Amanda Jax was 21, and it was time to celebrate.
She started with one or two beers at her friends’ apartment, then went to a Mankato bar, where someone bought her a pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea. By the time Jax had finished most of it, at least one person noticed her slurring her words, but the party wasn’t over.
Jim Beam. Captain Morgan. A three-shot Stop Light. And a Cherry Bomb, all for Jax, who finally laid her head on the bar and passed out.
A friend carried her outside, while others snapped pictures as she slumped on the sidewalk. Another friend took Jax home and put her in a spare bed.
The next morning, Jax was dead. And all those friends now face a lawsuit from her parents accusing them of contributing to her death. The lawsuit details the alleged events that night.
"Once you put somebody in harm’s way, you assume responsibility for them. You cannot put them in further danger and just all of a sudden take a hands-off approach," said Chad Schulze, an attorney for Jax’s family.
Schulze cites tort law that says if a person does something that puts another person at risk, he or she has a duty to prevent harm from the risk.
The argument isn’t new, but its use against friends in an alcohol-poisoning case is rare. An Associated Press analysis of news articles over the past decade found only one similar case in which friends were sued. The AP found fewer than a dozen other lawsuits over alcohol-poisoning deaths involving victims who were underage and pressured to drink by fraternity brothers.
Steven Duke, a Yale law professor who examined the Jax complaint for AP, says the cases are unusual because alcohol-poisoning deaths aren’t common, and because it may be hard for plaintiffs to show that the person who provided the alcohol knew or should have known of the risk of death.
"I think they’ve got a real problem there, because normally ... a person throws up and that’s it," he said.
On the other hand, he said, Jax’s parents can argue that her friends knew she was vomiting and unconscious. "They are kind of on notice that she was sick," Duke said.
Mark Solheim, an attorney for one of the defendants in the Jax case, said the law doesn’t set out a legal duty for one person to protect another except in certain cases, such as parents’ obligation to keep their children safe.
"There’s a difference between moral duty and the legal duty imposed by courts," Solheim said. "This is unfortunate, it’s tragic, it’s an epidemic _ but there is no legal duty."
Solheim and other defense attorneys declined to allow Jax’s friends to be interviewed for this story.
The family of Steven Judd, a New Mexico State University junior, used similar arguments in a lawsuit against Judd’s friends after he died in 2004 after celebrating his 21st birthday. The lawsuit alleged Judd was given drinks by his friends at a bar, and they kept buying him alcohol after he said he didn’t want any more.
His blood-alcohol level reached 0.427 percent. He slipped into a coma and died at a hospital.
P. Scott Eaton, an attorney for the Judd family, said at some point Judd lost the ability to care for himself and his friends _ who were also fraternity brothers _ should have protected him instead of buying him more alcohol.
"The focus of the evening was on buying alcohol for Steven and prodding him to drink more and more," Eaton said.
Some of Judd’s friends reached undisclosed settlements with his family before the lawsuit was filed, while others reached settlements after the court filing.
Barry Feld, a University of Minnesota law professor, said the issues of what constitutes "legal duty" in alcohol-related cases are in constant evolution as lawmakers create new laws governing behavior. For example, he said, as society learned more about the risks of drinking and driving, lawmakers lowered the legal blood-alcohol content for drivers to 0.08 percent. As problems arise with teenage drinkers, policymakers are imposing liability on social hosts, he said.
In addition, he said, Minnesota is one of the few states that has a Good Samaritan statute that imposes a duty to help people in distress.
"But it’s really a policy judgment about the scope of responsibility," he said.
Jax herself bore some responsibility because she was a participating adult of legal drinking age, Feld said. If damages are awarded, Jax’s own responsibility would become a factor in determining the amount of an award, he said.
Some families make hard decisions not to sue.
When Cindy McCue lost her son Bradley to a 21st birthday celebration in 1998, the family decided that a lawsuit would only add to their grief.
"He made a conscious choice to go to the bar and drink," McCue said of her son. "His friends contributed to that and the bartender contributed to that ... We live with the grief every day of not having him, but the people who were with him live with grief and guilt.
"Do I blame them? Yeah, I do. But I don’t have to live with that guilt that they have to live with, so that’s enough. They don’t need to be drug through a trial."
Amanda Jax’s mother, Jenny Haag, declined to be interviewed for this story on the advice of her attorney. At the time the lawsuit was filed, she told reporters she blamed the people who were with her daughter, who died with a blood-alcohol content of 0.459 percent.
"They helped her drink, I think even when she was ready to quit," Haag said in February. "Now she’s dead.
"I don’t know how they can call themselves friends."
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