MN college student drinks herself to death -- family sues friends, bar

Amanda Jax died last fall while celebrating her 21st birthday. Authorities say Jax, who was found with a .4594 BAC, was killed by alcohol poisoning. The prosecutor wouldn't file charges, but her family is suing not only the bar, but the young woman's friends, saying they should have stopped buying her drinks, the Star-Tribune reports.

Comments

[kev]

I guess they held her down and poured the stuff down her throat?

[G]

Should her friends have stopped buying her drinks? Yes.

Are her friends negligent for her death? No.

Sad that people compound their grief with baseless litigation.

[Tam]

I personally think that as a Bartender you should have some sort of liability when it comes to keeping your patrons under control and safe. The Bartender in this case even went so far as to purchase a drink for an obviously intoxicated young woman.

Do I think anyone in this case should be sued for their actions? No.

[JDog]

I did not sleep at a Hoilday Inn Express last night, but I believe that courts have long held bars and bartenders legally responsible for serving "obviously" intoxicated persons.
I'm going to guess that at some point before they left the bar, she was obviously intoxicated.
Should her friends be responsible; no.

[D]

I was a bartender in the 1980s. That shows my age I guess, but whatever.

It's real hard to determine if someone is intoxicated if you can't see them. If they are served by a cocktail waitress in a real large and busy place, how can the bartender monitor them?

Does anyone know if this was a little neighborhood bar, or a club?

Her friends could buy drinks/shots from one waitress and deliver them to her. It happened all the time 20+ years ago. I'm sure it still does.

[Tam]

D, story doesn't clarify if bar was large or small. Just a sports bar and grill.

I agree with you, it is extremely difficult to watch all the patrons within a bar.

[M]

What an unfortunate occurance. That being said, whatever happened to a person being held accountable for his own actions? I highly doubt this young woman was physically forced to drink the alcohol.

[Mickey Mouse]

Yes, the friends should be at fault, but not to the point of legal action. Come on now, folks! How many of you got slammed on your 21st b-day. I know I did. Right of passage maybe?? Got sick on my moms car walking to the house after the friends dropped me off. My punishment, had to wash my mom's car while being totally bombed by the worst hangover there could ever be! My moms attitude was like if you didn't go over your limit you wouldn't be in this predicament. I don't care how you feel, my car needs to be washed and you need to realize some people think you look stupid being drunk...

[MT]

Too bad this poor girl is not here to wash her mom's car. Her friends will have to live with this the rest of their lives. If this girl had a .45 alcohol level, yes, they probably were pouring the shots down her throat.

[Sandra]

The former bartender is right...it's virtually impossible to monitor every patron in the bar unless that person is sitting at the bar and the bartender is personally serving him/her one-on-one. As far as the comments about 'nobody made her do it', that doesn't wash either because after a number of drinks, a person's judgment becomes impaired and I doubt if she really knew how many she had or when to stop. Drunk people are neither rational nor capable of good judgment. It was tragic. And stupid of those who kept egging her on with drinks.

[please sign your comments]

Just another on the list of dead young people due to alcohol abuse. Sad commentary on our society, isn't it? I'm tired of going to the funerals of my children's friends because of irresponsible behavior. And no, Their friends are NOT at fault. Just a parent lashing out because they don't want to shoulder any of the blame themselves and are looking for someone to blame a tragedy on.

[devin]

I've wondered when it would go to this level. The ratio of customers to bartenders at a bar could easily be 50:1 or more at a crowded bar. How on earth is a bartender supposed to keep track of the intoxication level of that many people? Especially when he may never see many of those people if they're not the one buying the rounds of drinks? A person's friends have far more opportunity to observe their intoxication level and should be bear more of the responsibility. However, I'm not talking legal responsibility here. The person's friends have to live with the burden of knowing they contributed to the death of their friend. I see no reason to enrich lawyers to take on an economic burden to the emotional burden.

[devin]

last line should say "tack on" not "take on"

[Mike]

I am a bardender and there is no way to watch every one in a club setting.In most cases you are mixing one drink after the next plus waiting on several waitress. most bartenders will buy a regular a drink on her or his birthday. After all in most cases they have tiped him in the past.Its a shame she is no longer with us. But it is up to her to stop drinking. Sounds like her parents really did not know their daughter.

[Ray]

I hope her friends are liable for something. If you bought, handed it to them and encouraged your friend to drink a glass of poison, you should be held accountable. At some point in the evening, each additional drink was a glass of poison and it killed her. This is a community folks. We all need to be aware of the effects of ethanol. It's a tragedy for sure. The idiots may need to face reality.

[Newbie]

I think congress should form a committee and investigate these incidents. It would be better than doing roids....

Maybe issue a ticket that states how many drinks you can have and you have to show said ticket with every drink...

Or maybe teach dumbass kids what could happen and bring them up where they can rationalize whether they should drink 10 beers and 20 shots and what affect that would have on them.

[east side mike]

These friend will hurt the rest of their lives. This was their friend and they will re live the last moments they spent with her. Why do we need legal justice this is a bad experience that never goes away. These friend did not want anything bad to happen to her.The funeral will be hard on everyone. let us all pray for the family and the many friends for their loss.

[chris]

It is too bad that the choices this young woman and her friends made resulted in death, but they are not responsible for her actions; regardless of of the level of intoxication she is impaired by. First off, anyone who claims otherwise is making the assumption that the friends were not also impaired; which is highly unlikely. If being intoxicated is an excuse to blame others for your bad judgment, then liability should not be attached to others who are also incapable of making responsible decisions. People need to quit blaming others for their bad judgment and accept responsibility for their actions.

[scooter]

Couldn't have been my poor little Amanda's fault for drinking herself to death. No. It was somebody else's fault. They're to blame, and we should make them pay. Just like the lawyer's TV advertisements say.

[mrEd]

"If being intoxicated is an excuse to blame others for your bad judgment, then liability should not be attached to others who are also incapable of making responsible decisions."

ding, ding, ding...and we have a winner. It's very simple, her parents want to absolve her of responsibility for her own actions because she was drunk. Well, by that reasoning her friends should also be absolved.

[AllnADaysWork]

All grown folks are responsible for what they do to themselves. She obviously had a role to play here; she drank what they were buying. She didn't have to drink the drinks.. She could have used self control. I remember my 21st also; I didn't go drink myself into oblivion. Instead I chose to use self control and once my friends saw I wasn’t drinking the drinks they where shelling out money for, they stopped buying. Imagine that.

[bh]

"The former bartender is right...it's virtually impossible to monitor every patron in the bar unless that person is sitting at the bar and the bartender is personally serving him/her one-on-one."

What a crock.. monitoring "everyone" in the bar is a lot different than noticing one person who is more than five times the legal limit.

I suppose if she crawled to her car and drove away, that's not their fault either.

When someone is doing something incredibly stupid and dangerous "friends" should prevent it.

They are not 100% at fault, but they do carry part of the blame. The family has a right to sue and make their case to a judge or jury to see just how much blame her drunk idiot friends should be responsible for.

[Dopey]

Is anybody else geting sick of the idea that when some idiot ends up hurting themselves, the family sue's everyone who was within 20 feet of the victim?

[Tej Dasari]

Another one of those tragedies as a result of our Culture. Yes I do blame those friends who did not stop her.She had no control over her actions with blood alchohol level almost at 50 %.

[xraygal]

I have 3 kids. Now 24, 26, and 28. I knew when the Big 21 came that they and their friends would be roaring to go. I am not sure when this 21 shots for your 21st birthday tradition was established. Of course I think it not only stupid but deadly as well. I insisted that my 2 oldest kids and their friends ride on a "Party Bus" the night of the big celebration. I spoke with the bus driver and coordinated which 5 bars (only 5 bars) the kids would be dropped off at. Then I went to those 5 bars in Lawrence, Kansas and spoke with the managers. I gave them a picture of my kid. I told them 3 shot limit. The deal I made was after 3 shots only serve my kid "shots" of lime apple juice. Of course I gave them money to accomodate this "mom". It worked out really well because their friends continued to buy shots and the money spent was split between the waitress and the bartender. My kids never mentioned or ??? the process. It was a win-win situation. Bartender and waitress made extra money, I kept the little bit of sanity that I had left and my kids "partied" with their friends. My 3rd child didn't drink so she received extra money in her birthday card. Crazy, over-protective mother you may call me. Thats much better than calling me crazy, grieving, bitter mother.

[locomotivebreath1901]

My condolences to the family. It is a horrific thing to bury your own child - legal adult or not.

But this stupid, vindictive anger to bring parasites...I mean, lawyers, to punish others for this legal adult woman's own stupidity will not raise her from the dead or assuage the parent's grief.

If anything, the parents should reflect on how they raised a young woman who condones and participates going to saloons and drinking alcohol.

Prayers and hugs, not lawyers.

[xraygal]

Saloons.....

[Dizzy]

the parents should blame themselves.

[Bohica]

It's too bad that her parents didn't raise her to march to her own drum. My kids know that peer pressure is not an excuse!

[JewwellsP]

Her family should lose this case. I sure hope they have to pay every legal bill involved.

Just another reason to make pot legal.
Impossible to OD

[Seriously?]

I think they should file a countersuit for wasting their time.

[Way Off]

"She had no control over her actions with blood alchohol level almost at 50 %."

I think you probably need to reexamine how they measure blood alcohol...she didn't have almost 50%, she had almost 0.50%. Anything with an alcohol content of 50% is a martini, not a human...and you'd have to have gallons of pure alcohol in your blood to have 50%...but thanks for posting

[blarney]

and the gene pool has thinned a little more folks.

[sly]

OK whatever happened to personal responsibility? You're arguing that she wasn't "rational enough to consent to drinking"? I suppose, then using that logic, that if I get drunk & drive & kill someone, I can't go to jail, but my friend who let me drive can be sent to jail. That makes PERFECT sense. Absolutely. Sure. Maybe on Mars.

Ever stop to think what if the friends were drunk too? Ironically, the only way to avoid legal liability with this crazy, tortured logic is for the friends to be drunk & then they could argue, "Hey, we were also too drunk to be rational." Then that way, everyone's drunk & no one's responsible.

[carl spats]

Maybe someone should sue the parents for not teaching the child to know better!

[Tom K]

The drinking age, the practice of suing bartenders, manipulating a person's life when he or she is 21 years old, showing that you do not trust him, all of that is aimed at making certain that people do not take responsibility for their own actions.

[STA]

OMG, not POISON? Oh, no, just the thought of it is terrible...

Hey Ray, what if she had had enough water to die? Yes, it is possible. The water can lead to hyperhydrosis, a condition which can lead to death. Gotta watch those posions ya know.

Get a grip sunshine, and drop the 'it takes a village' drama. It's HER responsibility to avoid killing herself with excess alcohol.

[tired of the whiners]

I think I'll sue the parents...they brought ME duress and stress by tying up the courts, and bringing this to the public's attention through the media.

How weak this country has become...we lack personal responsibility, and immediately want to sue for a perceived 'wrong'.

This sounds like the typical case of a person coming of age, without having been raised properly by her parents, and now they want to find someone to blame to ease their conscious.

I'm SURE this girl grew up hearing 'just say no'...she didn't, she died. Next we'll hear drug defendants say it wasn't their fault, because someone ELSE bought them the drugs, or the peddlers of child porn will go free because THEY didn't actually make the porn, someone ELSE gave it to them.

WHEN are people going to accept responsibility for their own actions? She was 21!!!!! Unless someone tied her down and poured it down her throat...IT WAS HER FAULT!!!! I am sorry for her parents loss but perhaps they can bare some blame as well...did they teach her NOT to engage in this type of activity? We are getting to be a society of feeble minded childlike beings.

[What A Country!]

Waaahhh!!!!!!! Our idiot daughter drank herself to death and now we're pissed and need to blame someone for closure! Waaahhhh!!!!!!!!!

[She just couldn't hang]

Dumb b*tch couldn't hold her liquor...end of story.

[Young Adult]

I know that young-adult drinking culture can be a ridiculous thing. The answer: Lower the drinking age and teach kids how to respect alcohol while they're still in your house! Stop making it such a lusted after commodity and it will eventually become less of an issue. Besides, it's not like when kids go to college they actually follow the drinking-age laws anyways, because honestly, the vast majority do not (Heck, even in High School! I was one of the good kids who waited until college. . . ). This is where they learn the ropes. In a dorm room, or at a frat party, or at any other various sort of college party. Basically, we need to demystify the "amazing" allure of alcohol and it'll become less of an issue.

[moose]

To Jewells:

Actually you can OD on pot, but you would have to smoke a pound in about 20-30 minutes. That's a lot of puffing. *cough cough*

[Rhonda]

First and foremost, my condolences to her family. However, if this child/young woman had already received two DUI's prior to her 21st birthday, she obviously had a drinking problem. Her parents would not want me on their jury pool as I believe her friends and the bartender held no responsibility for the end result. In fact, I give my condolences to each of those young people who are being needlessly blamed.

If this lawsuit is successful, imagine the precedent that will be set.

[parentstoberesponsible]

My condolences to the family, but blaming someone else for your failure to have your kids learn from previous experiences is unacceptable. Why are the parents not responsible? Why are they not to blame for not educating their own daughter about alcohol after she received 2 DUIs? I don't know anyone in their right mind that would think that their child did not have an alcohol problem if they received 2 DUIs before turning 21.

[janey54]

I do feel sorry for the parents losing a child. I would feel bad also if I lost a child to alcohol poisoning but I would realize it was no one fault but my child's. They have been taught from a young age to be responsible for their actions, do not touch what is not yours, do not give into peer pressure because you yourself are soley responsible for your actions. Maybe her parents should have been teaching their daughter the same type of lessons instead of trying to now make a monetary gain from the death of their child. Maybe they plan to donate it to MADD or someone involved in trying to educate kids against the evils of alcohol abuse. Is this money really going to bring her back and why punish the people who were with her? I think maybe if they can put the blame on someone else, it will clear their conscience. Ultimately, it was her responsiblity to say she had had enough. She knew when she was getting to ready to cross that line. Teach your kids, its okay to say No and to stick with it.

[Dan]

I remember when we were responsible for our own mistakes. It"s great living in a time when you can blame everybody else, and even make money doing it!!

[mrEd]

I'm curious, when she got her DUIs did she win the lawsuits against the bartenders and her friends for allowing her to get too drunk to drive...I mean somebody is responsible for her legal fees.

[JewwellsP]

Moose, that would take one heck of a bong.