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BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A state judge has ruled that Southern University is not liable for a former student band leader's off-campus hazing activities that sent two marching band members to the hospital in fall 2008.
District Judge Tim Kelley ruled Thursday the school may still be on the hook for alleged on-campus hazing activities involving band members that occurred earlier that year.
The Advocate reports (http://bit.ly/1MKlXOs) a lawsuit filed against Southern and a former student section leader in the band in 2008 is set for trial May 4.
The November 2008 hazing incident, which took place at private East Baton Rouge Parish residences before that year's Bayou Classic football game, was part of an unsanctioned initiation into the band's unofficial French horn fraternity — Mellow Phi Fellow. The hazing involved band members being struck by 2-by-4-inch boards.
Attorneys for Marcus Heath and Cameron Taylor, the two former band members hospitalized following the off-campus hazing, said they will ask the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal to reverse state District Judge Tim Kelley's ruling Thursday.
Thomas Flanagan, one of Southern's attorneys, argued during a hearing Thursday that Dixon's actions were not done in the course and scope of his duties as a section leader and that Dixon had no authority to haze anyone because the band expressly forbade such conduct.
"The entire affair was prohibited," he told the judge.
Flanagan also argued the university took steps to try to eliminate hazing in the marching band, including having members sign an anti-hazing pledge.
But Corey Hebert, an attorney for Heath and Taylor, pointed out that the honorary band fraternity Kappa Kappa Psi was suspended earlier in 2008 by its national chapter after it was learned the fraternity had taken part in hazing activities at Southern. Those activities are part of the civil case.
Dixon, of Natchez, Mississippi, and six other former Southern marching band members pleaded no contest in 2009 to charges of criminal conspiracy to commit second-degree battery and misdemeanor hazing. Each was put on probation and ordered to perform community service.
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Information from: The Advocate, http://theadvocate.com
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