The family of Jack Loso, a 19-year-old college student killed in a landslide near Mankato, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the state of Minnesota on Monday in Blue Earth County District Court.
Family sues DNR in wrongful death lawsuit after son’s death in landslide at Mankato state park
Jack Loso, a 19-year-old college student, died while visiting Minneopa State Park on Dec. 2, 2023.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
February 3, 2025 at 7:26PM
The lawsuit accuses the Department of Natural Resources of failing to warn visitors about the severe risk of landslides at Minneopa State Park. The lawsuit also accuses the DNR of maintaining stairs, paths and signs encouraging visitors to gather directly underneath the park’s waterfalls.
Loso, a student at Minnesota State Mankato, visited the park with his sister and cousin on Dec. 2, 2023. He walked down a trail to the base of the lower waterfall, and then the sandstone cliff above him collapsed and buried him.
Minneopa State Park is a 58-acre recreational area just outside of Mankato with two waterfalls.
“This was an easily preventable tragedy,” said Jeffrey Storms, a Minneapolis-based lawyer representing the Loso family. “The state knowingly directed families like the Losos to a foreseeable and deadly danger without warning.”
The DNR in a statement said it could not comment in detail due to active litigation against it. “Our thoughts and condolences continue to be with the family and loved ones of Jack Loso following this tragic loss,” Gail Nosek, DNR communications director, said Monday morning.
Loso’s parents Patti and Robert said in December that they blame the DNR for negligence leading to their son’s death.
“How could they allow this to happen?” Patti Loso said before a vigil at the park in memory of her son.
Patti and Robert Loso said state officials should have installed signs warning of the dangers of falling rock. They claim the cliffs had been visibly deteriorating for several months before their son’s death.
The area around Minneopa State Park is known to be prone to landslides. Researchers mapped landslides near the Blue Earth River and found almost 500 points around Mankato where a landslide or rockslide had occurred, the Mankato Free Press reported in 2018.
Efforts to track landslide risk statewide kicked off in response to a 2013 landslide in St. Paul that killed two children on a fossil-hunting field trip, but the Loso family said their son’s death has not prompted similar levels of scrutiny.
The complaint seeks at least $50,000 for Loso’s next of kin, with similar sums for his sister and cousin for severe emotional stress witnessing his death.
Jack Loso, a 19-year-old college student, died while visiting Minneopa State Park on Dec. 2, 2023.
