Many young people throughout the state of Pennsylvania cannot wait to be finished with high school so that they can go on to college. While there, in addition to academics, many take part in a variety of social activities. Sometimes the individuals who participate in those activities are not even students at the school. On many campuses those activities involve the Greek system of fraternities and sororities.

The University of Pennsylvania is one of those campuses and in January of 2011, a young man who was a student at a different school, died at fraternity party. The 20-year-old man was reportedly at a New Year's Eve party and had been drinking alcohol when he tripped on some steps. As a result of tripping, the man ended up falling to the floor below after first going over the railing. Though he survived the initial incident, he died several days later as a result of a traumatic brain injury.

Several months after the death, the young man's father filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the University of Pennsylvania, the fraternity that owned the house in which the incident occurred and a distributor of beer that allegedly sold the beverage to the man who died earlier in the day, despite the fact that he was not old enough to legally buy it.

Against the fraternity, the lawsuit asserted that it did not take steps to make sure the railings throughout the house were at a safe level. The college reportedly did not break up the underage party despite having been called to the house earlier in the evening due to a fire alarm.

Recently, the case against the fraternity and beer distributor was settled for close to $3.4 million. Of that amount, $3 million was from the fraternity. The remaining $375,000 was from the beer distributor. The claims against the college were also recently settled though that agreement is confidential.

Source: The Legal Intelligencer, "$3.4 million settlement reached in Penn frat party death," Zack Needles, Dec. 10, 2012