Family sues friends who partied with Jax

The family of a woman who drank herself to death at a Mankato nightspot while celebrating her 21st birthday is suing not only the establishment but also the friends who bought her a steady stream of drinks.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Blue Earth County District Court, alleges that on Oct. 29 the college-age friends of Amanda Jax bought her one drink after another in less than two hours.

As a result, Jax's parents are taking the unusual legal step of suing her companions, in a case that could set a precedent as to who can be held legally liable when someone drinks too much.

"It's evolutionary," said Prof. Barry Feld of the University of Minnesota Law School, who used the scenario as a question on a final exam last semester. "It's pushing the edges of legal liability. These kinds of cases are the engines that drive social change."

That desire for change -- along with holding people responsible for their daughter's death -- is what is driving the lawsuit, Jax's parents said Thursday.

Jax, the suit contends, "was in the care" of the friends who gave alcohol to "an obviously intoxicated person." Their actions, the suit argues, "created an unreasonable risk of causing physical harm" to Jax, and the friends "failed to exercise reasonable care" in preventing harm to her.

"I don't know how they could have called themselves friends and not done anything," said a tearful Jenny Haag, Jax's mother. "They helped her drink even when she wanted to quit. If people had called 911 [in time], then Amanda's death could have been avoided."

At the apartment where Jax died, the suit says, an intoxicated Jax was tended to by two of the defendants about 12:30 a.m. Oct. 30, when she had "been unconscious for approximately one hour and had vomited twice. No one sought medical help for the dying Amanda." A 911 call was made from the apartment about 7 a.m., police records show, after a friend discovered Jax's cold body.

Legal duty questioned

Mark Solheim, the attorney for Jax friend and defendant Hannah Becker, said his client had no "legal responsibility to [Jax] and her family. This is an incredible and unfortunate tragedy," he said, but "the deceased has some responsibility for voluntarily drinking."

As for the lawsuit's legal standing, "the law does not impose any legal duty on [Becker] to care for a drinking companion," said Solheim, who has practiced in this area of law for 18 years. "I can't think of any other case that has been brought on similar facts."

The lawsuit cites a handful of Minnesota cases dating to 1979 in pursuing damages. In one, the state Court of Appeals said that a "duty to act for the protection of another only arises when a special relationship exists between the parties." It went on to list possible "special relationships," including "persons who have custody of another person under circumstances in which that other person is deprived of normal opportunities of self-protection."

The suit contends that Jax was denied "normal opportunities of self-protection" and was "particularly vulnerable and dependent" on the defendants, who "held considerable power" over her welfare.

Alan Milavetz, the family's attorney, said the family is on strong footing because the friends contributed to the danger the young woman was in. "The law provides for friends to be responsible if they put someone in harm's way," he said. "Someone should have stepped in and done something to stop this."

In an interview, the U of M's Feld agreed. He said the college students not only contributed to her intoxication but also took Jax away from the bar so no one else could rescue her.

"If you cause the person distress," Feld said, "then you have a duty to alleviate it. You don't have to rescue someone you see drowning in a lake, but if you are the one that pushed them in you have to get them out safely."

The Sidelines Bar and Grill is also named as a defendant. The suit says Sidelines bartender Beau Ryan ignored "Amanda's obvious state of intoxication," even buying her a drink -- a "Cherry Bomb" -- after she had already consumed a large amount of liquor.

"The bartender provided this final cocktail of cherry vodka mixed with an energy drink as the last alcoholic beverage prior to Amanda's tragic death," says the suit, which seeks "an amount in excess of $50,000" in damages.

Besides the bar and its liquor license bonding company, the other defendants were all friends of Jax and with her that night and early the next morning. Each is accused of buying her one or more drinks before her death.

Jax, a former pre-nursing student at Minnesota State University, Mankato, was found dead in a Mankato apartment where two of the friends lived. The 100-pound woman died of acute alcohol poisoning and had a blood-alcohol content of 0.4594 percent, nearly six times the legal limit for driving, authorities said.

Along with Becker, 21, of Monticello, the friends being sued are: Kathryn A. Lensing, 21, of Rochester; Richard T. Johnson, 22, of Mankato; Jonathan R. McIntyre, 22, of St. Paul; and Per David Kvalsten of Durbin, N.D.

Telephone, e-mail messages, or both, were left Thursday with all of the friends and the bar's owners, Craig and Adam Blattner. A message also was left for Ryan, who is not a defendant. Only Becker, through her attorney, replied.

The county attorney's office declined to charge anyone, saying it couldn't prove "beyond a reasonable doubt that any particular person was criminally responsible."

List of drinks

The suit offers a tally of everything Jax drank that night and emphasizes that others bought all of it for her: one or two cans of beer at an apartment before going to Sidelines; a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea (equal to 12.5 shots of hard liquor); five shots of hard alcohol; two beers; and the cherry vodka-energy drink concoction.

Sidelines closed this week after the city suspended its liquor license for 30 days following many violations.

City Attorney Eileen Wells, in her recommendation to the City Council to suspend the bar's license, included a memo that she sent last month to police that read: "The bartender had a duty to stop serving Ms. Jax, to remove any alcoholic beverage from her control, and further prevent any of the other patrons in the bar from providing alcohol to Jax."

A Facebook page created by Becker in Jax's memory is home to scores of mournful messages and dozens of photos of Jax and her friends. One posting, signed by "Amanda's future aunt," questioned how closely Jax's friends were watching over her that night.

Postings in response signed by Becker and Lensing say they told police everything. "Please please do not hold anger or blame against me," Becker wrote. "I loved her ... and I just want to find peace and begin healing." Wrote Lensing: "Instead of backtracking us in our healing help us out in believing and understanding our situation."

Jax, of Mayer in Carver County, was the first of three young adults to die after binge drinking, from October to January in Minnesota college towns.

In mid-December, Winona State University student Jenna Foellmi's body was found in an off-campus apartment in what police called a "classic case of binge drinking."

In early January, Brian Threet, 20, of Farmington, who was about to re-enroll at St. Cloud State University, was found dead after a night of partying and drinking games in St. Cloud. Police and family suspect alcohol poisoning killed him.

Haag, Jax's mother, said the family hopes the publicity in this case will keep others from drinking and dying.

"We didn't know that this could happen," Jax's mother said.

Relatives and lawyers said they thought Jax had her life under control, even though she had had two drunken-driving arrests before the age of 21.

They also challenged friends who told police that Jax drank often. "I'm not going to say that she didn't drink," Jenny Haag said. "But it wasn't the hundreds of times that they said."

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482 Heron Marquez Estrada • 612-673-4280