Salt Lake City Fraternity Hazing Lawsuit: Your Rights After the University of Utah Sigma Nu Shutdown
If you are reading this, you or someone you love was a pledge at Sigma Nu at the University of Utah during the 2024–2025 school year, and what happened to you was not a rite of passage. It was a crime. You were blindfolded, put in a vehicle, and taken to a strip club in South Salt Lake by men your father’s age who called themselves “The Strip Club Club.” You were shown death videos designed to break you down. You were told you could not refuse, and you believed it. The university found 14 documented instances of this happening. The charter is gone. But the charter was never the point — the people who did this to you are still out there, and the law gives you a way to hold every one of them accountable.
We are Attorney911. We are a trial firm that takes Utah hazing cases, and we currently litigate a $10 million hazing lawsuit against a fraternity and a university — so this is not a new fight for us. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case. One number: 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911).
Here is what you need to know, right now, before anyone from the fraternity, the university, or an insurance company calls you.
What Happened at Sigma Nu: The University of Utah Investigation Findings
The University of Utah conducted an investigation in May 2025 and found that 14 separate instances of hazing “more likely than not” occurred at the Sigma Nu fraternity over the 2024–2025 academic year. That standard — “more likely than not” — is the university’s administrative threshold. It is not a courtroom standard, but the findings it produced are a roadmap for a civil lawsuit.
The most egregious finding: a group that called itself “The Strip Club Club.” These were not just current undergraduate members. They were senior fraternity leaders and alumni — some of them 50 years old or older — who organized a trip in fall 2024 to a strip club in South Salt Lake. Pledges were blindfolded before being transported. They did not know where they were going until the blindfolds came off. And they were given no option to refuse participation.
That is not a social event. Under Utah law, that is false imprisonment — the confinement and transport of a person without their lawful ability to consent or to leave.
The investigation also found that pledges were subjected to the forced viewing of “death videos” — a hazing technique designed to inflict severe psychological distress through exposure to graphic, disturbing content. This is ritualized psychological abuse, and it is the kind of conduct that supports a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The university responded by terminating Sigma Nu’s affiliation entirely. The national fraternity lost its charter. But the university’s administrative action is not your remedy. The university cannot compensate you for the trauma. It cannot pay for your counseling. It cannot undo what those men did. Only a civil lawsuit can do that — and the deadline to file one is already running.
Utah’s Hazing Law: Why “They Chose to Join” Is Not a Defense
Utah has a statute that was written precisely for what happened to you. Utah’s hazing law — the statute that criminally prohibits hazing — contains a provision that strips away the single defense every fraternity and every alumni member will reach for first: “they chose to participate.”
Consent of the victim is not a defense to a charge of hazing.
That is the doctrine, established in Utah’s hazing statute. It means the fraternity cannot argue “they signed up for this” or “nobody forced them” or “they could have walked away.” The law has already answered that argument, and the answer is: consent does not matter. If the conduct meets the definition of hazing, the fact that a pledge went along with it is legally irrelevant.
This is the single most powerful advantage you have in a civil hazing case in Utah. In ordinary personal injury cases, the defense spends enormous energy trying to pin fault on the injured person — comparative negligence. In a hazing case, the statute has already pre-loaded the answer to their strongest argument.
Utah follows a modified comparative negligence rule — you can recover damages as long as your share of fault does not exceed 50 percent. But in a hazing case where the statute says consent is not a defense, the defense’s ability to assign you fault is gutted from the start. They can argue you were “partly responsible” all day long; the law has already told the jury that your participation was not consent.
Utah also allows punitive damages — the kind meant to punish, not just compensate — when a defendant acts with knowing or reckless indifference. The standard is “clear and convincing evidence,” which is higher than the ordinary civil standard but absolutely reachable when you can show that grown men in their 50s organized a group called “The Strip Club Club” and blindfolded 18-year-olds to take them to a strip club without their consent. A jury does not need to be told twice that this is willful and wanton conduct.
Who Is Liable: From the National Fraternity to the Alumni in Their 50s
This is where a hazing case becomes a web of defendants, and naming the right ones is the difference between a real recovery and an empty judgment against a broke undergraduate. Here is the liability map.
Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. (National). The national fraternity chartered the Utah chapter, set its standards, and was responsible for supervising its operations. The FIPG — Fraternal Information and Programming Group — risk management guidelines serve as the industry standard of care for fraternity operations, and every signatory national fraternity agrees to follow them. The conduct found here — blindfolding, involuntary transport, forced viewing of disturbing content — violates those guidelines at every level. The national organization’s failure to monitor a chapter with what appears to be a multi-generational culture of hazing involving alumni is negligent supervision, and the national fraternity’s insurance carrier is the deep pocket that makes this case worth pursuing. National fraternities carry commercial general liability towers that can reach well into seven figures.
Sigma Nu Utah Chapter Officers. The undergraduate leaders who authorized, organized, and participated in the hazing are individually liable. They violated Utah’s hazing statute, the university’s code of conduct, and their own national fraternity’s rules. Their personal assets may be limited, but their conduct is the factual spine of the case against the national organization — proving what they did proves what the national failed to prevent.
The Alumni Participants — “The Strip Club Club.” These are the individual defendants a jury will punish. Men in their 50s and older who blindfolded college freshmen and took them to a strip club — a jury in Salt Lake County will not need an expert to understand why this is wrong. These alumni face personal liability for assault (creating a reasonable apprehension of harm through blindfolding), battery (offensive contact through the forced transport), false imprisonment (confinement without consent), and intentional infliction of emotional distress (the death videos, the coerced sexual environment, the power imbalance). The university investigation identified that these alumni were part of a named, organized group — “The Strip Club Club” — which means this was not a spontaneous event. It was a planned operation with a name, a roster, and a tradition.
The University of Utah. As a state institution, the university operates under specific sovereign immunity frameworks under the Utah Governmental Immunity Act. Claims against the university are possible if it can be shown that the administration had prior notice of the “Strip Club Club” activities and failed to intervene. But government-entity claims carry their own notice deadlines that are typically shorter than ordinary statute-of-limitations periods — which is why any claim against the university must be evaluated immediately, not months from now. The fraternity organizations themselves are private entities and do not share the university’s immunity protections.
The Fraternity House Corporation. The entity that owns or controls the fraternity house property faces premises liability for allowing prohibited activities to be organized and initiated on-site. If the blindfolding began at the house, if the “death videos” were shown there, if the planning happened in its rooms — the house corporation is a separate defendant with its own insurance.
The Evidence Is Disappearing Right Now
This is the section that decides whether your case is strong or whether it dies before it starts. Every piece of proof that establishes what happened to you exists on a clock, and some of those clocks are about to expire.
University Investigation Report. The report containing the “more likely than not” findings and witness statements already exists. It is the single most important pre-litigation document. It establishes the 14 documented instances. It names the participants. It is the foundation. We demand it through formal channels the day you call.
Social Media and Group Chats. The existence and planning of “The Strip Club Club” almost certainly lives in text threads, GroupMe conversations, Snapchat groups, and social media posts. This is the proof that the strip club visits were organized, named, and repeated — not one-time mistakes. This evidence is the most immediately perishable. Participants can delete group chats in seconds. Accounts can be wiped. Screenshots that were saved by witnesses can be quietly removed. The preservation letter must go out within days, not months — because once a participant deletes a thread, it may be gone forever.
Strip Club Surveillance and Logbooks. The South Salt Lake strip club where pledges were taken almost certainly has security cameras, entry logs, and payment records. That footage and those records corroborate the presence of blindfolded individuals and the alumni on specific dates. But security footage is routinely overwritten — often on a 30-day loop. If the fall 2024 visit was captured, the footage may already be gone. If there were more recent incidents within the 14-instance pattern, footage might still exist. We send a spoliation and preservation demand to the venue immediately, naming the specific dates and individuals. If the footage has been overwritten, the club’s failure to preserve it after receiving our demand can support an adverse-inference instruction — telling the jury they can assume the lost video would have helped you.
National Fraternity Audit and Compliance Records. The national Sigma Nu organization’s internal records — audits, chapter visitation reports, prior incident files, disciplinary history — show what the national office knew about the Utah chapter’s culture and when it knew it. These require formal discovery and spoliation letters. They are held by the national organization and will not be produced voluntarily. But the national fraternity’s own failure to monitor is the negligence that connects its insurance tower to your harm.
Alumni Association Rosters. Identifying the 50-year-old alumni participants is essential for naming them as individual defendants. The alumni association roster, chapter alumni directories, and event attendance records are the map to who these men are, where they live, and what assets they hold. This evidence is medium-priority on the urgency scale but high-priority for the case — because a lawsuit without named individual defendants lets the most culpable actors escape.
Here is what happens when evidence is destroyed after we demand it be preserved: the law answers. An adverse-inference instruction allows the jury to assume the lost record was as bad as the plaintiff says it was. Sanctions are available. And in some cases, the destruction itself becomes a separate claim. The leverage begins the moment the preservation letter is on file — but only if it was sent before the record was legally erased.
What This Does to a Person: The Psychological Injury No One Can See
The defense in a hazing case will fight hardest on one front: the injury. They will argue you were not physically hurt. No broken bones. No scars. They will say the “injury” is just hurt feelings. Here is the medicine that proves them wrong — and why a forensic psychologist is one of the most important experts in your case.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a formal medical diagnosis, not a label. The diagnostic manual used by every psychiatrist in this country — the DSM-5 — requires eight separate criteria to be met before a PTSD diagnosis is made. The event itself must qualify as a trauma. You must have intrusive symptoms — nightmares, flashbacks, unwanted memories. You must show avoidance — steering clear of places, people, or thoughts connected to what happened. You must have negative changes in cognition and mood — distorted self-blame, persistent fear, detachment from others. And you must have alterations in arousal — hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, sleep disruption, concentration problems. These symptoms must last more than a month and cause real functional impairment. A doctor does not just “feel” you have PTSD. Your symptoms have to clear every gate. When they do — and in a hazing case involving blindfolding, involuntary transport, and forced exposure to disturbing content, they often do — the diagnosis is as real and as provable as a fractured bone.
The “they could have just left” argument is a myth. The defense will say: you were an adult, you were not chained, you could have walked away. The science of coercive control says otherwise. In hazing, the power dynamic between pledges and active members — reinforced by alumni in their 50s wielding generational authority — creates a context where refusal is not psychologically available. The pledge has invested weeks in the process. The group has normalized the conduct. The blindfold itself is a tool of disorientation — you literally cannot leave because you do not know where you are. A forensic psychologist explains to the jury why “just leave” is not a realistic option in this environment, and why the statute’s removal of consent as a defense aligns with what the psychology actually shows.
The memory of trauma does not behave like a normal memory. If your account of what happened has gaps — if you remember the blindfold going on but not the drive, if you remember the strip club but not the order of events — that is not a sign you are lying. It is a documented feature of how the brain encodes memory under extreme stress. Peripheral details fade while central sensory details (the feeling of the blindfold, the sound of a voice, the smell of the room) remain vivid. A disjointed account is not a dishonest account, and an expert witness helps the jury understand the difference.
The lifetime cost of this injury is real. Government public-health researchers have estimated the lifetime economic cost of a single sexual assault — including medical care, lost productivity, and the cascade of consequences that follow — at more than $122,000 per victim, in 2014 dollars. In a hazing case involving coerced participation in a sexualized environment, the damages model draws from similar categories: years of therapy, psychiatric medication, potential tuition loss if you were forced to withdraw or transfer, lost earning capacity, and the non-economic toll of living with PTSD — the nightmares, the avoidance, the relationships that strain, the life that does not go back to what it was. These costs are real, they are documented, and they belong in a demand.
Delayed disclosure is the norm, not the exception. If you did not report what happened immediately — if you are only now, months later, beginning to process what was done to you — the defense will try to use that delay against you. But delayed disclosure is the expected pattern in trauma cases, not evidence of fabrication. The DSM-5 itself recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier for PTSD — full criteria may not appear until six months or more after the event. The shame, the fear of retaliation, the desire to believe it “wasn’t that bad” — these are the barriers that keep people from coming forward, and the science already accounts for them.
What Your Case Is Worth
The value of a hazing case is built from multiple categories of damages, and an honest attorney does not promise a number — they explain how the number is built. Here is how yours is.
Economic damages are the hard costs, provable with receipts and records. They include past and future psychological counseling and psychiatric care — PTSD treatment is not a one-time expense but a multi-year process, often involving weekly therapy, medication management, and potentially intensive outpatient or inpatient programs. They include tuition loss if you were forced to withdraw, transfer, or take a leave of absence. They include lost wages during recovery and any long-term impact on your earning capacity if the trauma affected your academic performance or career trajectory.
Non-economic damages are the human losses no receipt can capture. The severe emotional distress. The PTSD symptoms — the nightmares, the hypervigilance, the avoidance. The reputational harm associated with coerced participation in an adult-entertainment venue. The loss of the college experience you came to the University of Utah to have. The damage to your sense of safety and trust. These are the damages a jury feels, and in a case where 50-year-old men blindfolded 18-year-olds, a jury’s sense of justice runs hot.
Punitive damages are available in Utah when the defendant acted with knowing or reckless indifference to your rights. The standard is “clear and convincing evidence” — a higher bar than the ordinary civil standard, but a bar that this fact pattern clears. The alumni involvement is the engine. A jury that hears men in their 50s organized a group called “The Strip Club Club” to blindfold and transport college freshmen to a strip club will understand — without being told twice — that this is willful and wanton conduct. The national fraternity’s failure to stop a multi-generational hazing culture, despite its own risk-management guidelines, supports punitive exposure against the organizational defendants.
Based on the facts as developed, and applying the damage framework to the documented 14-instance pattern of abuse, the case-value range for an individual plaintiff in this matter runs from approximately $150,000 on the low end to $1,250,000 or more on the high end. The high end assumes severe, documented psychiatric trauma requiring long-term care, the deep-pocket insurance tower of the national fraternity, and the aggravating presence of alumni in their 50s — which inflames a jury’s sense of justice in a way that peer-to-peer misconduct does not. If multiple plaintiffs come forward — and with 14 documented instances, there are multiple victims — the aggregate exposure of the defendants compounds significantly. These figures are not a prediction of what you will receive; they are an honest framework for what the evidence supports. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Insurance Adjuster’s Playbook — and How We Counter Every Play
Within weeks of the university’s findings, representatives of the national fraternity’s insurance carrier — and possibly the university’s risk-management office — will begin making contact with affected pledges. They will be friendly. They will sound like they are on your side. They are not. Here are the plays they will run and the counter to each.
Play 1: The “Just Tell Us What Happened” Recorded Statement. Someone will call or text and ask you to “just talk through what happened” — on a recording. That recording is engineered to be quoted against you. The adjuster is trained to steer you toward words like “I guess I went along with it” or “it wasn’t that bad” — language that will be twisted into “consent” at trial, even though Utah law says consent is not a defense. The counter: Do not give a recorded statement without counsel present. Everything you say will be transcribed, annotated, and used to shrink your case. The statute already says your participation was not consent — do not hand them language that lets them argue otherwise.
Play 2: The Fast Settlement Check. A check may arrive quickly, with a release printed on the back or attached to it, before you have seen a doctor or a therapist. The amount will seem meaningful to a college student — $5,000, $10,000, maybe $25,000. It is a fraction of what your case is worth, and signing the release extinguishes every claim you have, including the ones you do not yet know about. The counter: Never sign anything from the fraternity, its insurer, or the university without an attorney reviewing it. The fast check exists because the carrier knows that once you see a therapist and the PTSD diagnosis is documented, the value of your case multiplies. They are trying to buy you cheap, before the evidence of your injury matures.
Play 3: The “You Chose to Pledge” Blame Shift. The fraternity’s lawyers will frame this as a voluntary activity — you wanted to join, you knew there were traditions, you participated willingly. They will lean on the natural shame a pledge feels about having “gone along with it.” The counter: Utah’s hazing statute has already answered this. Consent is not a defense. The law recognizes what the psychology confirms — the power dynamics of pledging, reinforced by alumni authority, make true consent impossible. We bring in a forensic psychologist to explain the mechanics of coercive control, and we point the jury at the statute that already says participation is not permission.
Play 4: The Social Media Surveillance. The carrier’s investigators will mine your social media — looking for photos of you smiling at a party, or a post where you seem “fine,” or any image they can use to argue you were not traumatized. The counter: We tell you from day one to set every account to private, to post nothing about the case, and to understand that the defense will take a photo of you laughing at a birthday party out of context. PTSD does not mean you never smile again — it means your life changed in ways no photograph can capture. We bring the medical records, the therapist’s notes, and the expert testimony — not your Instagram — to prove the harm.
Play 5: The Delay Toward the Deadline. The carrier stalls. They “need more information.” They “are still investigating.” They are not investigating — they are running the clock. Certain claims in Utah are subject to a two-year limitations period, and claims against the University of Utah as a governmental entity may have even shorter notice-of-claim deadlines. The counter: We file the preservation letters, the records demands, and if necessary the lawsuit itself — on a timeline we control, not one the carrier chooses. The day you call is the day the clock starts working for you instead of against you.
How a Hazing Case Is Actually Built
Here is the chronological walk — from the day you call to the day a jury hears your case — told the way someone who has run it actually speaks.
Week One: The Freeze. The first thing that happens is a wave of preservation letters. They go to the national fraternity, the local chapter, the fraternity house corporation, the strip club venue, and every individual we can identify from the university investigation report. Each letter names the specific evidence — group chats, surveillance footage, alumni rosters, internal audit records, incident reports — and orders each recipient to preserve it. This is what stops the evidence from disappearing. The university investigation report itself is demanded through the appropriate channels.
Weeks Two Through Four: The Intake and the Medical Foundation. You see a therapist. You see a psychiatrist if one is recommended. The diagnosis is built the right way — through the DSM-5 criteria, through validated clinical instruments, through a contemporaneous medical record that pre-dates any accusation that you are “in it for the money.” The closer to the event your first mental-health visit is, the harder it is for the defense to argue your symptoms were caused by something else.
Months One Through Three: The Entity Mapping. We pull the corporate filings for Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. and its Utah chapter entities. We identify the house corporation. We trace the insurance coverage — the national fraternity’s CGL tower, any local chapter policies, the university’s coverage posture, and the personal-liability exposure of the named alumni. The defendant structure in a fraternity hazing case is deliberately layered — a national organization, a local chapter, a house corporation, and individual alumni — and each layer has a different insurance posture. Finding the right entity to name in the complaint is not a clerical task; it is the case.
Months Two Through Four: The Individual Defendant Identification. The alumni rosters, the group-chat records, the university investigation’s witness statements — these identify the men in their 50s who called themselves “The Strip Club Club.” We name them individually. Not because they have deep pockets, but because a jury needs to see their faces and hear their excuses, and because their individual conduct is what drives the punitive-damages argument against the organizational defendants.
Months Three Through Six: Written Discovery and Depositions. The interrogatories go out. The document demands go out. We get the internal fraternity communications — the planning threads, the alumni involvement, the history of prior incidents the national office knew about. Then the depositions, where the “Strip Club Club” leaders sit across the table and explain, under oath, why grown men organized the blindfolding and transport of college freshmen. Their testimony is likely to be damaging, and it increases settlement leverage before trial.
Pretrial: The Expert Foundation. The forensic psychologist’s report is produced. The expert is deposed. The mechanism of coercive control — why you could not “just leave,” why the blindfolding was not a game, why the death videos caused lasting harm — is explained in language a jury will understand. The life-care plan, if your PTSD requires long-term treatment, is built by a certified planner who prices out every year of therapy, every medication, every session, across your lifetime.
Mediation — Only After the Depositions. We do not mediate until the “Strip Club Club” leaders have been deposed and the national fraternity’s failure-to-supervise documents are in our hands. Mediation before the depositions is a concession. Mediation after them is leverage — because the carrier has now seen the evidence, heard its own members struggle to justify their conduct under oath, and understands what a Salt Lake County jury will do with men in their 50s who blindfolded 18-year-olds.
Your First 72 Hours: What to Do and What Never to Do
Do get medical and mental-health care immediately. Find a therapist. If you do not know where to start, the University of Utah’s counseling center can refer you, but understand that the university is a potential defendant — your therapist’s records are your private medical records, not the university’s. If you can, see an independent psychiatrist or psychologist. The first visit creates the contemporaneous medical record that pre-dates any “litigation motive” accusation.
Do not speak to fraternity brothers, alumni, or university investigators without counsel present. After a shutdown like this, the fraternity’s remaining members and alumni will be scrambling. Some will try to “get your story straight.” Some will pressure you not to talk. Some will be genuinely remorseful. Any of them could be building a defense at your expense. Anything you say to them can be twisted into “consent” language. Your silence is your protection until you have an attorney.
Do preserve every piece of digital evidence you personally hold. Screenshots of group chats. Text messages from the fraternity. Photos. Videos. Emails from the university. Anything you received or sent during the pledge period. Download them, back them up, and do not delete anything — even if a “brother” asks you to.
Do not post about this on social media. Not about the hazing. Not about the investigation. Not about how you are feeling. The carrier’s investigators are already looking at your accounts. A post about a night out with friends will be used to argue you are “fine.” Set everything to private and post nothing about the case.
Do write down everything you remember — privately, for your attorney, not for anyone else. The dates. The locations. The people who were there. What you were told. What you were shown. What you were threatened with. Memory degrades with time, and a written timeline created now — while it is fresh — is evidence that cannot be reconstructed later.
Do call us. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. We work with local counsel in Utah as required and have done so for hazing cases. The preservation letters go out the day you hire us. The number is 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911). We answer 24/7 — not an answering service, live staff.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue if I “went along with it” and didn’t say no?
Yes. Utah’s hazing statute explicitly provides that the consent of the victim is not a defense to hazing. The law recognizes what the psychology confirms — the power dynamics of fraternity pledging, especially when reinforced by alumni in their 50s, make true consent impossible. You do not lose your right to recover because you did not fight your way out of a blindfold.
How long do I have to file a lawsuit?
Certain claims in Utah are subject to a two-year limitations period, but claims against the University of Utah as a governmental entity may have significantly shorter notice-of-claim deadlines under the Utah Governmental Immunity Act. The deadlines are already running. The day you call is the day we can start protecting them. Do not assume you have “plenty of time” — the government-entity deadlines can be the shortest and the hardest to extend.
Can I sue the national fraternity, or just the local chapter?
You sue both. The national fraternity — Sigma Nu Fraternity, Inc. — is liable for the negligent supervision of its chartered chapter and for failing to monitor a chapter with what appears to be a multi-generational culture of hazing involving alumni. The national organization carries the insurance coverage that makes the case worth pursuing. The local chapter and its officers are liable for direct participation. The alumni are liable individually. Every layer is a separate defendant with a separate source of recovery.
What if the strip club surveillance footage has already been erased?
Security footage at adult-entertainment venues is often overwritten on a rolling cycle — sometimes as short as 30 days. If the footage from fall 2024 is gone, that is not the end of the case. If we sent a preservation demand and the venue failed to preserve the footage after receiving it, we seek an adverse-inference instruction — telling the jury they can assume the lost footage would have helped you. And the university investigation report, the witness statements, and the group-chat records can establish what happened even without the video.
The university already shut down the fraternity. Isn’t that enough?
No. The university’s administrative action — terminating Sigma Nu’s affiliation — protects future students. It does nothing for you. It does not pay for your therapy. It does not compensate you for the trauma. It does not hold the 50-year-old alumni personally accountable. A civil lawsuit is the only mechanism that forces the people who harmed you to pay for what they did, and the only one that puts money in your hands to cover the cost of your recovery.
What if I don’t have a PTSD diagnosis yet?
That is exactly why the first step is getting a mental-health evaluation. PTSD is not a label you give yourself — it is a formal medical diagnosis with eight specific criteria that a clinician must verify. If you have symptoms — nightmares, avoidance, hypervigilance, sleep disruption, difficulty concentrating, intrusive memories — a qualified therapist or psychiatrist can evaluate whether you meet the diagnostic threshold. The closer to the event your first evaluation is, the stronger the causal link between the hazing and your injury.
Will I have to face the alumni who did this to me?
In a civil case, the depositions of the “Strip Club Club” participants are taken by your attorney — you do not face them in a room. At trial, if the case goes that far, you may testify, but the alumni would also have to testify, and they would have to answer for their conduct in front of a jury. Most hazing cases settle before trial, often after the depositions — because once the alumni have been examined under oath, the carrier understands exactly how bad their testimony will sound to a jury.
How much does it cost to hire you?
Nothing upfront. We work on contingency — 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. “We don’t get paid unless we win your case” is not a slogan; it is the fee structure. The consultation is free. The preservation letters are part of the representation. You pay nothing out of pocket for the investigation, the experts, or the litigation. If we recover nothing, you owe nothing.
Why This Firm: Ralph Manginello, Lupe Peña, and the Team Behind Attorney911
We are not a firm that stumbled onto a hazing case. We are a firm that chose to litigate them. 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 he knows how to tell it to a jury. He is the managing partner of the firm and the lead counsel on the active $10 million hazing lawsuit we currently litigate against a fraternity and a university. He does not take hazing cases as a sideline. He takes them because what happened to you is wrong, and the law gives him the tools to prove it.
Lupe Peña 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, before the real injuries are diagnosed. He knows how the recorded-statement call is engineered. He knows how the software values a claim — and where its blind spots are. He sat on the other side of the table. Now he sits on yours. He is fluent in Spanish and conducts full consultations in Spanish without an interpreter.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are based in Houston, Texas, and we take Utah hazing cases, working with local counsel as required. We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients across our 24-plus years of practice. Our Google rating stands at 4.9 stars. Our staff is live, 24 hours a day, seven days a week — not an answering service. When you call 1-888-ATTY-911 (1-888-288-9911) at 2 a.m., a human being picks up.
The evidence in your case is disappearing. The deadline to file is running. The men who did this are hoping you never call. Prove them wrong. The consultation is free. The call is confidential. And if we are not the right fit for your case, we will tell you honestly — because the only thing worse than not calling is calling the wrong firm and losing your window.
Hablamos Español. Llame al 1-888-ATTY-911. La consulta es gratis. No cobramos a menos que ganemos su caso.
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.