Washington State University can be sued for the 2019 death of freshman Sam Martinez, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-4 decision that reshapes how far a public university's legal duty extends into the off-campus fraternity houses it recognizes and promotes.
From a Dismissed Lawsuit to the State's Highest Court The path to Thursday's ruling was anything but straightforward, and it illustrates how much a hazing death's legal fate can hinge on a single, technical question of duty rather than on the facts of what happened.
WSU then appealed to the state Supreme Court, arguing the Court of Appeals had gone too far in holding a public university responsible for the private conduct of an independent, off-campus organization it did not staff or supervise.
Under that reading, the university's role was closer to a landlord or a licensing body than to an entity legally responsible for members' safety inside a house it did not own, staff or supervise on a daily basis.
A university arguing it had no way to know a specific fraternity was dangerous faces a very different set of facts than one that had, through its own recognition and review process, kept a file on a chapter with a known history and continued to sanction it anyway.
A 5-4 Washington Supreme Court ruling sends the Sam Martinez fraternity hazing death case to trial, finding WSU had a legal duty to protect students from foreseeable hazing dangers.