The 70 Interventions They Knew About: Fraternity Hazing Wrongful Death in Pullman
If you are reading this page, you may be standing where Jolayne Houtz and Hector Martinez stood after losing their 19-year-old son Sam — a Washington State University freshman who died from alcohol poisoning at an Alpha Tau Omega fraternity hazing event in 2019. You may be a parent who searched for safety information about a fraternity and found nothing, the way Sam’s mother searched and found nothing. You may be learning, only after the worst has already happened, that the danger was documented — that authorities had intervened at that same chapter house nearly 70 times in the six years before your child died, and that the university and the national fraternity knew it at their highest leadership levels and did nothing effective to stop it.
We are Attorney911. We are a trial firm that takes Washington wrongful-death and fraternity-hazing cases, working with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. We currently litigate a \$10 million hazing lawsuit against a university and a national fraternity — so the machinery of these cases, the defendant structures, the insurance towers, and the institutional excuses are not abstract to us. This page is legal information, not legal advice. Contacting us is free and confidential. And we do not get paid unless we win your case.
What happened at WSU is not an isolated tragedy. It is a documented pattern of institutional failure — 70 interventions over six years, by the university, the national fraternity, and local police, at a single chapter house where hazing was already known to be happening. The family learned that number only after their son was dead. The institutions had it the whole time. That gap — between what they knew and what they told the family — is where the legal case lives.
What Happened at Washington State University
In 2019, Sam Martinez was a 19-year-old freshman at Washington State University in Pullman, Whitman County, Washington. He wanted to join a fraternity. His mother, Jolayne Houtz, later said she searched hard for information about the chapter’s safety record and found nothing. He pledged Alpha Tau Omega.
At a fraternity hazing event, Sam was encouraged to drink excessively — the kind of coerced binge consumption that defines hazing rituals at chapters across the country. He died from alcohol poisoning. He was 19 years old, below the legal drinking age in every state in the country.
After his death, his family learned what the institutions had known all along: authorities from Washington State, the ATO fraternity, and local police had intervened at that chapter house nearly 70 times in the six years before Sam died — for a range of misconduct violations, including hazing. WSU and ATO knew this at their highest leadership levels. They did nothing effective to stop it.
“Hazing thrives in darkness and has for generations. The Stop Campus Hazing Act brings hazing out of the shadows and into the light.”
That is what Sam’s mother told a reporter after the federal Stop Campus Hazing Act passed the U.S. Senate unanimously in December 2024 — a bill she and other grieving families had pushed for across a decade. The legislation matters. But the civil justice system is a separate road, and the institutions that failed Sam still owe accountability under Washington law regardless of what Congress does.
Pullman is a small college town — roughly 32,000 people, swelling during the academic year — on the eastern edge of Washington, near the Idaho border. WSU dominates the town economically and culturally. The Whitman County Superior Court, located in Colfax, serves as the primary trial venue for civil matters arising in Pullman. Jury pools drawn from the surrounding rural agricultural region tend to be conservative but community-oriented — people who understand what it means when an institution in their own community fails to protect a young person it was supposed to serve.
Who Is Legally Responsible for a Fraternity Hazing Death
A fraternity hazing death is never one defendant’s fault on paper. The liability fans out across a deliberate stack of entities, each designed to point at the others. Here is the structure, and here is why naming every layer matters.
Alpha Tau Omega National Fraternity. The national organization maintains authority over chapter operations, risk management policies, and disciplinary oversight. Its own rules prohibit hazing. The article confirms that ATO knew of the 70 prior interventions at the highest leadership levels. A national fraternity that knows its chapter has been cited for hazing 70 times in six years and does not revoke the charter, reorganize the chapter, or impose meaningful supervision is not a bystander. It is an institution that chose to keep collecting dues and licensing its name while the danger it documented continued.
The ATO Local Chapter at WSU. The chapter directly hosted the hazing event. Chapter members organized and executed the ritual. The local chapter is where the individual conduct happened — but it is also the entity with the thinnest assets and the smallest insurance policy. Suing only the local chapter is exactly what the other defendants hope you do.
Washington State University. As the institution housing and regulating the fraternity, WSU had knowledge of the 70 prior interventions and failed to take effective corrective action. The article confirms WSU knew at its highest leadership levels. When a university voluntarily assumes regulatory authority over Greek organizations through its student conduct system, it creates a duty of reasonable care in exercising that oversight. WSU breached that duty 70 times over six years — not by failing to notice, but by noticing and failing to act.
Individual fraternity members who supplied or encouraged alcohol consumption. Washington law prohibits furnishing alcohol to minors. The individual members who handed a 19-year-old bottles of liquor and told him to drink — or created the social environment where refusal was punished — face both criminal exposure and civil liability. Their homeowners’ insurance often excludes intentional acts, but negligent furnishing of alcohol to a minor is a recognized civil claim in many jurisdictions.
The ATO House Corporation or Chapter House Entity. If a separate legal entity owns or manages the chapter house — and most national fraternities use this structure — it bears premises liability for dangerous conditions and activities occurring on the property. Hosting hazing events involving dangerous levels of alcohol consumption on the property is a dangerous condition the property owner knew or should have known about. The 70 prior interventions prove it.
The shell game works like this: the national points at the local chapter and says “we just license the name.” The university points at the fraternity and says “we don’t control their internal rituals.” The local chapter points at the individual members and says “they acted on their own.” The house corporation says “we just own the building.” Each entity is designed to be judgment-proof on its own. Naming every layer — and proving the control and knowledge that connects them — is the difference between a settlement that covers a funeral and a recovery that reflects what was actually lost.
Washington’s Anti-Hazing Law and the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing Act
Washington state responded to Sam’s death by strengthening its anti-hazing law — formally renaming it in his memory. The Sam Martinez Stop Hazing law establishes hazing as both a criminal offense and a basis for institutional accountability. It mandates institutional reporting and prevention measures at public and private institutions within the state.
Washington also prohibits furnishing alcohol to persons under 21 under its liquor control statutes. This is not just a criminal prohibition — it creates per se negligence for civil liability purposes. When fraternity members furnish alcohol to a 19-year-old, they have violated a statute designed to protect exactly this category of person from exactly this kind of harm. In a civil wrongful-death case, that statutory violation is powerful evidence of negligence — and in some applications, negligence per se.
Washington’s wrongful-death statute permits recovery by surviving parents and beneficiaries. The general statute of limitations runs three years from the date of death. For any family facing this situation, the first question is whether that window is still open — and the answer depends on the exact date of death and whether any case was already filed. This is not something to guess about. It is something to confirm with a lawyer immediately.
Washington does not impose statutory caps on non-economic damages in wrongful death actions, allowing full recovery for loss of companionship, emotional distress, and other intangible harms.
That principle — no caps — is one of the strongest advantages Washington law gives to a family that has lost a child to institutional failure. In states that cap non-economic damages, a wrongful-death case can be artificially limited regardless of how egregious the conduct was. Washington does not do this. A jury in Whitman County can award what the loss is actually worth — the love, the guidance, the companionship, the future that was taken — without a statutory ceiling cutting the number down.
Washington also follows a pure comparative negligence standard. This means a plaintiff’s recovery is reduced by their percentage of fault but is not barred entirely. In a hazing case, the defense will try to assign fault to the deceased — “he chose to drink” — and every percentage point they pin on him is money off the recovery. But the power dynamics of hazing, the documented pattern of prior interventions, and the statutory violation of furnishing alcohol to a minor are the answers to that defense. A 19-year-old pledge in a coercive group ritual did not “choose” the way a 25-year-old at a bar chooses. The law recognizes the difference, and a wrongful death claim built by a trial team that understands hazing dynamics makes the jury see it too.
The Federal Stop Campus Hazing Act: What It Changes and What It Doesn’t
The Stop Campus Hazing Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives and then passed the U.S. Senate unanimously in December 2024. It awaits presidential signature as of the article’s publication. It is the first federal anti-hazing law, and it was a decade in the making — pushed by families like the DeVercelly family, who lost their son in 2007, and the Martinez family, who lost Sam in 2019.
The Act has four key elements:
Transparency. It requires all public and private colleges and universities in all 50 states to publish their hazing prevention policies on their websites, along with the campus organizations that have violated those policies. For the first time, families will be able to see which groups have been disciplined for hazing — the information Sam’s mother searched for and could not find.
Clery reporting. It mandates that schools include hazing incidents in their annual campus crime reports — the Clery reports that institutions receiving federal Title IV funding are already required to produce each year. The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act already requires reporting of campus crime statistics, including incidents referred for disciplinary action. The Stop Campus Hazing Act adds hazing to that framework.
Education. It establishes campus-wide, research-based hazing education and prevention programs. Many campuses currently do not address hazing at all. Under the new law, they will have to.
A consistent definition. It creates a uniform definition of hazing across all 50 states for the first time. Currently, states are all over the map — some only cover fraternities and sororities, some include athletic teams and marching bands, some include K-12 schools, and six states have no hazing law at all.
What the Act does not do is create a private civil cause of action. It is a transparency and prevention statute, not a tort remedy. The civil case — the lawsuit that holds the fraternity, the university, and the individuals accountable in dollars — still runs through state wrongful-death and negligence law. The Act is a shield for the next family. The civil justice system is the sword for this one.
Sam’s mother described the transparency gap with devastating clarity:
“When my son Sam wanted to join a fraternity at Washington State University, I searched hard for information and found nothing. But then, months later, after he died, we learned that authorities from Washington State, from his fraternity, Alpha Tau Omega, and local police had intervened at that chapter house nearly 70 times for a range of misconduct violations, including hazing, in the six years before Sam died.”
That is the sentence that should keep every university general counsel and every national fraternity risk manager awake at night. The information existed. The institutions had it. They chose not to share it with the family. And the family only learned the truth after their son was dead.
The Medicine of Alcohol Poisoning: How Hazing Kills
Alcohol poisoning is not a gradual decline. It is a cascade — and the fraternity hazing environment is specifically engineered to trigger it.
When a person consumes a large volume of alcohol rapidly — the “chugging” or “funneling” that defines hazing rituals — the blood alcohol concentration rises faster than the liver can metabolize it. At high BAC levels, the central nervous system depresses in a predictable sequence: slurred speech, loss of coordination, confusion, then stupor, then coma. The medullary respiratory centers — the part of the brain that tells the body to breathe — slow down. Breathing becomes shallow and irregular. The gag reflex, which protects the airway, is suppressed. If the person vomits — and alcohol poisoning frequently causes vomiting — they cannot protect their airway. Aspiration of gastric contents can cause asphyxiation. Even without aspiration, pure respiratory depression leads to hypoxia — the brain and heart are starved of oxygen — and cardiac arrest follows.
The lethal BAC threshold varies by individual, but it is generally above 0.30 to 0.40 percent. For context, the legal driving limit is 0.08. A 19-year-old with low body mass and limited alcohol tolerance can reach lethal levels with a volume of hard liquor that an experienced drinker might survive. The fraternity hazing ritual does not account for individual tolerance. It demands consumption — and the pledge who hesitates faces social punishment from the group whose acceptance he is desperate to earn.
The critical failure point is almost always after the event. The “passed out” pledge is left to “sleep it off.” This is the moment where monitoring and medical intervention could save a life — and it is the moment where the fraternity’s culture of silence and self-protection takes over. A person who has passed out from alcohol poisoning may stop breathing within minutes to hours. The gag reflex is already suppressed. The breathing centers are already depressed. Without someone watching — checking breathing, positioning on the side, calling 911 when breathing becomes irregular — the person dies. The “let him sleep it off” instruction is not negligence. It is abandonment.
The survival damages — the conscious pain and suffering Sam experienced before death — are real and compensable. The terror of progressive respiratory depression, the physical distress of poisoning, the body’s struggle to breathe, the progressive loss of consciousness — these are not abstract harms. They are documented in the toxicology report, the autopsy findings, and the timeline of the evening. A forensic toxicologist can reconstruct the BAC trajectory from the postmortem blood alcohol level, the estimated time of death, and the known elimination rate of alcohol. That reconstruction shows how fast the BAC rose — which shows the hazing pattern of rapid, coerced consumption, not social drinking.
“He Chose to Drink” — The Defense Playbook and How We Answer It
The insurance adjuster and the defense lawyer have a playbook for fraternity hazing deaths, and it has been refined across decades of cases. Here are the plays, and here is how we answer each one.
Play 1: “He chose to drink.” This is the defense’s favorite line. It reframes a coerced hazing ritual as a voluntary social activity. The answer is the power dynamics. A 19-year-old pledge is in a structurally vulnerable position — his status within the group he is desperate to join is contingent on submission to the ritual. The entire active membership stands on one side; he stands alone on the other. “Voluntary” consumption under these conditions is not truly voluntary. The fraternity’s own risk management policies — which the national organization maintains and which prohibit hazing — prove that the organization itself recognizes the danger. A fraternity that says “he chose to drink” is a fraternity that is simultaneously telling its own members, in writing, that this exact conduct is forbidden. The contradiction is the case.
Play 2: “The university didn’t control the fraternity’s internal activities.” This is the voluntary-undertaking defense. WSU chose to regulate Greek organizations through its student conduct system. It chose to intervene 70 times. Having assumed that regulatory authority, it owed a duty of reasonable care in exercising it. Seventy interventions that did not stop the hazing are not evidence of due diligence — they are evidence of deliberate indifference. The university noticed the danger 70 times and did not revoke the chapter’s recognition, suspend its activities, or impose meaningful consequences. “We tried but failed” is not a defense when the failure is this documented and this persistent.
Play 3: “The national organization can’t control what local chapters do.” The national fraternity maintains authority over chapter operations, risk management policies, and disciplinary oversight. It collects dues. It licenses its name. It publishes risk management standards that prohibit hazing. When it learns — 70 times — that its chapter is violating those standards, and it does not revoke the charter or reorganize the chapter, it has made a choice. The choice is to keep the revenue stream and accept the risk. That is not lack of control. That is control exercised in favor of the status quo.
Play 4: The quick settlement check. Within days or weeks, someone from the fraternity’s insurance company or the university’s risk management office will call the family. The voice will be warm. The offer will be fast. The release will be buried in the paperwork. The check will arrive before the family has had time to understand the full scope of what happened — before the 70 prior interventions are documented, before the toxicology is fully analyzed, before the full defendant stack is identified. The answer is simple: do not sign anything, do not give a recorded statement, and do not accept a check before you have spoken to a lawyer who handles hazing wrongful-death cases. The first offer is designed to close the case at the lowest possible number. It is never the full value.
Play 5: The recorded statement. Someone friendly will call to “check on the family” and ask the family to “just tell us what happened” on a recording. That recording is built to be quoted against the family later — to extract a sentence that can be framed as “the family acknowledges their son was responsible for his own drinking.” The answer: do not give a recorded statement to the other side. Not ever. Not without your lawyer present.
The Evidence Clock: Records That Exist and How Fast They Disappear
The evidence in a fraternity hazing wrongful-death case is perishable. Some of it is already gone. Some of it is on a legal destruction clock right now. Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it can legally die.
WSU Office of Student Conduct disciplinary records for the ATO chapter. These documents prove the 70 prior interventions and establish actual notice to the university of the dangerous pattern. Institutional records are retained per university policy but may be subject to records destruction schedules. A preservation letter should issue immediately to freeze them. The university’s own retention policies may allow destruction of older disciplinary files — and six years of records are exactly the ones at risk.
ATO national organization risk management files and chapter correspondence. These establish the national fraternity’s knowledge of the chapter’s misconduct history and its failure to act. National fraternity organizations maintain archives but may purge files after disciplinary closure. A litigation hold is needed the moment a case is contemplated.
Pullman Police Department call logs and incident reports for the ATO chapter house. These corroborate the 70 prior interventions and establish law enforcement awareness of the danger. Police records are generally retained long-term but should be formally requested through public records channels.
Toxicology report and autopsy findings. These establish cause of death as alcohol poisoning and document the blood alcohol concentration at time of death. These were completed in 2019 and should be part of the official record. The toxicology report is the foundation of the survival damages claim — it shows the BAC that killed, and a forensic toxicologist can work backward from it to show the rate and volume of consumption that the hazing ritual required.
Fraternity event records, pledge activity schedules, and group communications. These document the hazing ritual structure and identify individual participants who supplied or encouraged alcohol. Group chats, social media posts, and internal fraternity communications may have been deleted but could be recoverable through forensic analysis. The members who were there know what happened — and their phones may still hold the evidence even if they have deleted messages.
WSU and ATO leadership email communications regarding the ATO chapter. These prove knowledge at the highest leadership levels, as the article states. Email retention policies vary — institutional emails may be subject to automatic deletion after defined periods. A university that knew about 70 interventions and did nothing may not be eager to preserve the emails that prove it. The preservation letter has to go out before the retention clock runs out.
The fastest-dying evidence is the digital evidence — group chats, social media posts, phone records, surveillance footage. The most powerful evidence is the institutional evidence — the 70 interventions, the disciplinary records, the emails between leadership. Both need to be frozen immediately. The day a family calls is the day the preservation letters go out. Not the week. Not the month. That day.
What a Hazing Wrongful Death Case Is Worth in Washington
The wrongful death of a 19-year-old college freshman generates catastrophic damages. In Washington, those damages are not capped. Here is how the number is built.
Economic damages. Loss of lifetime earning capacity is the largest single economic component. A forensic economist projects what Sam would have earned across a statistical work-life expectancy — the expected number of years a person of his age, education, and training would actually be in the labor force. The projection accounts for his educational trajectory at WSU, his expected career path, and statistical work-life tables derived from federal labor data. It also includes employer-paid benefits — health insurance, retirement contributions, paid leave — which federal figures show run roughly 30 percent of total compensation on top of wages. Funeral and burial expenses are recoverable. Loss of financial support to family beneficiaries is recoverable.
Non-economic damages. These are the human losses no receipt can measure: loss of love, loss of companionship, loss of guidance, the emotional devastation of parents losing a child to entirely preventable institutional failures. In Washington, these are not capped. A jury in Whitman County can award what the loss is actually worth — and the loss of a 19-year-old son to a fraternity hazing event that 70 prior interventions should have prevented is a loss that a jury can understand in its bones.
Punitive damages. The 70 prior interventions over six years, combined with documented knowledge at the highest leadership levels of both WSU and ATO, create a powerful punitive damages case. Punitive damages are not about compensation — they are about punishment and deterrence. They are available when the defendant’s conduct shows a conscious disregard of a known and recurring danger. Seventy interventions is not a mistake. It is a pattern. It is an institution that documented the danger 70 times and chose to do nothing effective. That is the textbook predicate for punitive damages — and in Washington, where non-economic damages are uncapped, the punitive exposure compounds the recovery rather than replacing it.
Survival damages. If Sam was conscious during any part of the alcohol poisoning process — and the toxicology and timeline may establish that he was — his estate has a survival claim for his conscious pain and suffering. Alcohol poisoning involves severe physical distress: respiratory depression, the terror of not being able to breathe, nausea and vomiting, progressive loss of consciousness. These are not abstract harms. They are the documented progression of acute alcohol intoxication, and a forensic toxicologist can reconstruct the timeline from the postmortem findings.
The case value range for a hazing wrongful death with this fact pattern — a young victim, clear institutional notice through 70 prior interventions, multiple deep-pocket defendants, no statutory damage caps in Washington, and strong punitive exposure — is in the eight-figure range. Comparable hazing wrongful death cases nationally have resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements and verdicts. The notice evidence here is exceptional — 70 prior interventions is not a single missed warning sign. It is six years of documented institutional failure.
Every case is different. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. The specific value of any case depends on the evidence, the defendants, the jurisdiction, and the jury. But the framework — economic, non-economic, punitive, survival — is how a real number is built, and the adjuster’s first offer is always a fraction of it.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do After a Fraternity Hazing Death
If your family has lost a child to a fraternity hazing event, the first 72 hours are not about filing a lawsuit. They are about protecting the evidence and protecting yourselves from the institutional machinery that is already moving.
Hour 1 through 24: Do not sign anything. Do not give a recorded statement. Within days, someone from the fraternity’s insurance company, the university’s risk management office, or a “claims administrator” will contact the family. The voice will be warm. The stated purpose will be to “express condolences” or “gather information.” The real purpose is to lock in a low settlement before the family understands the full scope of what happened. Do not sign a release. Do not give a recorded statement. Do not accept a check. Say nothing beyond “we are not ready to discuss this” and end the call.
Hour 24 through 48: Get the autopsy and toxicology report started or confirmed. If the death is recent, the medical examiner or coroner should be conducting an autopsy and toxicology screen. Confirm that this is happening. Request copies when complete. The toxicology report — the blood alcohol concentration at time of death — is the single most important medical document in the case. It proves the cause of death and, through reconstruction, the rate and volume of consumption that the hazing ritual required.
Hour 48 through 72: Send preservation letters. This is where a lawyer earns their keep. The preservation letter — the litigation hold — goes out to WSU, to ATO national, to the local chapter, to the Pullman Police Department, and to any other entity that holds evidence. The letter orders them, in writing, to freeze all records: disciplinary files, email communications, risk management files, incident reports, group chats, surveillance footage, pledge records. Once the letter is on file, destroying the evidence becomes spoliation — and a jury can be told to assume the destroyed records were as bad as the family says they were.
Do not post on social media. The defense will be watching. A post about the death, about the grief, about the anger at the fraternity — anything — can be screenshotted and used. Grieve privately. Let your lawyer speak publicly.
Do not talk to the fraternity’s lawyer. The fraternity may send a lawyer or a representative to “offer support” or “answer questions.” This person is not your friend. They are gathering information to defend the fraternity. Every word you say to them will be used against you.
Call a lawyer who handles hazing wrongful-death cases. Not a generalist. Not a friend who does real estate. A trial lawyer who has built cases against fraternities and universities — who knows the defendant structure, the insurance towers, the evidence clocks, and the defense playbook. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. And if the lawyer takes the case, the fee is contingency — a percentage of the recovery, not an hourly bill. We do not get paid unless we win.
How We Build the Case: The Proof Story
Here is how a fraternity hazing wrongful-death case is actually built — week by week, record by record, deposition by deposition.
Week one: The preservation letter goes out. Letters go to WSU’s Office of Student Conduct, to ATO’s national headquarters, to the local chapter, to the Pullman Police Department, and to the ATO house corporation if one exists. Each letter names the specific records to be preserved: disciplinary files for the ATO chapter going back six years, email communications between university leadership regarding the chapter, the national fraternity’s risk management file for the chapter, police call logs and incident reports for the chapter house address, pledge event records, group communications, and any surveillance footage. The letter puts every recipient on notice that destroying these records is spoliation.
Weeks two through eight: Records demands and public records requests. We file public records requests with WSU and the Pullman Police Department for all documents related to the ATO chapter. We demand the university’s student conduct records, the police incident reports, and any correspondence between university officials and the fraternity. We request the autopsy and toxicology reports from the medical examiner. We start building the timeline — every intervention, every complaint, every disciplinary action (or inaction) over six years.
Months two through six: Discovery. Once the case is filed, we use the discovery process to force the defendants to produce what the preservation letter froze. We depose the university officials who knew about the 70 interventions — the people in the student conduct office, the Greek life advisors, the administrators who received the reports. We depose the national fraternity’s risk management staff — the people who maintained the file on the chapter, who knew about the prior interventions, who decided not to revoke the charter. We depose the individual fraternity members who were present at the hazing event — who supplied the alcohol, who encouraged the consumption, who left Sam to “sleep it off.”
The 70 interventions are the spine of the case. Every single intervention is a data point. Every one is a date, a complaint, a response (or non-response), and a person who knew. Laid out chronologically, they tell a story that no defendant can escape: the danger was not just foreseeable — it was foreseen. Seventy times. Over six years. By three separate institutions. And none of them stopped it.
The expert witnesses. A fraternity culture and hazing practices expert explains the coercive dynamics that overcome a pledge’s voluntary will — why “he chose to drink” is a legal fiction in the hazing context. A forensic toxicologist reconstructs Sam’s blood alcohol trajectory and demonstrates how the hazing environment produced lethal consumption levels. A forensic economist projects lifetime earnings based on Sam’s educational trajectory at WSU, expected career path, and statistical work-life expectancy. Each expert’s testimony is grounded in the specific facts of this case, not in generic theory.
The depositions where the story locks in. The deposition of the university official who received the 70th intervention report and did nothing. The deposition of the national fraternity staff member who maintained the chapter’s risk management file and did not recommend charter revocation. The deposition of the fraternity member who handed a 19-year-old a bottle of liquor and told him to drink. Under oath, with a court reporter, with the transcript that will be read to a jury — that is where the institutional excuses collapse.
The number at the end is built from all of it. The economic damages from the forensic economist. The non-economic damages from the loss the jury can see and feel. The punitive damages from the 70 interventions that prove conscious disregard. The survival damages from the toxicology that shows the conscious pain and suffering. The settlement demand — or the verdict presentation — is the sum of all of it, documented, sourced, and ready for a jury in Whitman County.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a fraternity for a hazing death?
Yes. A fraternity — both the local chapter and the national organization — can be held legally responsible for a hazing death. The national organization maintains authority over chapter operations and risk management; when it knows its chapter has been cited for hazing and does not act, it shares the liability. The local chapter hosted the event and its members executed the ritual. In Washington, the state’s anti-hazing law creates statutory liability for hazing conduct, and the wrongful-death statute permits the family to recover. The civil case is separate from any criminal prosecution — and it is the road to financial accountability for the institutions that failed your child.
How long do I have to file a wrongful death lawsuit in Washington?
Washington’s wrongful-death statute generally gives families three years from the date of death to file. This is a hard deadline — miss it and the case is over, no matter how strong the evidence is. For any family facing this situation, the first question is whether that window is still open, and the answer depends on the exact date of death and whether any case was already filed. Do not wait to find out. Confirm the deadline with a lawyer immediately.
What if my son “voluntarily” drank the alcohol?
This is the defense’s favorite argument, and it is a lie. A 19-year-old pledge in a fraternity hazing ritual is not drinking voluntarily in any meaningful legal sense. The power dynamics of hazing — the entire active membership on one side, the pledge alone on the other, acceptance contingent on submission — are designed to overcome individual choice. The fraternity’s own risk management policies prohibit hazing, which means the organization itself recognizes that this conduct is not voluntary social drinking. Washington follows a pure comparative negligence standard, so even if the defense assigns some percentage of fault to the deceased, the family still recovers — reduced by that percentage, but not barred. And the statutory violation of furnishing alcohol to a minor is powerful evidence that the fault lies with the people who gave the alcohol, not the 19-year-old who was pressured to consume it.
Can Washington State University be held responsible?
Yes. WSU voluntarily assumed regulatory authority over Greek organizations through its student conduct system. Having assumed that authority, it owed a duty of reasonable care in exercising it. The article confirms that WSU knew about the 70 prior interventions at the highest leadership levels. Seventy interventions over six years that did not stop the hazing are not evidence of due diligence — they are evidence of deliberate indifference. A university that documents a danger 70 times and does not revoke the chapter’s recognition, suspend its activities, or impose meaningful consequences has breached its duty of care.
What is the Sam Martinez Stop Hazing law?
The Sam Martinez Stop Hazing law is Washington state’s anti-hazing statute, strengthened and renamed in Sam Martinez’s memory after his death. It establishes hazing as both a criminal offense and a basis for institutional accountability. It mandates institutional reporting and prevention measures at public and private institutions within the state. Washington is one of nine states that currently require hazing incident data to be transparent — meaning that the kind of information Sam’s family could not find before he joined should now be available to families. The state law is separate from the federal Stop Campus Hazing Act, which creates a national transparency framework.
How much is a fraternity hazing wrongful death case worth?
The value depends on the specific facts, but the framework is this: economic damages (lost lifetime earning capacity, funeral costs, loss of financial support), non-economic damages (loss of love, companionship, guidance — uncapped in Washington), punitive damages (available when the defendant showed conscious disregard of a known danger — the 70 prior interventions are the punitive engine), and survival damages (the conscious pain and suffering from alcohol poisoning before death). For a case with this fact pattern — a young victim, clear institutional notice, multiple deep-pocket defendants, no caps, and strong punitive exposure — the value range is in the eight figures. Comparable hazing wrongful death cases nationally have resulted in multi-million-dollar settlements and verdicts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
What evidence do we need to preserve?
The most important evidence is the institutional record: WSU’s Office of Student Conduct disciplinary files for the ATO chapter (the 70 interventions), ATO national’s risk management files and chapter correspondence, Pullman Police Department call logs and incident reports for the chapter house, and email communications between WSU and ATO leadership regarding the chapter. The medical evidence — the toxicology report and autopsy findings — establishes the cause of death and the BAC at time of death. The digital evidence — group chats, social media posts, internal fraternity communications — documents the hazing ritual structure and identifies individual participants. All of this evidence is perishable. Preservation letters must go out immediately to freeze it before the defendants’ retention policies allow destruction.
Does the national fraternity organization pay or just the local chapter?
Both can be held responsible, and naming both is critical. The national fraternity maintains authority over chapter operations, risk management policies, and disciplinary oversight. It collects dues and licenses its name. When it knows — as ATO national knew, at the highest leadership levels — that its chapter has been cited 70 times for misconduct including hazing, and it does not revoke the charter or impose meaningful supervision, it has made a choice to keep the revenue stream and accept the risk. The national organization typically carries larger liability coverage than the local chapter. Suing only the local chapter — which may have minimal assets and a thin insurance policy — is exactly what the national organization hopes you do.
What if my child was injured but survived hazing?
Hazing injuries that do not result in death are still actionable. Alcohol poisoning that required hospitalization, physical injuries from hazing rituals, and the psychological trauma of coercive group abuse are all compensable harms. Washington’s anti-hazing law applies to hazing conduct that causes injury, not just death. The same defendant structure — national fraternity, local chapter, university, individual members — applies. The damages framework shifts from wrongful death to personal injury, but the liability analysis is the same: who knew, who failed to act, and what harm resulted.
How do I know if my family has a case?
If your child died or was seriously injured in a fraternity hazing event at a college or university in Washington, and the institution or the fraternity had prior knowledge of hazing at that chapter, you may have a case. The strength of the case depends on the documentation of prior notice, the severity of the harm, and the defendant structure. The only way to know for certain is to talk to a lawyer who handles hazing wrongful-death cases — and the call is free. We handle fraternity and sorority hazing lawsuits and we can evaluate your situation at no cost.
Why This Firm — Ralph Manginello and Lupe Peña
Ralph Manginello is the managing partner of Attorney911 and has spent 27-plus years in courtrooms, including federal court. He is the lead counsel in the active \$10 million hazing lawsuit against the University of Houston and Pi Kappa Phi fraternity — a case that involves the same kind of institutional failure, the same kind of fraternity defendant structure, and the same kind of fight against organizations that knew about the danger and did not stop it. Ralph was a journalist before he was a lawyer, which means he knows how to find the documents the institutions do not want found — and how to present them to a jury in a way that makes the failure undeniable. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Texas, and he takes Washington cases with local counsel and pro hac vice admission where required. Read more about Ralph here.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney at the firm and a former insurance-defense attorney. He spent years inside a national defense firm — in the rooms where adjusters and their software decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the reserve is set in the first 48 hours, how the recorded-statement call is engineered, how the quick settlement check is designed to close the case before the family understands the full scope. Now he sits on your side of the table. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. Read more about Lupe here.
We work on contingency. The fee is 33.33 percent of the recovery before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. We do not get paid unless we win your case. The first consultation is free, and it is confidential. You can reach us at 1-888-ATTY-911 — 1-888-288-9911 — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You will speak to a live person, not an answering service.
Hablamos Español. We serve your family fully in Spanish.
This page is legal information, not legal advice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. Every case is different, and the specific value of any case depends on the evidence, the defendants, the jurisdiction, and the jury. But the law is real, the institutions are reachable, and the families who fight are the ones who force the changes that protect the next student. Call us today — or call tonight, at 2 a.m., when the grief is loudest and the questions are heaviest. We are here.