The Moment You Are In — And What We Need You to Know First
If you are reading this at 2 a.m. because your child went to a scholarship celebration at a Toledo university and came home in a way no parent should ever have to describe — or did not come home at all — we need you to hear one thing before anything else: what happened was not an accident, and it was not your child’s fault. It was a failure of leadership and supervision by people who were supposed to protect your student, not endanger them. The law in Ohio recognizes this. We are going to tell you exactly how.
Your child earned a scholarship. That means your child was recognized for academic achievement — for doing the right things, studying hard, building a future. The event that night was supposed to celebrate that. Instead, the organization your child trusted turned that celebration into something dangerous. The contrast between what your child earned and what was done to your child is not just a tragedy. It is the heart of a case.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are trial lawyers who take hazing cases. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity in Harris County, Texas — a case that is being watched because it does what we believe every hazing case should do: hold every layer of the organization accountable, from the local chapter to the national office to the institution that let it happen. That experience shapes every word on this page.
We are writing to you — one person, in Toledo, in Lucas County, in the worst moment of your family’s life — because the decisions you make in the next few days will decide whether the evidence survives and whether the people who did this answer for it. Everything here is written for you.
What Happened at That Scholarship Celebration Was Not an Accident
Ohio law is specific about this. After the death of Stone Foltz at Bowling Green State University in 2021, Ohio passed Collin’s Law — Senate Bill 126 — the most significant anti-hazing legislation in the state’s history. Collin’s Law did three things that matter directly to your family.
First, it expanded the definition of hazing to cover a far broader range of conduct — not just physical violence, but any act that endangers someone as a condition of joining or maintaining membership in an organization. A scholarship celebration that devolved into an initiation ritual falls squarely within that definition.
Second, it increased criminal penalties. Under Collin’s Law, hazing that involves forced consumption of drugs or alcohol — or that results in serious physical harm — can be charged as a felony. That means the people who did this to your child may face not just a civil lawsuit but criminal prosecution.
Third — and this is the provision your family needs to know about right now — Collin’s Law created a specific civil cause of action for victims of hazing and their families.
Ohio Revised Code § 2307.44 provides a specific civil cause of action for victims of hazing, allowing them to sue the organization and its participants.
That sentence is the door your family walks through. It means you do not have to wedge your child’s case into a generic negligence theory. Ohio law gives you a dedicated path — one written by legislators who understood exactly what hazing looks like and designed a remedy for it. We use that statute as the spine of every Ohio hazing case we build.
Understanding Collin’s Law and Your Rights Under It
Collin’s Law changed Ohio’s legal landscape for hazing cases. Before it, families hurt by hazing had to fight through general personal injury law and argue that what happened met the definition of negligence. Now, the law says it directly: hazing is a recognized wrong with its own cause of action. Here is what that means for your family in practical terms.
The statute allows you to sue the organizations and the individuals. That includes the local student organization or fraternity chapter where this happened, the national organization that chartered and was supposed to supervise that chapter, the individual officers and members who planned and participated in the hazing activities, and — depending on the facts — the educational institution that failed to supervise a campus-affiliated organization it knew or should have known was a danger.
Ohio follows a modified comparative negligence rule — a 51 percent bar. What that means in plain language: even if your child willingly attended the event or participated in some activities, your family can still recover damages as long as your child’s share of fault does not exceed 50 percent. And here is the critical point that the defense will try to obscure: consent is legally impossible in a hazing environment. The power imbalance between pledges or new members and the active members who control their membership status means that what looks like “willing participation” is legally recognized as coercion. No student consents to being endangered. No student waives their right to safety by showing up to an event. We will not let the defense frame your child’s presence at a scholarship celebration as assumption of risk.
If this case involves a death, Ohio’s wrongful death statute — Chapter 2125 of the Ohio Revised Code — governs the claim the family brings. That statute allows recovery for the loss of companionship and the mental anguish of the next of kin. A personal representative is appointed by the court — the one person Ohio law authorizes to bring the family’s case — and we handle that appointment. If your child survived but suffered catastrophic injury — a traumatic brain injury, organ damage from alcohol poisoning, physical trauma — the survival action carries the claim for what your child endured, and the future medical and care costs become the economic backbone of the case.
The statute of limitations for personal injury in Ohio is two years, and the same two-year window applies to wrongful death claims under Chapter 2125. Two years sounds like a long time when you are sitting in a hospital waiting room. It is not. The evidence that wins these cases disappears in days and weeks, not years. The two-year clock is the outer boundary — the real deadline is the evidence-preservation clock, which we discuss below.
Who Can Be Held Responsible in a Toledo Hazing Lawsuit
One of the first things a family needs to understand is that a hazing case is almost never about one defendant. The organization that hurt your child is built in layers, and each layer has its own responsibility — and its own insurance. Naming only the obvious defendant leaves money on the table and lets the real decision-makers walk away.
The Local Student Organization or Fraternity Chapter. This is the entity that planned and executed the event where your child was harmed. The local chapter is vicariously liable for the actions of its members and for its failure to enforce safety policies during an official or semi-official event. The chapter may carry its own limited insurance, but it is often thinly capitalized — a local LLC or unincorporated association with few assets. The chapter is the first layer, but it is rarely the deepest pocket.
The National Organization. This is where the real supervision was supposed to happen — and where the real money often sits. The national fraternity or student organization chartered the local chapter, set its policies, trained (or failed to train) its officers, and was responsible for monitoring whether the chapter followed anti-hazing rules. The national organization carries general liability and excess insurance policies that can run into the millions of dollars. When the national organization’s own anti-hazing policies exist on paper but were never enforced at the local level — when the national office knew or should have known about prior incidents and did nothing — that gap is the negligence that reaches the deep coverage. We have seen, in the hazing litigation we are currently litigating, exactly how the national organization’s internal communications contradict its public-facing safety claims. Those communications are discoverable. We go after them.
Individual Participants and Officers. The students who planned the hazing, who carried it out, and who failed to call for help when your child was in danger are individually liable. This is also where the criminal dimension lives — under Collin’s Law, individuals who participate in hazing that causes serious harm can face felony charges. The failure to seek emergency medical assistance is itself a separate wrong. If your child was in medical distress and no one called 911 — if the organization’s “risk management” protocol was to wait and see whether the situation resolved itself rather than getting help — that delay is its own act of negligence, and potentially its own criminal exposure.
The Educational Institution. The university your child attended may bear responsibility if it failed to supervise campus-affiliated organizations, if it knew about prior hazing by this organization and did not act, or if its response to known dangers was deliberately indifferent. Title IX may apply if the university’s response to known harassment or dangerous environments was inadequate. The Clery Act requires institutions to report campus crime statistics, including hazing-related violence. A university that looked the other way — that had complaints on file, that had disciplinary records showing prior incidents, that had been warned — cannot claim it was blindsided. Those prior records are what we subpoena, and they are what transforms a single night of tragedy into a pattern of institutional failure.
Toledo sits in Lucas County, and the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas has experience handling high-profile personal injury and wrongful death litigation. The local jury pool in Toledo is generally balanced but can be significantly moved by cases involving the endangerment of young students by established institutions. A jury of people from your community — people who send their own children to the University of Toledo, to Bowling Green, to the colleges that dot northwest Ohio — understands what a scholarship means to a family. They understand the betrayal when an institution that promised to educate and protect a student instead became the source of harm.
The Evidence Is Vanishing Right Now — What Exists and Who Holds It
This is the section that may matter more than any other on this page, because the evidence in a hazing case dies faster than in almost any other type of case we handle. The records that prove what happened, who planned it, and who knew about it are on clocks measured in days and weeks — not months and years.
Digital Communications — GroupMe, WhatsApp, SMS, Snapchat. These are the records that show the planning, the intent, and the knowledge. GroupMe threads where active members coordinated the event. WhatsApp groups where the hazing ritual was discussed. Text messages where someone raised a concern and was told to stay quiet. Snapchat messages that have already vanished. This evidence is marked EXTREME urgency in our analysis because messages are routinely deleted or set to “vanish” the moment an investigation begins — sometimes within hours of the incident. The preservation letter we send the day you call us is the only thing that creates a legal duty to freeze those records before they are gone. Once they are deleted, the spoliation argument — the legal doctrine that lets a jury assume destroyed evidence was as bad as the plaintiff says — is powerful, but it is a second-best alternative to having the actual messages.
Video Surveillance. Security footage from the venue, from surrounding areas, from the fraternity house or campus building where the event took place. This footage can establish the timeline of events, who was present, and what happened to your child. Most surveillance systems overwrite their data within 7 to 30 days. Some systems cycle even faster. If the venue is a private residence or a fraternity house, the cameras may be the organization’s own — and the organization controls what happens to that footage. A preservation letter freezes it. Without one, the footage records over itself and the visual proof of what happened that night is permanently erased.
University Disciplinary Files. Previous complaints against the organization — prior hazing reports, disciplinary actions, student conduct hearings — prove the “notice” that is required for punitive damages. If the university had complaints on file about this same organization and did not act, that is not just negligence — it is the pattern of deliberate indifference that justifies punishment damages. These files require a subpoena, but they are legally protected once litigation begins. The university’s own records may show that the organization was on probation, that similar incidents had been reported, that the university knew this was a dangerous organization and let it keep operating. Those records are the backbone of the institutional liability case.
Toxicology and Medical Records. If your child was taken to a hospital — to ProMedica Toledo Hospital, to Mercy Health, to the University of Toledo Medical Center — the medical records from that admission are the forensic backbone of the harm. Blood alcohol levels, toxicology screens, imaging studies, the emergency department notes that describe your child’s condition on arrival — these establish the cause of the tragedy. Biological samples must be preserved for independent testing. The hospital’s own records retention schedule will eventually allow destruction, and the organization’s lawyers know that. We move to secure the complete medical record — the ER notes, the lab results, the imaging, the nursing flow sheets — before the retention clock runs.
The Pledge Manual and Internal Organizational Documents. The organization’s own pledge manual, new-member education materials, risk management policies, and internal communications are the documents that contradict the organization’s public-facing safety claims. When the national fraternity says it prohibits hazing, the pledge manual — the actual document new members were given — often tells a very different story. Those internal documents are what discovery is designed to uncover, and the gap between what the organization said publicly and what it told its members privately is where the punitive damages live.
Here is what the preservation process looks like when you call us: the day you call, we send a litigation-hold letter to every entity and individual who may hold evidence — the local chapter, the national organization, the university, the venue, the individuals who were present. That letter creates a legal duty to preserve. If evidence is destroyed after that letter is received, the destruction itself becomes a separate act of wrongdoing that a jury can be told about. The preservation letter is not a formality. It is the single most time-sensitive action in a hazing case, and it is why we answer the phone 24 hours a day.
What This Case Is Worth — An Honest Assessment
We are not going to tell you a number and pretend it is a promise. What we will do is tell you what the law allows, what drives the value, and what we have seen in comparable cases. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes — and that statement is not a disclaimer we are required to put at the bottom. It is the truth. Your child’s case is your child’s case, and its value depends on what we can prove.
That said, the forensic analysis of hazing cases involving a catastrophic outcome — wrongful death or permanent brain injury — in the current Ohio legal environment places the case value range between approximately $2.5 million on the low end and $12.5 million or more on the high end. The factors that drive where your case falls in that range are specific and provable.
Economic damages are the mathematically calculable losses. If your child survived, this includes past and future medical expenses — the hospital bills from the acute event, the rehabilitation costs, the ongoing care, the life-care plan that a certified life-care planner builds to project every dollar of future medical need across your child’s entire life. If your child was a scholarship student, the lost earning capacity is calculated from the trajectory that scholarship represented — the degree, the career, the professional life that was taken. A forensic economist takes that trajectory and reduces it to present value, and the scholarship itself becomes evidence of the promise that was lost. That is why the scholarship context matters to the economics of the case — it is not just emotionally powerful, it is financially quantifiable.
If this is a wrongful death case, wrongful death damages include the loss of financial support your child would have provided, the loss of household services, and — under Ohio law — the loss of companionship and mental anguish of the next of kin. The survival action, which runs parallel, carries what your child endured: the conscious pain and suffering between the injury and the death, the medical expenses incurred, the funeral costs.
Non-economic damages cover the human losses no receipt can measure. Your child’s pain and suffering. The terror of what happened that night. The emotional damage to your family. Under Ohio law, there are caps on non-economic damages in many personal injury cases — but those caps may be lifted in cases involving catastrophic injury or specific statutory exceptions. A hazing case that results in death or permanent brain injury is the kind of case that can pierce those caps, and we plead the facts that support piercing them from the first filing.
Punitive damages are highly likely in a hazing context. Punitive damages are not compensation — they are punishment. They exist to deter future hazing conduct by organizations that, without a significant financial penalty, will treat a student’s death or injury as a cost of doing business. The “notice” element — prior complaints, prior incidents, the university’s own disciplinary files showing the organization was already on notice — is what transforms a negligence case into a punitive damages case. When the national organization’s internal communications show it knew about hazing at this chapter and did nothing, or when the university had reports on file and looked the other way, the conscious disregard for student safety is the predicate for punishment damages.
The insurance reality in hazing cases is layered. The local chapter may carry limited coverage — sometimes a few hundred thousand dollars, sometimes nothing at all if it is an unincorporated student group. The national fraternity organization carries the larger policies: general liability coverage that can run into the millions, plus excess and umbrella layers stacked above. The university has its own coverage. Individual participants may have homeowner’s insurance that sometimes applies, though hazing and assault exclusions are common and will be fought over. The coverage tower is stacked, but every rung is contested. The insurance company’s first move in a hazing case is often to argue that the policy excludes exactly this kind of harm — that hazing is an intentional act, that assault and battery exclusions apply, that the organization’s conduct falls outside the policy’s grant of coverage. That coverage fight is its own litigation, and it is one of the reasons having a lawyer who understands the insurance structure — not just the tort law — matters in these cases.
Lupe Peña, our associate attorney, spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm before joining our side of the table. He sat in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the valuation software discounts injuries it cannot see on a scan, and how the quick settlement check arrives before the family has even buried their child. That knowledge — the insider’s view of how the other side prices a case — is now working for your family.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook — What They Will Try and How We Counter It
In the days and weeks after a hazing tragedy, the organizations and their insurers begin a coordinated response designed to minimize their exposure. Here is what they will do — and what we do about it.
Play 1: The “Independent Investigation” That Is Not Independent. The national fraternity’s risk management team will arrive on campus within hours. They will conduct an “internal investigation” that is designed to protect the organization, not to find the truth. They will interview members, collect documents, and produce a report that frames the event as an isolated incident, a rogue chapter, a breakdown of communication — anything except a systemic failure of supervision. The counter: we are conducting our own investigation, simultaneously, and we are freezing evidence before the organization’s risk management team can sanitize the record. The preservation letter goes out before their investigation is complete. When their internal report contradicts the contemporaneous evidence — the text messages, the medical records, the surveillance footage we froze in time — that contradiction is the case.
Play 2: The Quick Settlement Offer. A check may arrive fast, with a release attached, before the full scope of the harm is known. The offer is designed to feel generous to a grieving family and to close the case before a lawyer can evaluate what it is actually worth. The counter: no family should sign a release in the first weeks after a hazing tragedy. The full medical picture — the brain injury that does not show up on the first scan, the psychological trauma that declares over months, the earning capacity that was taken — takes time to evaluate. The first offer is always a fraction of the case’s real value. Lupe Peña has been on the other side of that calculation. He knows the number the adjuster has in the reserve file, and it is never the number they offer first.
Play 3: Blame the Student. The defense will argue that your child “chose” to participate, that the activities were “voluntary,” that a scholarship student should have known better. This is the oldest and cruelest play in the hazing defense playbook. The counter is the law itself: consent is legally impossible in a hazing environment. The power imbalance between a new member and the active members who control their future in the organization makes “voluntary” a legal fiction. Ohio’s modified comparative negligence rule — the 51 percent bar — means your child’s presence at the event does not bar recovery, and we will not let the defense frame a scholarship celebration as an assumption of risk.
Play 4: The “Rogue Chapter” Defense. The national organization will argue that the local chapter acted on its own, outside the scope of the national’s policies, and that the national cannot be held responsible for the conduct of an independent affiliate. The counter: the national organization chartered the chapter, set its policies, collected its dues, and claimed credit for its activities. The franchise relationship is not a one-way street. When the national’s own anti-hazing policies exist but were never enforced — when the national office received reports and did nothing — the gap between policy and practice is the national’s own negligence. We discover the national’s internal communications, the compliance audits that were never done, the warning signs that were ignored. The “rogue chapter” defense falls apart when the documents show the national knew.
Play 5: The Delay. The insurer will ask for more time, more documentation, more investigation — all aimed at running the statute of limitations clock while the evidence quietly disappears. The counter: we set the pace, not the insurer. The preservation letter, the records demands, the expedited discovery schedule — we move quickly because the evidence dies quickly, and because the law rewards the party that acts while the proof still exists.
The Medicine of Hazing Harm — What Happened to Your Child’s Body
We need to talk about the medicine, because the defense will try to minimize what happened to your child, and the only answer is the truth of the injury itself.
In hazing cases, the catastrophic outcome is often one of several mechanisms. If forced alcohol consumption was involved — and the toxicology and medical records will tell us — the mechanism is acute ethanol toxicity. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant. At high blood alcohol concentrations, it suppresses the respiratory drive. A person does not need to drink a lethal volume; what matters is the blood alcohol level and how fast it was reached. The medical record from the emergency department — the blood alcohol concentration drawn on arrival, the Glasgow Coma Scale score, the intubation note if your child could not breathe on their own — is the forensic proof of what was done. The delay in calling 911 — the minutes or hours between when your child stopped responding and when someone finally sought help — is not just a failure of care. It is the difference between a survivable alcohol poisoning and a fatal one.
If physical trauma was the mechanism — a beating, a fall, a blow to the head — the injury may be a traumatic brain injury. Here is what families need to understand about brain injuries in hazing cases: the word “mild” in a hospital record is a triage classification, not a prognosis. A mild traumatic brain injury — a concussion scored at 13, 14, or 15 on the 15-point Glasgow Coma Scale — can still produce permanent cognitive damage. More than one-third of patients with a GCS score of 13 — the top of the “mild” range — have potentially life-threatening intracranial lesions. And the standard CT scan that the ER ran is normal about 90 percent of the time in these injuries — not because nothing is wrong, but because the damage is microscopic tearing of nerve fibers that a standard scan was never designed to see. Advanced imaging — diffusion tensor imaging, susceptibility-weighted MRI — can show what the CT missed. The headaches, the memory loss, the personality changes, the inability to concentrate that you may be seeing across the dinner table — those are not subjective complaints. They are the standard presentation of diffuse axonal injury, and they are proven with neuropsychological testing and advanced imaging, not dismissed because the first scan was clean.
If water intoxication was the mechanism — forced consumption of water as part of a hazing ritual — the harm is hyponatremia: the sodium in the blood drops to dangerous levels, water shifts into the brain, and the brain swells inside the rigid skull. This can cause seizures, brain herniation, and death. The mechanism is well-documented in the medical literature, and it is entirely foreseeable to anyone who forces another person to consume dangerous quantities of water.
If the outcome was death, the medical examiner’s report — the autopsy, the toxicology, the cause and manner of death — is the document that fixes the mechanism. That report is a public record in most Ohio counties, and it becomes the foundation of the wrongful death case. The time between the injury and the death — the hours or days your child may have survived in the hospital — is the window of conscious pain and suffering that the survival action compensates. The nursing notes, the physician progress notes, the ventilator settings, the intracranial pressure readings — every page of that hospital record is a piece of the story of what your child endured.
The lifetime cost of a catastrophic hazing injury is not a round number. It is built from the ground up: the life-care plan that a certified planner constructs, pricing out every surgery, every therapy session, every piece of equipment, every hour of attendant care, every modification to a home and a vehicle — projected across your child’s entire life expectancy and reduced to present value by a forensic economist. If your child’s case involves a severe brain injury or spinal cord injury, that lifetime cost can reach into the millions before a single dollar of pain and suffering is added. If the case is a wrongful death, the economic loss is the earning capacity your child’s scholarship represented — the professional trajectory, the income, the support to the family — all calculated and reduced to present value.
How We Build the Proof — The Investigation From Day One
Here is how a hazing case is actually built, from the day you call us to the day a jury hears it. This is not a summary. It is the walk.
The day you call, we send the preservation letter. It goes to every entity and individual who may hold evidence — the local chapter, the national organization, the university, the venue, the individuals present. That letter freezes the digital communications, the surveillance footage, the organizational records, the medical evidence, the university disciplinary files. Everything that can be destroyed is, for that moment, placed under a legal duty to be preserved.
In the first week, we begin the records demands. The medical records from the hospital. The police report if one was filed. The university’s incident report and student conduct records. The autopsy and toxicology if this is a death case. The organization’s insurance policies — the primary general liability, the excess layers, the umbrella — because the coverage fight starts on day one, not the day before trial.
In the first month, we file the lawsuit and begin discovery. Written interrogatories to the organization: who planned the event, what was the agenda, what policies were in place, what did the national office know and when. Document demands for the pledge manual, the risk management plan, the internal communications, the prior incident reports, the insurance policies. Deposition notices for the chapter officers, the event organizers, the national organization’s risk management personnel.
The depositions are where the case is won or lost. The chapter president, under oath, explaining why the scholarship celebration became an initiation ritual. The risk management chair, explaining why the anti-hazing policy that exists on the national’s website was never mentioned at the event. The national organization’s representative, explaining why a chapter with prior complaints was allowed to keep operating. The individuals who were present, explaining why no one called 911 when your child was in distress. Every deposition is a chance to lock in testimony before memories are “refreshed” by the defense lawyers and before the organization’s narrative hardens.
The experts come next. A forensic toxicologist to interpret the blood alcohol levels and reconstruct the timeline of consumption. A neurologist or neuropsychologist to test and document the brain injury. A life-care planner to build the cost projection. A forensic economist to reduce it to present value. An expert in Greek life and campus safety to explain what the organization should have done and what the industry standards required. Each expert’s report is a piece of the case that the defense must answer.
The trial strategy in a hazing case is built on two narratives: the culture of silence and the power imbalance. The culture of silence is why no one called 911 — the organizational pressure to handle things internally, to protect the group, to avoid getting brothers in trouble. The power imbalance is why your child could not simply leave — the pledge’s dependence on the active members for membership, for social standing, for the very community that the organization promised. The scholarship celebration narrative ties it all together: your child was there because of academic achievement, because the organization said it was honoring that achievement, and the organization used that moment of trust to commit the harm. The contrast between the student’s merit and the organization’s recklessness is the frame that a jury in Lucas County will understand — because every parent on that jury knows what a scholarship means.
The First 72 Hours: What Your Family Must Do
If you are reading this in the first days after the incident, here is the hour-by-hour, day-by-day roadmap. Medical first, always — but the legal clock is running alongside the medical one.
Hour 1 through 24. If your child is in the hospital, your entire focus is on their care. But do this one thing: ask the hospital to preserve all biological samples and all imaging. The blood samples, the toxicology screen, the CT and MRI scans — these are the forensic evidence. Hospitals operate on their own retention schedules, and biological samples can be discarded on a timeline. A verbal request to the charge nurse or the risk management office creates a record that you asked. Our formal preservation demand follows within hours of your call.
Day 1. Call us. The preservation letter goes out the same day. Do not speak to the organization’s risk management team, their lawyer, or their insurance adjuster. Do not sign anything. Do not post about the incident on social media — the defense will mine your posts for anything they can use. Do not allow anyone from the organization to contact your child directly. If they try, document it — the contact itself is evidence of the organization’s attempt to manage the narrative.
Day 2. If a police report has not been filed, file one. Hazing is a crime in Ohio under Collin’s Law. The police report creates an official record of the incident and triggers an investigation that may produce evidence your civil case can use. If the university has a hazing reporting process, use it — but understand that the university’s investigation is designed to protect the university, not your child. Our investigation runs in parallel.
Day 3. Secure your child’s phone, laptop, and digital accounts. The GroupMe messages, the text threads, the social media communications — your child’s own devices are evidence, and they are evidence the organization cannot destroy because they are in your possession. Do not delete anything, even messages that seem irrelevant. The full digital record is the timeline of what was planned, what was communicated, and what your child was told.
Day 1 through 72 and beyond. Do not accept the first settlement offer. Do not agree to an “informal resolution” with the university. Do not let the organization’s “grief counselor” or “support liaison” — who works for the organization, not your family — become your primary point of contact. Everything you say to anyone associated with the organization can and will be used against your family. Your point of contact is your lawyer. That is what we are here for.
Why Our Firm — Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
Ralph Manginello has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer — he knows how to find the story the evidence tells, and how to tell it to a jury. He is the managing partner of this firm, and he is currently lead counsel in an active $10 million hazing lawsuit — Bermudez v. Pi Kappa Phi / University of Houston — that is pursuing a university and a national fraternity for the harm done to a student. That case is not a brochure. It is a live file, with depositions, discovery, and the same kind of institutional accountability fight your family is now facing. The experience of litigating that case — of going up against a national fraternity’s defense team, of uncovering the internal communications that contradict the public safety claims, of building the proof that the institution knew and did nothing — is the experience that shapes how we approach your child’s case in Toledo.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. He 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 knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the valuation software discounts injuries it cannot see, and how the quick settlement check arrives before the medical results do. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. That insider knowledge — the insurance industry’s own playbook, from the inside — is now working for your family.
Our firm has recovered more than $50 million for injured clients over more than 24 years of practice. We handle cases on contingency: 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The first consultation is free. Our emergency hotline — 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911) — is answered 24 hours a day by live staff, not an answering service.
We take Ohio hazing cases working with local counsel where required. We do not claim an office in Toledo, and we will not pretend to be something we are not. What we are is a trial firm that knows how to build a hazing case — from the preservation letter to the verdict — and that has the specific, active, filed-litigation experience to prove it.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if my child “willingly” attended the scholarship celebration?
Yes. Ohio’s modified comparative negligence rule — the 51 percent bar — means your child can recover damages as long as their share of fault does not exceed 50 percent. More importantly, consent is legally impossible in a hazing environment. The power imbalance between a new member and the active members who control their membership status means that “willing attendance” is not legal consent. Your child went to an event to celebrate a scholarship. What happened there was not something your child agreed to.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio’s statute of limitations for personal injury is two years, and the same two-year window applies to wrongful death claims under Chapter 2125 of the Ohio Revised Code. But the real deadline is not two years — it is the evidence clock. Digital messages vanish in hours. Surveillance footage overwrites in 7 to 30 days. Biological samples are discarded on hospital schedules. The two-year SOL is the outer boundary; the evidence-preservation clock is what actually controls when you must act.
What is Collin’s Law and how does it help my case?
Collin’s Law — Senate Bill 126, passed in 2021 — is Ohio’s anti-hazing statute. It expanded the definition of hazing, increased criminal penalties (making hazing a felony in certain circumstances), and created a specific civil cause of action under Ohio Revised Code § 2307.44 that allows victims and their families to sue the organizations and individuals responsible. It is the law that gives your family a dedicated legal path, rather than having to fit your case into a generic negligence theory.
Can we sue the national fraternity, not just the local chapter?
Yes, and in most hazing cases, the national organization is the defendant with the deepest coverage. The national fraternity chartered the local chapter, set its policies, collected dues, and was responsible for supervising whether the chapter followed anti-hazing rules. When the national’s own policies existed but were never enforced — when the national office knew or should have known about prior incidents — that gap is the negligence that reaches the national’s insurance tower, which is often far larger than the local chapter’s coverage.
What if the university knew about prior hazing and did nothing?
That is the “notice” that transforms a case. If the university had complaints, disciplinary records, or prior incident reports about this organization on file and failed to act, that is evidence of deliberate indifference — the standard that can trigger institutional liability and punitive damages. University disciplinary files are subpoena-protected once litigation begins, and those prior records are what we go after first. A university that looked the other way cannot claim it was blindsided.
How much is a hazing case worth?
The analysis of hazing cases involving a catastrophic outcome in the current Ohio legal environment places the case value range between approximately $2.5 million and $12.5 million or more. Where your case falls depends on the severity of the harm, the strength of the evidence, the degree of institutional knowledge and failure, and whether punitive damages are warranted. The scholarship context adds a layer of “lost promise” that increases the economic value of the life lost or the career derailed. We build the number from the ground up — the life-care plan, the lost earning capacity, the pain and suffering, the punitive exposure — not from a formula.
What should I do right now to protect my child’s case?
Three things, in this order. First, make sure all medical evidence is being preserved — ask the hospital to hold all biological samples and imaging. Second, secure your child’s phone, laptop, and digital accounts — the messages and communications on those devices are evidence the organization cannot destroy because they are in your possession. Third, call us. The preservation letter we send the day you call is the legal mechanism that freezes the evidence before the organization’s risk management team can sanitize the record. Do not sign anything. Do not speak to the organization’s representatives. Do not post on social media.
Will my family have to pay upfront to hire a lawyer?
No. We handle hazing cases on contingency. That means we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent if the case resolves before trial, 40 percent if it goes to trial. The first consultation is free, and it is confidential. You can call us at 1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911 — 24 hours a day. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service.
The Call You Make Today
Everything on this page comes down to one thing: the evidence is dying. The text messages that show the planning. The surveillance footage that shows who was there. The university records that show the prior complaints. The medical evidence that shows what happened to your child’s body. Every one of those records is on a clock, and the clock is shorter than you think.
The preservation letter is the first thing we send. It goes out the day you call. It freezes the evidence. It creates a legal duty to preserve. It is the difference between a case built on proof and a case built on absence.
Your child earned a scholarship. That means your child was building something. What happened at that celebration was not your child’s fault, and it was not an accident. It was a failure of the organizations and individuals who were supposed to protect your child. Ohio law gives your family a path to hold them accountable. We know that path because we are walking it right now, in a case that is live and filed.
Call us. Contact Attorney911 — 1-888-ATTY-911. Free consultation. No fee unless we win your case. Hablamos Español.
We answer 24 hours a day. The call you make today is the call that starts the clock working for your family instead of against you.