In the two years since Piazza’s death, his parents, Jim and Evelyn Piazza, have sought reforms in numerous ways, including working with leading Greek associations and advocating legislative changes. And they continue to seek to hold former fraternity members responsible for their son’s death. The Piazzas filed a civil lawsuit in federal court alleging wrongful death, negligence and conspiracy, their attorney, Thomas R. Kline, announced Friday.

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The complaint alleges that the defendants planned and led hazing of new members of the fraternity. For more than 11 hours after Piazza’s fall at the pledge event, fraternity members did not seek help even as he suffered, according to the lawsuit. Some members even slapped and punched him, the complaint claims, and they unsuccessfully sought to hide evidence of hazing once they realized the seriousness of the situation.

The family reached an out-of-court settlement with Penn State, the university announced Friday, which includes efforts to improve safety at fraternities and sororities on campus. Last month, Penn State announced it would create a center, named in Piazza’s honor, to expand research into Greek life and lead efforts to improve safety.

Financial terms of the settlement are confidential, according to Kline, but the agreement includes training students on how to intervene and get help if they observe risky behavior. It also contains measures such as providing information to families and students about violations of anti-hazing rules, and sanctions imposed on chapters.

The lawsuit claims that before Piazza’s fall, St. Moritz Security Services employees spent two or three minutes at the fraternity house checking for any violation of Penn State’s Interfraternity Council policies. That “sham inspection,” the lawsuit claims, enabled the other defendants “to continue hazing Timothy Piazza and others.”

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An attorney for St. Moritz Security Services declined to comment Friday.

A lawyer who had represented one of the former fraternity members in a criminal case emerging from the incident in 2017 said Friday that the case was tragic but that the extent of Piazza’s medical distress was not apparent to an untrained eye.

Kline said the goal was to hold accountable those who either planned or actively participated in the events that night. “There’s documentary evidence, text evidence and video evidence, and every one of them is now going to be questioned intensely as to what they did,” he said.