A Baton Rouge, Louisiana, jury has awarded $6.1 million to the parents of a Louisiana State University student who died as a result of alcohol poisoning in a 2017 hazing incident.
Max Gruver, 18, started his freshman year at LSU in the fall of 2017, when he began pledging with the Phi Delta Theta fraternity and died the day after participating in a “Bible Study” drinking game at the fraternity house, according to his parents’ wrongful death lawsuit.
Jurors on March 8 concluded that former fraternity member Matthew Naquin was 80% at fault for Gruver’s hazing death and awarded a $6 million sum to Gruver’s parents, plaintiffs Stephen and Rae Ann Gruver.
The jury awarded an additional $100,000 for “the pain and suffering, fright, fear, or mental anguish” Gruver suffered during the hazing incident, according to the verdict form.
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Max Gruver died in a 2017 hazing incident at LSU. (The Fierberg National Law Group)
“‘Bible Study’ was a test of the pledges’ knowledge of fraternity history and the Greek alphabet. Pledges were singled out to answer questions, and if they answered incorrectly, they were compelled to take a pull – a three to five second chug – directly from a bottle of Diesel, 190-proof alcohol,” the complaint states.
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Gruver’s blood alcohol level was 0.495 — more than six times the legal limit — at the time of his death, according to the lawsuit, which sought $25 million.
From left to right, Stephen and Rae Ann Gruver sit in a House committee room behind a photo of their son, 18-year-old Maxwell Gruver, a Louisiana State University freshman who died with a blood-alcohol content six times higher than the legal limit for driving in what authorities say was a hazing incident, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. (Melinda Deslatte, File)
Seventeen other defendants initially named in the complaint had already paid the Guvers a “significant sum” of settlement funds, family attorney Jonathan Fazzola told The New York Times.
Some of the funds will go toward The Max Gruver Foundation, a nonprofit “working to end hazing on college campuses,” the foundation website states.
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During the “Bible Study” hazing event, pledges’ cell phones were confiscated before fraternity members instructed them to face a wall. They blasted loud music and turned on a strobe light while the pledges faced the wall and began the drinking game.
Naquin was convicted of negligent homicide in 2019 in connection with Gruver’s death.
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“Although the verdict does not — and cannot ever — repair that loss, it is another important step in our mission to end hazing,” Stephen and Rae Ann Gruver said in a statement provided to the Times by Fazzola. “We are grateful that the jury understood that Max and his pledge brothers had no real choice and were not at fault for the hell they had to endure. And, significantly, through its verdict, the jury put to rest the notion that merely being a bystander to hazing absolves a fraternity member of responsibility.”
