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Biggest hazing settlement ever?
Indianapolis Family Pushes for Nationwide Anti-Hazing Law
Nov 1, 2005, 02:03 PM PST
By Leslie Olsen
A local family whose son was killed in a college hazing incident in Florida has helped get hazing legislation passed in that state. Now they are advocating for similar laws nationwide.
Chad Meredith was a top athlete and scholar in the Warren Central High School Class of 2002, and he lives on in the hearts of his family and classmates.
Halfway through Meredith's first semester at the University of Miami, he drowned in a campus lake.
“He started saying ‘Help, help, I need help; I'm hurting, I'm hurting,’” said Jerry Meredith, Chad’s father.
In a civil trial, a jury found that two Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers were negligent in abandoning their fraternity pledge during a hazing incident. “They waited ninety minutes to call 911 by their own timeline,” said Meredith.
No criminal charges were filed because Florida did not have a hazing law. It does now. “It's the Chad Meredith Act, so he'll live in the law books forever,” said Carol Meredith, Chad’s mother.
The Chad Meredith act was recently signed into law by Florida Governor Jeb Bush. “This law makes it easier to prosecute those types of actions,” he said.
The new Florida law provides for people involved in hazing incidents that result in serious injury or death to go to prison for up to five years. The adults who sponsor the organizations that haze can be held accountable, too.
“They get to pay fines. They can be dismissed from their jobs,” said Greg Garrison, an attorney who represents the Merediths locally.
Garrison says Indiana's hazing law also makes hazing a felony under some circumstances but he would like to see it strengthened to hold adults and universities more accountable.
The Merediths are trying to get Indiana legislators and lawmakers nationwide interested.
A jury awarded the Merediths the largest settlement ever known in the United States in a hazing case: $14 million. The family is not allowed to say how much they actually collected. Mr. Meredith says it's nowhere near that much, but some of the money has gone to Warren Central High School for a scholarship and the family says some of it will be given to needy families for the holidays._
“At least something good has happened from his death, and he had always said, ‘I am going to do something good in this world,’” said Mr. Meredith.
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