Family of Minnesota student found frozen awarded $6.4 million in legal malpractice lawsuit

One nightmare is finally over for Bill and Kristi Anderson.

Last month, their family was awarded $6.4 million in damages in Hennepin County District Court for the death of their 19-year-old son, Jake. They have spent more than 11 years chasing accountability against the wave of first responders who failed to provide adequate care after Jake was found bloodied and suffering from severe hypothermia near the banks of the Mississippi River in 2013.

But the damages are not being held against the first responders, they are being held against Robert Hopper, the lawyer the Andersons hired to fight for their son in federal court.

“We were wronged by so many entities in this endeavor,” Kristi said earlier this month. Bill quietly responded, “We were wronged by everybody.”

Hennepin County Judge Edward Wahl determined that, if not for Hopper’s legal malpractice, the Andersons “would have been successful in the underlying wrongful death action” against several defendants including the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, the Minneapolis Police Department, the Minneapolis Fire Department and HCMC Ambulance Services.

But the Andersons never got their day in court for Jake. They never got to discover how in the world so many different city and county personnel failed their son.

For that, other nightmares remain.

Jake was a freshman at the University of Minnesota when he went to an Ugly Sweater Party a few days before Christmas in 2013. The last photo taken of him that Saturday night shows him with ski goggles around his neck, beaming. He left the party, ready to walk some girlfriends home, and wasn’t seen again until the next morning when an amateur photographer saw him slumped over near the 10th Avenue Bridge.

The photographer called 911 an hour after sunrise. The overnight windchill was 15 degrees below zero.

More than a dozen first responders arrived on the scene.

A Minneapolis firefighter checked Jake’s arm for a pulse, but couldn’t find anything and ruled him dead. HCMC first responders — who had medical authority over all personnel at the scene — made a “visual assessment” of Jake from 15 feet away and ruled he was “obviously dead.” That determination is typically reserved for bodies that have been destroyed by a train or mauled by an animal. It was later determined that Jake was still alive. Crime scene photos showed spit bubbles on his tongue, but his heartbeat and breathing had slowed dramatically.

No one provided any lifesaving measures or transported him to the hospital or tried to slowly warm his body, even though you can revive someone suffering from severe hypothermia using that method.

There is a well-known medical phrase around bodies found in cold temperatures — they are not dead until they are warm and dead. One week before Jake was found, first responders in Duluth saved a young woman’s life under nearly identical circumstances in colder weather.

Jake was left in the cold then sent to the morgue. An expert analysis determined he died there.

Years later, Kristi spoke with the renowned forensic pathologist Bennet Omalu who told her the first responders displayed a common psychological phenomenon known as conformational thinking. Once that first firefighter decided Jake was dead, everyone else followed suit.

“He laid there in zero degree weather for three hours,” Bill said.

“They didn’t even turn him over,” Kristi added. “They left him laying on the pile of rocks where they found him and didn’t even give him a fighting chance to survive.”

Asked if anything had changed with protocols around hypothermia in the 11 years since Jake died, the Minneapolis Fire Department said it is currently reviewing and updating all of its standards, Hennepin Healthcare said the lawsuit against it was dismissed long ago and the Minneapolis Police Department did not respond.

A year after Jake’s death, in early 2015, the Andersons paid a $5,000 retainer and hired Hopper as their attorney.

He was well respected with nearly 40 years of experience as an attorney working on gigantic cases including locally against the Metro Gang Strike Force and nationally against Big Tobacco. He taught law at the University of Minnesota and raced thoroughbreds in his spare time.

Hopper did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Hopper’s law firm investigated Jake’s death for a year. It was discussed several times that the statute of limitations to file a wrongful death suit would expire for the family on Dec. 15, 2016.

On July 12, 2016 Hopper told the family they had a viable wrongful death claim and he was preparing the lawsuit. He felt it would be ready on Sept. 1.

That was pushed to Sept. 30. Then Oct. 4. On Oct. 13, Hopper told the Andersons the complaint was ready, but they couldn’t see it. They kept asking over and over that it be filed. It finally was, on Dec. 8, seven days before the deadline.

Over two months later, a paralegal at Hopper’s firm emailed the Andersons:

“We have a factual question for you for our records.

“Did either of you take steps to be legally appointed as administrator, executor and/or trustee of Jake’s estate? If so, please provide details.”

One day later, the defendants filed a motion to dismiss the Anderson’s lawsuit for lack of jurisdiction because they “are not court-appointed wrongful death trustees.”

It had been nearly two years since the Andersons retained Hopper as their attorney. No one at his firm told them they had to be appointed trustees before filing the lawsuit, even though it is considered perhaps the most essential directive given to plaintiffs by an attorney in any wrongful death lawsuit.

Because Bill and Kristi had not been appointed Jake’s trustees, they had no legal standing to assert any wrongful death claim on his behalf.

Hopper amended the complaint to become a civil rights lawsuit. He dropped defendants. He dropped legal claims. He removed the wrongful death argument.

On March 30, 2018, U.S. District Court Judge Susan Nelson issued her 51-page opinion dismissing all claims because the Andersons were outside the statute of limitations and the civil rights claim wasn’t legally sustainable.

She began by writing, “This is a very tragic case.”

Hopper appealed to the eighth circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel upheld the district court ruling. Circuit Judge Jonathan Kobes wrote that the circumstances around Jake’s death simply didn’t reach the legal standard for a civil rights violation.

On top of that, in a civil rights action, the first responders were granted qualified immunity because they “did not intentionally deny emergency aid to someone they believed to be alive.”

“The defendants in this case may have performed their duties poorly, but if so, they made an error in judgment of the sort that qualified immunity protects.”

Hopper appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it on June 24, 2020.

The Andersons said they had to wait years for the case to play out in federal court, even though they knew its chance of succeeding was slim. If they didn’t, Hopper could claim he wasn’t given a chance to seek every legal avenue on their behalf.

More than two years after the Supreme Court decision, attorney Matthew Pelikan, with the law firm Madel PA, filed the legal malpractice lawsuit against Hopper. Pelikan said the Andersons have fought as strongly as anyone possibly could to seek some kind of answer to the tragedy they endured.

“They’re wonderful people. They are strong. They are kind. They know more about this case and the law around it than anyone,” he said. “They have pushed on because of their love for Jake and their attempt to try and do right by him.”

Wahl’s order awarding damages to the Andersons for legal malpractice provided a few things.

It entered, as factual evidence in the court, that the first responders who treated Jake in distress were negligent in causing his wrongful death.

“All of the facts we cite about what went wrong with the various county and government authorities are true,” Pelikan said. “The fact that Jake would be alive if they had followed their manuals and procedures is true.”

Wahl’s order also highlighted not just the loss to Kristi and Bill, but to his siblings, Emily and Luke.

Hopper’s malpractice, “deprived the family of a lifetime of support, care and companionship,” Wahl wrote. He awarded $1.5 million apiece to Bill and Kristi and $500,000 apiece to Emily and Luke.

He awarded an additional $2.4 million for economic suffering and the loss of Jake’s future earnings.

“We weren’t just these crazy grieving parents chasing this down for no reason,” Kristi said. “It was warranted.”

That someone should be held accountable for Jake’s death was more important to the Andersons than money.

There is no guarantee they will recover anything from Hopper.

He has retreated from public view. After the legal malpractice lawsuit was filed, Hopper’s attorneys answered the complaint, denying most of the allegations. A month later, those attorneys withdrew from the case. Hopper abruptly stopped responding to emails. Physical mail sent to him by the Hennepin County District Court has been returned to sender. His law firm closed, and he turned over his law license after disciplinary actions were started against him by the Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility.

“We know right from wrong and we know that none of this was right and so much was wrong,” Kristi said. “So many people were trying to cover their own tails.”

It has left them endless questions about what happened to their son.

The Andersons wonder if he was attacked, if he smiled at someone’s girlfriend or somehow upset a stranger at the party. There were lengthy drag marks around the scene where he was found. He had defense wounds. His shoes and coat were off and scattered. His parents wonder if someone, somewhere knows something.

Police investigators believed Jake was drunk and meandered down the path to the river. They told the Andersons they left messages with people at the party, but no one called them back. They said traffic cameras in the vicinity were not turned on. There was a camera at the University of Minnesota Southeast Steam Plant near where Jake was found, but police said they never received the footage. Police footage from the crime scene was given to the Andersons. It was sped up at five-times normal speed with the sound redacted.

The Andersons believe police should reopen the investigation and Kristi has written a book about the case.

She still has nightmares about her son’s final moments and imagines him waking up in the morgue.

During an interview in downtown Minneapolis, Bill and Kristi spoke for more than an hour about everything that had happened to them.

They spoke of their grief and their rage. They spoke of their community, which honors Jake to this day. They knowingly said with a smile that, yes, they still find a world of joy in this life. They spoke of their children, of their first grand baby, just two weeks old. They spoke of the things they always carry.

Toward the end of the conversation, Bill recalled the Sunday morning when his dogs started barking. There were two Orono police officers and a chaplain approaching his door. He opened up and jovially asked them, “What do I owe the pleasure of this visit for?”

They asked how he knew Jacob Anderson.

Bill said, “Well, that’s my son.”

They told him Jake had been found by the river and died of hypothermia. He and Kristi collapsed to the floor. In the middle of their screams, he grabbed her, looked her in the eye and said, “This will not break us. This will not tear our family apart.”

More than 4,000 days later, as he recalled that moment, Bill began to cry. His wife reached out and took his hand as sunlight poured in through a skylight and enveloped them.

They took a breath and kept telling their son’s story.