Maryland Hazing Injuries Under the Stop Campus Hazing Act: What the New Federal Law Means for Your Family
The phone call that changes everything does not come with a warning label. A hospital social worker says your son was brought in unconscious after a university event. A roommate tells you your daughter collapsed during a pledging ritual. Or the call that no parent is prepared for — the one from a dean, or a police officer, telling you your child did not survive. You are sitting in a waiting room or standing in a kitchen at 2 a.m., trying to understand how a school you trusted let this happen. That is the moment you are in right now, and that is who we are writing to. We are Attorney911 — trial lawyers who take hazing injury and wrongful death cases — and what follows is everything the law now says about your rights, what the university was required to do, what evidence is already disappearing, and exactly what to do in the first 72 hours. None of it is theoretical. The Stop Campus Hazing Act, signed into law on December 23, 2024, changed what universities must track, report, and disclose about hazing — and the University of Maryland, Baltimore began collecting that data on January 1, 2025. That paper trail, if we move fast enough to capture it, is the backbone of your case.
What the Stop Campus Hazing Act Actually Requires — and Why It Changes the Legal Landscape
The Stop Campus Hazing Act (SCHA) is the first federal law to treat campus hazing as a trackable, reportable safety threat on the same level as sexual assault, robbery, and arson. Signed by President Biden on December 23, 2024, the SCHA amends the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act — formerly known simply as the Clery Act — and for the first time forces universities to include hazing incidents in their Annual Security and Fire Safety Reports (ASRs). The federal statutory hook is 20 U.S.C. § 1092(f), the Clery Act’s reporting provision, now expanded to cover hazing as a distinct category.
The SCHA’s definition of hazing is where the legal power lives. The amended Clery Act now defines hazing as:
“Any intentional, knowing, or reckless act committed against a student (even if they consent), tied to initiation or maintenance of membership in an organization, that causes or risks physical injury, mental harm, or degradation.”
Those four words — “even if they consent” — are the entire ballgame in a state like Maryland. They are the reason a defense lawyer cannot stand in a courtroom and say “he agreed to it” and walk away. We will come back to that, because in Maryland it matters more than in almost any other state.
The SCHA built a three-part framework:
Mandatory hazing data collection. Every hazing incident reported to a Campus Security Authority (CSA) or local law enforcement must now be tracked and included in the university’s ASR. UMB began formal data collection on January 1, 2025. The first reported year will appear in the 2026 ASR — covering 2025 figures — released on October 1, 2026. That means the first public record of what universities knew about hazing on their campuses is being built right now.
Clear anti-hazing policies and prevention education. The SCHA requires institutions to maintain and publish anti-hazing policies and to implement prevention education programs. A school that has no meaningful prevention program — or that has a policy on paper but no enforcement — has created its own evidence of negligence.
The Campus Hazing Transparency Report. Starting July 1, 2025, colleges must document hazing violations by recognized student organizations and prepare a public Campus Hazing Transparency Report. The initial report is due by December 23, 2025, and must be updated at least twice annually. No personally identifiable information may be disclosed — but the names of the organizations found responsible for hazing must be. That public record is what allows us to prove a university had constructive notice of a dangerous organization before it hurt your child.
The Department of Education can fine institutions that fail to report — fines exceeding $67,000 per violation. But that federal penalty is not your remedy. Your remedy is a civil lawsuit. The SCHA’s reporting requirements are the evidence factory that builds it.
Can You Sue a University for Hazing in Maryland?
Yes — and the legal pathways are more defined now than they have ever been. Maryland law provides several theories of liability against a university that permits hazing on its campus or within organizations it has formally recognized.
Negligence per se. Maryland’s own anti-hazing statute — Md. Code, Crim. Law § 3-607 — prohibits hazing regardless of whether the victim consented. When a university or student organization violates this statute, that violation can serve as the standard of care the defendant breached. Maryland’s anti-hazing law mirrors the SCHA’s own “even if they consent” language, stacking a state-law prohibition on top of the federal reporting framework.
Negligent supervision. A university that formally recognizes a student organization — whether a professional fraternity at UMB’s School of Law, a pharmacy fraternity, or any recognized student group — owes a duty to monitor that organization’s activities. Once the SCHA-mandated reporting system indicates a history of misconduct by a specific organization, the university’s constructive notice is documented in its own federal filings. Ignoring that pattern is negligent supervision, and the SCHA’s transparency reports are the evidence that proves the school knew.
Premises liability. UMB’s downtown Baltimore campus integrates with the University of Maryland Medical Center in ways that create complex jurisdictional questions about campus security versus city police — but the core duty is simple. An institution that controls a space where hazing occurs must ensure that space is free from foreseeable dangerous activities. A fraternity house, a campus meeting room, or an off-site location where a university-sanctioned organization conducts initiation rituals all fall within this duty.
Breach of fiduciary duty. The specialized relationship between a university and its students — particularly at a professional school like UMB, where students are adults investing in professional degrees — creates a duty to provide a safe educational environment. When a university recognizes an organization, permits it to recruit members, and fails to supervise its practices, the institution has breached a duty it created by its own act of recognition.
Maryland’s Contributory Negligence Trap — and How the SCHA and State Law Disarm It
This is the single most important legal fight in a Maryland hazing case, and it is the one that separates lawyers who understand this state from those who do not.
Maryland is one of a shrinking number of states that still follows the contributory negligence doctrine. Under this rule — harsher than any comparative-fault system in the country — a plaintiff who is even one percent at fault for their own injury is barred from recovering anything. In most injury cases, this doctrine is the defense’s most powerful weapon. In a hazing case, the defense’s first move is almost always to argue that the victim “participated willingly” in the activity that caused the harm.
That argument is exactly what the SCHA and Maryland’s own anti-hazing statute were written to destroy.
The SCHA defines hazing as an act committed “even if they consent.” Maryland’s anti-hazing statute, Md. Code, Crim. Law § 3-607, prohibits hazing regardless of the victim’s consent. Both the federal and state frameworks explicitly remove consent as a defense.
What this means in practice: when the university’s lawyer or the fraternity’s insurer says “your son chose to participate,” the law answers them before we have to. Consent is legally irrelevant to whether hazing occurred and whether the defendants are liable for the harm it caused. The contributory negligence argument that would kill an ordinary injury case in Maryland is neutralized by the specific statutory language of both the federal and state anti-hazing laws.
“Any intentional, knowing, or reckless act committed against a student (even if they consent), tied to initiation or maintenance of membership in an organization, that causes or risks physical injury, mental harm, or degradation.”
That sentence — from the amended Clery Act — is the weapon that defeats the “he agreed to it” defense in a Maryland courtroom. It is why a hazing case in this state is winnable in ways that other injury cases may not be.
Who Can Be Held Responsible: The Defendant Stack in a Hazing Case
A hazing injury or death is rarely the work of one person. It is the product of an organizational culture, a university’s tolerance, and a national structure that profit from membership while disclaiming responsibility for what membership rituals do to people. The defendant stack in a hazing case runs four layers deep.
The university itself. The University of Maryland, Baltimore — or any institution covered by the Clery Act — is the first and deepest-pocket defendant. The university recognized the organization, permitted it to operate on campus, and was required under the SCHA to track hazing reports involving it. If the university’s own Campus Hazing Transparency Report shows prior violations by the same organization, that is constructive notice — documented in the school’s own federal filing — that the institution failed to act on. A university that ignores repeated SCHA-reported violations and allows the same organization to keep pledging, keep initiating, and keep hurting people is not negligent by accident. That is conscious disregard of student safety, and in the right case it opens the door to punitive damages.
The student organization. The local chapter — a professional fraternity, a student club, a recognized group — is the entity that directly planned and executed the hazing ritual. Whether it is a law school fraternity at UMB, a pharmacy organization, or any recognized student group, the organization itself bears direct liability for the acts of its members when those acts are tied to initiation or membership. The organization’s own bylaws, pledge manuals, and internal communications become the evidence of what it expected its new members to endure.
The national parent organization. National fraternities and organizations collect dues, set standards, publish pledging manuals, and brand the local chapter with their name. When a local chapter hazes, the national parent organization’s liability runs on two tracks: vicarious liability for the chapter it chartered and controlled, and direct negligent oversight for failing to enforce its own anti-hazing policies. The national’s insurance tower is often the largest available coverage in a hazing case, and a demand letter sent early to the national carrier — highlighting the university’s SCHA reporting failures and the local chapter’s documented pattern — is where real leverage lives.
The individual perpetrators. The students who planned, directed, and carried out the hazing are individually liable for intentional torts — assault, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and in cases involving forced alcohol consumption, potentially negligent infliction of chemical injury. Individual perpetrators often carry no meaningful insurance, but naming them serves two purposes: it forces their testimony under oath, and it establishes the factual record that the organization and university allowed them to operate.
If your family is dealing with a hazing injury or death, the page where we describe our approach to fraternity and sorority hazing lawsuits covers the full defendant map in more detail — including professional fraternities, spirit groups, marching bands, and K-12 organizations that the same legal framework reaches.
The Evidence Clock: What Records Exist and How Fast They Disappear
Every hazing case is a race against the clock — not the statute of limitations (though that clock is real too), but the evidence-destruction clock. The records that prove what happened, who knew, and how long it had been going on are perishable, and some of them die within hours of the incident.
Campus Hazing Transparency Reports. These reports — required under the SCHA to be updated at least twice annually — establish the university’s institutional knowledge of an organization’s dangerous behavior. The reports are public, but they change. Older versions must be captured before they are overwritten, because a university can revise what it discloses. We pull every version that exists the day we are retained.
Internal disciplinary records. The university’s Office of Student Conduct or equivalent body holds unredacted witness statements, internal findings of fact, and the organization’s disciplinary history. These records are at immediate risk of “re-characterization” by university counsel — meaning the school’s lawyers may frame the incident in language that minimizes the university’s exposure before producing the records. A litigation hold letter sent within days of the incident freezes these records before they can be edited.
Social media and group chats. Group chats, Snapchat threads, Instagram direct messages, and text chains are the direct evidence of how the hazing was planned, who directed it, and what the perpetrators said to each other before and after. This evidence is the single most fragile category in a hazing case. Victims and perpetrators alike often delete digital footprints within hours of learning that an injury has occurred or that someone is asking questions. Preserving these records — through litigation hold, through preservation demands to the platforms, and through forensic imaging of the victim’s own devices — must happen immediately. If you are reading this and your child has been hurt, do not wait to call. Those messages are being deleted right now.
Security camera footage. UMB, like most urban campuses, maintains Blue Light emergency systems and CCTV coverage. But that footage overwrites on a short cycle — commonly 14 to 30 days. If the hazing occurred on campus property or in a location captured by campus cameras, the footage showing who was present, when they arrived, and when they left is disappearing on a timeline measured in days, not months. A preservation demand to the university police or campus security office has to go out before the footage cycles off.
The university’s Clery compliance file. The university’s Clery Compliance Officer maintains the ASR data and the records behind it. In discovery, the compliance officer’s file — including what was reported, what was not reported, and what the university knew about hazing incidents that never made it into the ASR — is where the gap between what the school knew and what it disclosed becomes evidence of concealment.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call. Not the day we file suit. Not the day the medical records are complete. The day you call. Everything before that letter is evidence the defense is counting on you not to freeze in time.
What Hazing Injuries Look Like — and What They Cost for a Lifetime
Hazing injuries are not the bruised-shoulder, sore-for-a-week events that fraternity defense lawyers describe in their press releases. They are catastrophic, and they kill.
Acute alcohol toxicity. Forced or pressured binge drinking — “lining up shots,” “family pours,” “the gallon challenge” — is the number-one mechanism of hazing death in this country. A blood alcohol concentration above 0.40 can be lethal. A student forced to drink to that level is at risk of respiratory depression, aspiration, cardiac arrhythmia, and death. The medical record from the emergency department — the blood alcohol level, the intubation note, the toxicology screen — is the objective proof that what happened was not “a party that got out of hand.” It was a poisoning. Forensic toxicologists can testify to the dose, the timeline, and the mechanism of the brain injury or death that followed. For survivors, the aftermath can include permanent brain damage from hypoxic injury — the brain starved of oxygen during a period of alcohol-induced respiratory depression.
Traumatic brain injury. Hazing rituals involving blows to the head, falls during exhaustion challenges, “calf rides” that end with a student hitting concrete, or near-drowning during water-based hazing can all produce traumatic brain injury. The worst part: a “mild” TBI — the kind the ER sends home with a discharge instruction sheet — can come with a perfectly normal CT scan. About 90 percent of CT scans in mild TBI cases show no abnormality, because the damage is diffuse axonal injury — microscopic tearing of the brain’s white-matter tracts that a standard scan was never built to see. One in seven people with a “mild” brain injury never fully recovers. The headaches, the memory gaps, the personality changes, the lost words at the dinner table — those are the symptoms families see long before any scan confirms the injury. If your child came home from a university event and something is different — the way they talk, the way they react, the things they forget — that is not “being tired.” That may be a brain injury, and brain injury litigation is a field we know cold.
Psychological trauma. The SCHA’s own definition of hazing includes “mental harm” and “degradation.” Hazing is, by design, an exercise in power and humiliation. Survivors carry PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, and complex trauma that can last years or decades. Rape is the single most PTSD-generating event researchers have measured — more likely to cause lasting psychological injury than combat, than a car crash, than a natural disaster. Hazing rituals that involve sexualized humiliation, forced nudity, or degradation are psychologically devastating in ways the medical literature has documented precisely. A formal PTSD diagnosis requires eight specific criteria under the DSM-5, and the diagnosis is built from validated instruments — the CAPS-5 and the PCL-5 — not from a lawyer’s opinion. We prove the psychological injury the way medicine proves it.
Wrongful death. When hazing kills — and it has killed students at universities across this country, in numbers that grew loud enough to force Congress to act — the family’s claim is for wrongful death. In Maryland, the personal representative of the estate brings the claim. The damages include the lost financial support the student would have provided, the lost value of their life, the conscious pain and suffering they experienced before death, and the funeral costs. At a professional school like UMB, where students are training for high-earning careers in law, medicine, or pharmacy, the lost earning capacity is substantial — and a forensic economist builds that number from worklife-expectancy tables and wage data, not from a guess. Our wrongful death practice handles exactly this kind of loss.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook in Hazing Cases
The defense in a hazing case is not one actor — it is a coordinated machine with a playbook refined across decades of fraternity liability litigation and university risk management. Here are the moves they will run, and here is how each one is answered.
Play 1: “Your child consented.” This is always the first move. The university’s lawyer, the fraternity’s insurer, or the organization’s national office will say the student participated voluntarily. In Maryland, this play is designed to trigger contributory negligence — if the victim was even one percent at fault, recovery is barred. The counter: the SCHA and Maryland’s own anti-hazing statute both explicitly state that consent is irrelevant. The law was written this way on purpose. The “consent” argument is not a defense to hazing — it is the thing the law specifically prohibits using as a defense.
Play 2: The friendly “student life” interview. Within days of the incident, a university administrator — often from the Office of Student Conduct or Student Life — will contact the victim or the family asking for a “statement” about what happened. This interview is not designed to help your child. It is designed to build the university’s contributory negligence defense. The administrator will ask questions engineered to elicit answers like “I knew what I was getting into” or “I chose to be there.” Those words will appear in a court filing six months later, stripped of context, used to argue your child assumed the risk. The counter: do not let your child speak to any university investigator without counsel. Every interview is a recorded statement, and recorded statements in hazing cases are built to be quoted against the victim.
Play 3: The fast settlement check. The fraternity’s insurance carrier or the university’s risk management office may offer a settlement quickly — before the full medical evaluation is complete, before the long-term neurological or psychological consequences are known, before the Campus Hazing Transparency Report reveals the organization’s prior violations. A check arrives with a release attached, and the release is broad. The counter: no settlement should be signed before the medical picture is complete and the evidence is frozen. A quick check is cheap because the insurer knows the real value is many times higher once the full harm is documented and the university’s reporting failures are exposed.
Play 4: “This was an individual act, not an organizational practice.” The organization will argue that the hazing was the work of a few rogue members, not the policy of the chapter or the national. The counter: hazing is, by definition, an organizational act — it is tied to “initiation or maintenance of membership in an organization.” The SCHA’s own statutory language makes the organizational nature of hazing intrinsic. And the group chats, the pledge manuals, the prior reports in the Campus Hazing Transparency Report, and the testimony of former members all prove that what happened was not an aberration. It was the practice.
Play 5: Delay aimed at the statute of limitations. Maryland’s three-year statute of limitations for personal injury runs from the date of the incident. The defense may stall, request extensions, and run the clock — counting on the family’s grief and the complexity of the case to let time slip. The counter: we file early, and we file completely. The three-year deadline is a wall, not a suggestion, and in wrongful death cases the clock runs from the date of death — which may be different from the date of the hazing incident if the student survived for days or weeks in the hospital.
How We Build a Hazing Case: The Proof Story
Here is what happens in the weeks and months after you call — the chronological walk of how a hazing case is actually built.
Week one: the preservation letter. The day you call, we send litigation-hold and preservation letters to every entity that holds evidence — the university, the student organization, the national parent organization, the individuals involved, and the digital platforms where communications occurred. Every letter names the specific records that must be frozen: CCTV footage, group chats, social media posts, internal disciplinary records, Clery compliance files, Campus Hazing Transparency Reports, the organization’s pledge materials and bylaws, and the university’s SCHA reporting records. If those records are destroyed after the letter is received, the jury may be told to assume the destroyed evidence was as bad as we say it was.
Weeks one through four: records demands and medical documentation. We pull the complete medical record — the ED note, the toxicology screen, the imaging, the neuropsychological testing, the treating physician’s assessment. We request the university’s Clery compliance file, its ASR data, its Campus Hazing Transparency Report, and its internal disciplinary records for the organization involved. We subpoena the organization’s communications, its member roster, and its national’s oversight file. We capture every version of the Campus Hazing Transparency Report before it can be revised.
Months one through three: the expert phase. We retain the experts the case requires. A campus safety consultant testifies to the standard of care for university oversight of recognized organizations. A forensic toxicologist testifies to the alcohol dose and its mechanism of injury or death. A neuropsychologist administers the CAPS-5 and PCL-5 and documents the PTSD or cognitive deficits. A life-care planner builds the year-by-year cost of future medical care, therapy, and rehabilitation. A forensic economist reduces the lost earning capacity to present value — and at a professional school like UMB, where the student was training for a career in law, medicine, or pharmacy, that number is built from real wage data for the profession they were entering.
Months three through six: discovery and depositions. The Clery Compliance Officer testifies under oath about what was reported and what was not. The organization’s president testifies about the pledging practices. The national’s risk manager testifies about what they knew and what they did. The individual perpetrators testify about who directed the hazing and how long it had been the practice. The medical records and the expert reports are entered into evidence. The number at the end of the case is built from all of it — the documented harm, the documented notice, and the documented choice to let it continue.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do and What to Refuse
If your child has been injured in a hazing incident — or if you are reading this because someone you love did not survive — the hours and days that follow are when evidence is created and when it is destroyed. Here is what to do and what to refuse.
Do seek medical treatment immediately. If your child was released from the ER and something is wrong — headaches, confusion, memory gaps, personality changes, nausea, sleep disturbance — take them back. A “mild” brain injury can have a normal CT scan and still be a life-altering injury. Acute alcohol poisoning can cause liver damage that does not show symptoms for days. Psychological trauma may not declare itself until the shock wears off. Get every symptom documented. The medical record is the proof the defense cannot edit.
Do not let your child speak to university investigators alone. The Office of Student Conduct, the Dean of Students, the fraternity’s alumni advisor — none of them is your friend in this moment. Their job is to protect the institution. Any statement your child gives without counsel present will be recorded, transcribed, and used. Tell your child to say: “I need to speak with a lawyer before I answer questions.” That is not an admission of anything. It is a right.
Do photograph and preserve everything. Photograph your child’s injuries — bruises, abrasions, anything visible — from the first day and daily as they change. Save every text message, group chat, and social media post related to the incident. Do not delete anything from your child’s phone. Do not let anyone from the organization contact your child without a witness present. If the organization sends a “we’re sorry this happened” message, save it — that is an admission.
Do not sign anything. No release, no waiver, no settlement agreement, no “incident report” from the university. If someone hands you a document and says “sign this,” do not sign it. Call us first. A document signed in the first 72 hours, when a family is in shock and does not yet know the full extent of the harm, is the cheapest the defense will ever buy your silence.
Do call us. The preservation letter goes out the day you call. The evidence freeze starts the day we are retained. The medical documentation, the records demands, the expert retention — all of it begins from your first phone call. The consultation is free, it is confidential, and it costs you nothing to find out whether you have a case. Call 1-888-ATTY-911. We answer 24 hours a day.
What Your Case May Be Worth
The value of a hazing case is not a round number a lawyer picks. It is built from the medical evidence, the documented harm, the lost earning capacity, the lifetime cost of care, and — in cases where the university ignored repeated SCHA-reported violations — the punitive damages that punish conscious disregard of student safety.
In Maryland, the case value range for hazing injuries and wrongful death runs from approximately $500,000 on the low end to $7,500,000 on the high end. The low end accounts for Maryland’s non-economic damages caps — approximately $935,000 in 2024, increasing annually — and the potential contributory negligence hurdles that, while disarmed by the SCHA’s consent language, remain a factor the defense will press. The high end reflects wrongful death or permanent traumatic brain injury cases where the university had documented notice of prior hazing by the same organization in its SCHA reports and failed to act.
Economic damages — medical bills, rehabilitation costs, lost tuition, lost earning capacity — are not capped in Maryland. For a UMB student training for a career in medicine, law, or pharmacy, the lost earning capacity alone can reach into the millions. A forensic economist builds that number from the student’s age, their field of study, the prevailing wages in their profession, and the worklife-expectancy tables that account for their projected career length.
Non-economic damages — pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, the degradation inherent in the hazing itself — are subject to Maryland’s statutory cap, which adjusts annually. The 2024 figure of approximately $935,000 is the floor, not the ceiling, for what we know the cap to be at this writing. It is a moving number, and we verify the current cap at the time of filing.
Punitive damages in Maryland require proof of “actual malice” — meaning the defendant acted with spite or intent to injure. This is a high standard. But when a university has received repeated SCHA hazing reports about the same organization and allowed that organization to continue pledging, when a national fraternity has received warning after warning and done nothing, the argument that the conduct was not just negligent but consciously disregarded becomes viable. Punitive damages are not capped in Maryland in the way non-economic damages are, and in the right case they are the number that changes the outcome.
For wrongful death, Maryland’s wrongful death statute provides for the decedent’s spouse, parents, and children to recover. The damages include the lost financial support, the lost companionship, the conscious pain and suffering the student experienced before death, and funeral costs. At a professional school, where the student was on a defined path to a high-earning career, the lost financial support is substantial and provable.
Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The numbers above are the framework — the actual value of your case is built from your child’s specific medical evidence, the specific organization’s specific history, and the specific university’s specific failures.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Stop Campus Hazing Act?
The Stop Campus Hazing Act (SCHA) is a federal law signed on December 23, 2024, that amends the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act to require universities to track, report, and publicly disclose hazing incidents. It mandates hazing data collection in Annual Security Reports, requires universities to maintain anti-hazing policies and prevention programs, and creates a public Campus Hazing Transparency Report that names organizations found responsible for hazing. It is the first federal law to treat campus hazing as a reportable safety threat on par with sexual assault and other Clery Act crimes.
Can I sue a university for hazing in Maryland?
Yes. Maryland law provides several theories: negligence per se under the state’s anti-hazing statute (Md. Code, Crim. Law § 3-607), negligent supervision of recognized student organizations, premises liability for failures to ensure campus-controlled spaces are safe, and breach of the university’s duty to provide a safe educational environment. The SCHA’s mandatory reporting requirements create a paper trail that can establish the university had constructive notice of an organization’s dangerous behavior — which is the evidence that proves negligent supervision.
Does Maryland’s contributory negligence law bar my hazing claim?
No — not if the case is properly built. Maryland follows the harsh contributory negligence rule, which bars recovery if the plaintiff is even one percent at fault. But both the SCHA and Maryland’s own anti-hazing statute explicitly state that the victim’s consent is irrelevant to whether hazing occurred. The defense’s “he participated willingly” argument is precisely the argument the law was written to defeat. This is the single most important legal advantage a hazing plaintiff has in Maryland, and it is the reason a hazing case can succeed where other injury cases fail.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Maryland?
Maryland’s statute of limitations for personal injury is generally three years from the date of the incident. For wrongful death, the deadline is three years from the date of death — which may be different from the date of the hazing if the student survived for days or weeks in the hospital. Do not wait. Evidence disappears on its own schedule — CCTV footage overwrites in 14 to 30 days, social media is deleted within hours, and group chats can be wiped in minutes. The three-year deadline is the legal wall; the evidence clock is the real urgency.
What damages can I recover in a hazing case?
You can recover economic damages (medical bills, rehabilitation, lost tuition, lost earning capacity — uncapped in Maryland), non-economic damages (pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life — subject to Maryland’s statutory cap, approximately $935,000 in 2024 and increasing annually), and in cases where the university or organization acted with actual malice, punitive damages. For wrongful death, the family recovers lost financial support, lost companionship, conscious pain and suffering, and funeral costs.
What evidence do I need to preserve after a hazing incident?
Everything. CCTV footage from campus cameras (overwrites in 14 to 30 days). Group chats and social media messages (deleted within hours). The victim’s phone (do not delete anything). The university’s Campus Hazing Transparency Report (updated twice annually — capture every version). Internal disciplinary records from the Office of Student Conduct (risk of “re-characterization” by university counsel). Medical records from the ER and every follow-up (the objective proof of harm). Photograph visible injuries daily. Save every communication from the organization or the university. Do not speak to university investigators without counsel — their interview is designed to build a contributory negligence defense.
Can a national fraternity be held responsible for hazing by a local chapter?
Yes. A national fraternity or parent organization can be held liable on two tracks: vicarious liability for the local chapter it chartered and controlled, and direct negligent oversight for failing to enforce its own anti-hazing policies. The national collects dues, sets standards, publishes pledging manuals, and brands the chapter with its name — and with that control comes responsibility for what the chapter does under that brand. The national’s insurance tower is often the largest available coverage in a hazing case.
What should I do if a university “student life” investigator wants to interview my child?
Do not let your child speak to any university investigator without counsel present. The Office of Student Conduct, the Dean of Students, and any university administrator who asks for a “statement” is building the university’s defense, not your child’s case. The questions are designed to elicit answers that support a contributory negligence argument — “I knew what I was getting into,” “I chose to be there.” Your child should say: “I need to speak with a lawyer before I answer questions.” That is a right, not an admission.
Does the Stop Campus Hazing Act apply to professional fraternities at UMB?
Yes. The SCHA applies to all organizations recognized by the institution that are tied to initiation or maintenance of membership — it does not distinguish between social fraternities and professional fraternities. UMB’s campus consists primarily of professional schools (Law, Medicine, Pharmacy, Dentistry, Social Work, Nursing), and the organizations active on its campus include professional fraternities, honor societies, and student organizations. All are covered by the Clery Act’s hazing reporting requirements. Professional fraternities can and do haze — and the SCHA and Maryland law apply to them identically.
What if my child “consented” to the hazing activity?
It does not matter. The SCHA defines hazing as an act committed “even if they consent.” Maryland’s anti-hazing statute prohibits hazing regardless of the victim’s consent. Consent is not a defense to hazing — not under federal law, not under Maryland law. The defense will raise it. The law has already answered it.
Why Attorney911 — and What Your First Call Costs
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are Legal Emergency Lawyers. We take hazing injury and wrongful death cases, and we build them the way we have built every case for more than two decades: from the evidence out, from the medical record up, and from the defendant’s own choices down.
Ralph Manginello is our Managing Partner — 27+ years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is lead counsel in the active $10 million hazing lawsuit against Pi Kappa Phi and the University of Houston — a case that is, right now, testing the same legal theories the SCHA now codifies nationwide. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the document the defense does not want found and how to tell its story to a jury in language they cannot forget. He is admitted to the State Bar of Texas (Bar #24007597) and to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas. For Maryland cases, we work with local counsel and appear pro hac vice — meaning we bring our hazing litigation experience to your state’s courthouse while a Maryland-licensed attorney ensures full compliance with local rules.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney — a former insurance-defense lawyer who spent years inside a national defense firm, in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims from people exactly like you. Lupe knows how the other side values a hazing case, how it sets reserves in the first 48 hours before the real injuries are diagnosed, and how it engineers the “friendly” interview that is really a recorded statement. He now uses that inside knowledge for injured clients. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We work on contingency. That means: free consultation, and no fee unless we win your case. We do not get paid unless you get paid. The percentage is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial — and we tell you that up front because we believe in telling you the truth about money before we ask you to trust us with your family’s future. The first call costs you nothing. The consultation is free and confidential. And the preservation letter goes out the day you call — before the evidence disappears, before the university’s lawyers frame the narrative, before the fraternity’s insurer sends a check with a release attached.
We have been doing this since July 18, 2001 — more than 24 years. Our aggregate recoveries exceed $50 million. We have 251+ Google reviews at 4.9 stars. Our staff answers 24 hours a day, seven days a week — a live person, not an answering service. If you are reading this at 2 a.m. in a hospital waiting room or at a kitchen table with a folder of bills, call us now. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911).
Hablamos Español. Lupe conducts full consultations in Spanish — not through an interpreter, but directly. Si su familia necesita ayuda, llámenos. Estamos disponibles 24 horas.
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. The statutes, deadlines, and damage caps discussed here are current as of the date of publication but are subject to change — Maryland’s non-economic damages cap adjusts annually, and the SCHA’s implementation rules continue to evolve. The only way to know what your specific case is worth and whether you still have time to file is to call. The consultation is free. The evidence clock is running. Call 1-888-ATTY-911.