts from individual students in exchange for a release that also releases the international organization. This is the most dangerous play in the playbook. The individual members are students with limited assets. The real money is in the international fraternity’s insurance tower. If you sign a release that covers the national organization to get a small check from an individual member, you may extinguish the claim that actually has value. The counter is simple: never sign anything — not a release, not a settlement, not a “memorandum of understanding” — without your attorney reviewing it first.
Play 5: “The National Didn’t Control the Chapter.” Pi Kappa Alpha International will argue it is not responsible for the local chapter’s conduct — that the chapter is an independent entity, that the national organization merely provides a charter and a brand, and that it had no day-to-day control over what happened at BGSU. The counter runs through discovery: the franchise agreement, the risk-management filings, the chapter inspection reports, the prior complaints the national received about this chapter, the training materials the national provided (or did not provide), and the dues the national collected from this chapter. If the national organization chartered this chapter, collected money from it, inspected it (or failed to), received complaints about it (or ignored them), and permitted it to operate in its name — the national organization’s failure to supervise is a proximate cause of this death.
Play 6: Delay. The insurance company’s oldest weapon. They will ask for extensions. They will request additional documentation. They will “need more time to investigate.” The purpose is to push the family past the statute of limitations, exhaust the family emotionally, and force a lower settlement. The counter is the preservation letter, the early demand, and the willingness to file suit and let a jury in Wood County decide what a young man’s life was worth — because the threat of a trial is the only thing that moves an insurance company.
What This Case Is Worth
We are not going to tell you a number and pretend it is a promise. Every case depends on its facts, and past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But we will tell you what the law allows and what drives the value in a hazing wrongful death case like this one, because you deserve to understand the arithmetic.
The case value range for a hazing wrongful death of this nature — involving an international fraternity with substantial insurance coverage, an egregious pattern of forced alcohol consumption, and clear liability established by the university’s permanent ban — typically falls between $5,000,000 and $25,000,000. The high end is driven by several factors that converge in this case.
Economic damages include the medical expenses from ICU care prior to death — which can run well into six figures for a multi-day stay on life support — and funeral and burial costs. They also include the lost earning capacity of a young man who had decades of working life ahead of him. A forensic economist calculates this using federal labor data and worklife-expectancy tables: how many years would this person have worked, at what wage level, with what benefits. For a college student, the lifetime earning-capacity loss alone can run into the millions.
Non-economic damages are where the human cost lives. Ohio’s wrongful death statute allows the recovery of loss of support, services, society, and mental anguish for parents and siblings. The “loss of society” — the loss of the relationship, the companionship, the guidance, the love of a son and brother — is a damage category that no formula can capture but that a jury in Wood County, composed of people who live in this community and understand what it means to lose a family member, is empowered to value. The “loss of life’s pleasures” for a young man with decades of life expectancy is the lost capacity to experience everything life had to offer — career, marriage, children, travel, friendship, joy. That is not a small number.
Survival damages cover the conscious pain and suffering the decedent experienced between the hazing event and his death — the terror, the physical distress, the knowledge that he was dying — as well as the medical expenses incurred during that period. This is a separate claim from the wrongful death action, and in a case where the young man was on life support for a period before being declared brain dead, the survival damages can be substantial.
Punitive damages are the primary driver of case value in hazing cases. Ohio allows punitive damages where there is “actual malice” — which includes a conscious disregard for the safety of others. Forcing a young man to consume lethal quantities of alcohol as part of a fraternity ritual is the textbook definition of conscious disregard. Punitive damages are designed to punish the defendant and deter future conduct — and in a case where the international fraternity’s own policies prohibited hazing and the local chapter did it anyway, the punitive argument is that the national organization’s failure to enforce its own rules is what allowed this death to happen. Cases involving student deaths from hazing frequently settle in the high seven to low eight-figure range precisely because the defendants — the international fraternity and its insurer — know that a jury presented with the facts of a hazing death may return a verdict that exceeds the available insurance coverage.
The insurance tower for a national fraternity is not like a trucking company’s minimum coverage. Pi Kappa Alpha International, as a large national organization, maintains liability insurance that can be layered — primary, excess, and umbrella — and the full tower is what we pursue. The exact coverage is not public until discovery, but the fraternity’s “deep pockets” are real, and the insurer’s own incentive to settle within policy limits — rather than face a runaway jury verdict in Wood County — is the leverage that drives resolution.
You can learn more about how we evaluate and pursue wrongful death claims on our practice page.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What to Refuse
If your family is in the days after this loss, there are things you can do right now that protect the case and things you must not do that could destroy it. We are going to be direct with you, because this is the moment where cases are won or lost.
Do this:
Call a lawyer. Today. Not next week. The preservation letter that freezes the group chats, the surveillance footage, and the fraternity’s internal records has to go out before that evidence is deleted. We send it the day you call us — 1-888-ATTY-911, 24 hours a day.
Ask the hospital for the complete medical record — the toxicology report, the ICU records, the imaging, the neurological exams, the ventilator settings, and the death certificate. These are your son’s records and you have a right to them. Do not wait for a subpoena. Request them now.
Get the name and contact information of every person who was at the fraternity event — if you know any of them, write down their names before you forget. If your son’s phone has been recovered, do not delete anything — secure it and bring it to the lawyer. The phone may contain messages, photos, or location data that establish what happened.
If there was an autopsy, request the full report and all toxicology findings. The medical examiner’s report in Wood County will contain the official cause of death and the blood alcohol concentration — a number that tells the story of what was forced into your son’s body.
Do not do this:
Do not speak with any fraternity representative, any insurance adjuster, any “investigator,” or any university official about the facts of what happened without your lawyer present. Every word you say can and will be used to build a defense. The sympathy call from the fraternity’s insurance company is not sympathy — it is evidence gathering.
Do not sign anything. Not a release, not a settlement, not an acknowledgment, not a “memorandum of understanding,” not an insurance form. If someone puts a document in front of you and says it is “routine” or “just to help with expenses” — stop. Call a lawyer. That document may extinguish your family’s right to hold the fraternity accountable.
Do not post about the case on social media. Do not respond to messages about the case. The fraternity’s investigators are already monitoring the family’s online presence. Anything you post can be taken out of context and used against you.
Do not allow anyone — the university, the fraternity, the police — to interview your other children or family members without counsel present. The defense will try to get statements from grieving, exhausted, vulnerable people who are not thinking clearly and who may say things that are later twisted into “contributory negligence.”
Do not destroy your son’s belongings. His phone, his computer, his fraternity materials, his room — all of it is evidence. Secure it.
How We Build a Hazing Wrongful Death Case
Here is how a case like this is actually built — from the first call to the courthouse in Wood County.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out — to Pi Kappa Alpha International, to the Delta Beta Chapter, to every individual member we can identify, to BGSU, to the hospital, and to any third-party platforms that host the communications. The letter freezes every group chat, every internal email, every disciplinary record, every surveillance video, and every financial document. It puts every recipient on formal notice that evidence destruction is spoliation and will be met with sanctions. We open the medical records request. We pull the toxicology. We begin identifying every person who was at the event.
Weeks two through eight: We investigate. We interview witnesses — and in hazing cases, the witnesses are often other students who were themselves hazed and who may be willing to talk if they are protected from retaliation. We pull the university’s disciplinary file on PIKE — every prior complaint, every prior sanction, every warning the university ever gave this chapter. We pull the international fraternity’s risk-management file — every inspection report, every complaint the national received about this chapter, every training the national provided or did not provide. We identify the insurance tower. We hire a forensic toxicologist who can testify to the lethal nature of the blood alcohol concentration and the mechanism of death. We hire a life-care planner and a forensic economist who can build the lifetime damages model.
The demand: Once we have the evidence assembled, we send a demand to the fraternity’s primary and excess insurance carriers — a demand that lays out the liability, the damages, and the exposure if the case goes to a jury in Wood County. The demand is calibrated to the insurance tower. The insurer’s incentive to settle within policy limits — rather than face a verdict that exceeds the coverage and exposes the fraternity’s own assets — is the leverage that drives resolution.
If they will not settle: We file suit. The case is filed in the Wood County Court of Common Pleas — the courthouse where the jury will be drawn from this community, from people who know BGSU, who may have children at the university, who understand what it means to lose a young person to something that should never have happened. The discovery process forces the fraternity to produce its internal documents under oath. The depositions put the chapter officers and the international fraternity’s representatives under oath to explain what they knew, what they did, and what they failed to do. And the trial — if it comes to that — is where a jury of twelve people from this community decides what accountability looks like.
The Lawyers Who Take On Fraternities
Ralph Manginello is our managing partner. He has been licensed and practicing law for 27+ years — admitted in November 1998, Texas Bar number 24007597, and admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find a story the public needs to hear — and the story of a fraternity hazing death is one that should be told. Ralph is the lead counsel in the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university fraternity — a case we are currently litigating — and that experience is directly relevant to what your family is facing. He has recovered millions for injured clients, including a $5 million+ brain-injury settlement. Ralph speaks Spanish. Read more about Ralph.
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 decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. Lupe knows how the insurance company sets its reserve in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered to get you to say things that hurt your case, and how the claim is fed into valuation software that discounts pain it cannot see. He now uses that insider knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish — he conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. He is a third-generation Texan. Read more about Lupe.
We are a trial firm that takes Ohio cases, working with local counsel where required. We are based in Houston, Texas, but we represent families across the country in cases that demand the kind of experience we have — and a fraternity hazing wrongful death in Bowling Green, Ohio is exactly that kind of case. Our fee is contingency: 33.33% before trial, 40% if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The consultation is free. And our staff is live, 24/7 — not an answering service. When you call at 2 a.m., someone picks up.
We also maintain a dedicated fraternity hazing lawsuit practice page with more information about how these cases work.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for a hazing death?
Yes. Under Ohio law, a wrongful death claim can be brought against any party whose wrongful act, neglect, or default caused the death. In a hazing case, that includes the international fraternity (for negligent supervision of the local chapter), the local chapter and its officers (for organizing and directing the hazing), individual members who participated (for intentional torts and negligence per se), and potentially the university and property owners depending on the facts. The international fraternity’s liability insurance is typically the primary source of recovery, and the permanent ban BGSU imposed on the chapter is powerful evidence of liability.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s wrongful death statute of limitations generally gives the family two years from the date of death to file a lawsuit. However, the evidence that wins the case — group chats, surveillance footage, and fraternity communications — disappears far faster than that. The statute of limitations is the legal deadline, but the evidence deadline is measured in days and weeks, not years. Do not wait. The preservation letter has to go out immediately to freeze the evidence before it is legally destroyed.
Is my son partly at fault for participating in the hazing?
The fraternity will argue this. Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence rule with a 51% bar, which means the family can recover as long as the victim was not more than 50% at fault. In a hazing case, the coercion inherent in the ritual makes it extremely difficult for the defense to credibly assign 51% fault to the victim. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute criminalizes the conduct of the hazers regardless of the victim’s apparent willingness — because the legislature understood that “willingness” under social pressure and the threat of exclusion is not genuine consent. Recent Ohio legislation has increasingly rejected the assumption-of-risk defense in coerced fraternity contexts.
How much is a hazing wrongful death case worth?
Cases involving student deaths from fraternity hazing frequently fall in the $5 million to $25 million range, driven by the egregious nature of the conduct, the insurance coverage of the international fraternity, and the clear liability established by a university’s permanent ban. The value includes economic damages (medical bills, funeral costs, lost earning capacity), non-economic damages (mental anguish, loss of society, loss of life’s pleasures), survival damages (the conscious pain and suffering the decedent experienced before death), and punitive damages — which are available in Ohio for “actual malice” including conscious disregard for safety. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What does BGSU’s permanent ban of PIKE mean for the case?
The permanent ban is powerful evidence, not a legal judgment. It shows that the university’s own investigation produced findings severe enough to warrant the most serious disciplinary action available — permanent removal from campus. In a civil case, the ban and the investigation behind it support the argument that the fraternity’s conduct was egregious, that the organization was a known danger, and that the harm was foreseeable. The university’s disciplinary records leading up to the ban — prior complaints, prior warnings, prior sanctions — are discoverable and can establish a pattern of notice that extends liability to the international fraternity.
What is Collin’s Law in Ohio?
Collin’s Law (Senate Bill 126) is Ohio legislation that strengthened the state’s anti-hazing framework, elevating hazing to a felony in certain circumstances and expanding the reporting and enforcement requirements. The law was named for a student whose death exposed the inadequacy of prior penalties. The passage of this law is relevant to a civil wrongful death case because it demonstrates that the State of Ohio itself recognized hazing as serious criminal conduct — which supports both the negligence-per-se theory (the defendants violated a law designed to protect people from exactly this harm) and the punitive-damages argument (the conduct was so serious that the legislature increased the criminal penalties for it).
Can the university be sued for a fraternity hazing death?
Bowling Green State University may face liability if it had prior notice of hazing activities within the PIKE chapter and failed to take adequate action to protect students. However, public universities in Ohio are protected by sovereign immunity, which limits the damages available and the theories that can be pursued against the institution. The university’s role in the case is more likely to be as a source of critical discovery — its disciplinary records, its prior complaints file, its Greek-life oversight documents — than as a primary defendant. The university’s own investigation and the permanent ban it imposed are part of the evidentiary record.
What evidence disappears fastest in a hasing case?
The fastest-dying evidence is digital: fraternity group chats on GroupMe and Snapchat (designed to auto-delete or easily manually deleted), individual text messages between members, and any social media posts about the event. This evidence proves planning, intent, and the forced nature of the ritual. Store surveillance footage of alcohol purchases overwrites on a 30-day cycle. The preservation letter must go out immediately — before the members realize there is a criminal investigation and begin deleting. The second tier — medical records and university disciplinary files — is more stable but should also be requested early.
What if the fraternity says my son drank voluntarily?
This is the standard defense in every hazing case. The answer is that hazing is inherently coercive — a new member who refuses faces social destruction and expulsion from the brotherhood. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute criminalizes the conduct of the hazers regardless of the victim’s apparent willingness, because the legislature understood that “willingness” under coercion is not consent. The group-chat evidence, if preserved, will show the planning and the pressure. And the medical evidence — the toxicology report showing a lethal blood alcohol concentration — will show that whatever “willingness” existed, the result was a poisoning that no reasonable person would voluntarily inflict on themselves.
Do I need a lawyer who has handled hazing cases before?
Yes. A hazing wrongful death case is not an ordinary wrongful death case. It involves a specific defendant structure (international fraternity, local chapter, individual members, university), a specific regulatory framework (Ohio’s anti-hazing statute, Collin’s Law), specific evidence that dies faster than in any other case type (digital communications), and a specific insurance defense playbook (the “voluntary participation” and “assumption of risk” arguments). A lawyer who has not handled hazing cases may not know to target the international fraternity’s internal records, may not understand the coercion defense, and may not move fast enough to freeze the evidence. We are currently litigating a fraternity hazing wrongful death lawsuit — that experience is directly on point for what your family is facing.
If Your Family Is Standing Where This Family Stood
You did not expect to be reading this page. You expected your son to come home from Bowling Green State University with a degree, a future, and a life. Instead, a fraternity decided that its tradition was worth more than your child. The permanent ban is a start. It is not justice. Justice is holding every layer of this organization accountable — the members who were in the room, the officers who organized it, the national fraternity that failed to stop it, and the insurance company that will try to pay you as little as possible for the life that was taken.
We know how to build this case because we are building one right now. We know how the insurance company thinks because Lupe Peña used to be on their side. We know how to find the evidence because Ralph Manginello was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and finding the story the institution does not want told is what he does. We know how to present this to a jury in Wood County because we understand that the people who will decide this case are your neighbors — people who live in this community, who know BGSU, and who will understand what it means to lose a young man to something that never should have been allowed to happen.
The call is free. The consultation is free. We do not get paid unless we win your case. And the first thing we do — the day you call — is send the letter that freezes the evidence before it disappears. That letter is the difference between a case and a memory.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. Twenty-four hours a day. Seven days a week. Someone answers — not a machine, not an answering service, a person. Hablamos Español. We will talk to you about your son, about what happened, and about what comes next. And we will tell you the truth — because that is the only thing we know how to give a family in the moment the failure stops and the fight begins.
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.