20-year-old Radford student, John Doe, was pledging the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity when he was given a “ritual” bottle of liquor and drank it in an hour. Doe was found dead at his Fairfax Street home with a blood-alcohol content of 0.48, six times the legal limit for driving.

Our complaint alleged that the TKE chapter officers and members coerced Doe to consume fatal quantities of his ‘family drink,’ rendering him helpless and in need of emergency medical care, which the defendants failed to obtain.

Instead, the fraternity members carried Doe to his apartment, where he was found dead, “having vomited in the bed where he had been placed,” with a blood alcohol content of .48 percent.

Had [Doe] received timely proper care, instead of having been removed from the chapter house, as he was succumbing to alcohol poisoning, suffering and slowly dying, he would have survived unharmed.

– Virginia Circuit Court, Fairfax County, Case No. 2012-04085