Michael A. Zimmer, Appellant,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2018).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A19-2030

Michael A. Zimmer,
Appellant,

vs.

Michael T. Schulenberg, M.D., et al.,
Defendants,

Howard Kornfeld, M.D., et al.,
Respondents.

Filed September 28, 2020
Affirmed
Ross, Judge

Carver County District Court
File No. 10-CV-18-830

John C. Goetz, Jennifer E. Olson, Matthew J. Barber, Schwebel Goetz & Sieben, P.A.,
Minneapolis, Minnesota (for appellant)

Kenneth H. Bayliss, Steven R. Schwegman, Laura A. Moehrle, Quinlivan & Hughes, P.A.,
St. Cloud, Minnesota (for respondents)

Considered and decided by Ross, Presiding Judge; Bjorkman, Judge; and Bryan,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
ROSS, Judge
Following the death of the musician Prince, the trustee for his next of kin brought a
wrongful-death action against a physician and healthcare clinic, both located in California,
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alleging that they failed to provide adequate medical advice that would have prevented
Prince’s death. These defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction, and
the district court granted the motion. Because the defendants’ alleged contacts with
Minnesota are insufficient to establish specific personal jurisdiction over them, we affirm.
FACTS
This case arose out of the death of musician Prince Rogers Nelson. Prince passed
away at his home in Carver County, Minnesota, in April 2016, due to an accidental
overdose of opioid drugs. Appellant Michael Zimmer was appointed trustee of Prince’s
next of kin, and he sued healthcare providers for their allegedly negligent failure to take
reasonable steps to prevent Prince’s overdose. These healthcare providers are not parties
to this appeal. Zimmer amended his complaint to add respondents Dr. Howard Kornfeld
and the doctor’s healthcare clinic, Recovery Without Walls . According to the complaint,
Dr. Kornfeld practices in California and specializes in addiction treatment, including the
treatment of opioid addiction. The complaint alleges that Prince’s agents contacted the
Kornfeld defendants by telephone in California to seek advice for emergency addiction
treatment for Prince. It also asserts that these defendants departed from the proper standard
of medical care by failing to advise Prince’s agents that Prince sh ould be immediately
admitted to a treatment facility. And it alleges that the defendants sent Dr. Kornfeld’s son,
Andrew Kornfeld, to Minnesota with medicine to treat Prince, but that he was unqualified
and not licensed to administer the medicine and was also tardy, arriving in Minnesota at
about the time of Prince’s death.
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The Kornfeld defendants moved to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Zimmer
argued that the district court had specific personal jurisdiction because the Kornfeld
defendants engaged in Minnesota- directed conduct that formed the basis for the
wrongful-death action. The district court granted the motion to dismiss. Zimmer appeals.
D E C I S I O N
Zimmer challenges the district court’s order granting the Kornfeld defendants’
motion to dismiss under Minnesota Rule of Civil Procedure 12.02(b) for lack of personal
jurisdiction. Whether personal jurisdiction exists is a legal question that we review de novo.
Juelich v. Yamazaki Mazak Optonics Corp. , 682 N.W.2d 565, 569 (Minn. 2004). After a
defendant challenges the existence of personal jurisdiction, the plaintiff has the burden to
show that the court’s exercise of jurisdiction is proper. Id. at 569 –70. We review the
jurisdictional decision assuming that all factual allegations in the complaint are true. Rilley
v. MoneyMutual, LLC, 884 N.W.2d 321, 326 (Minn. 2016).
The Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause limits Minnesota’s ability to
exercise jurisdiction over nonresidents, like the Kornfeld defendants. See World-Wide
Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291, 100 S. Ct. 559, 564 (1980).
Minnesota’s long-arm statute identifies the circumstances allowing Minnesota courts to
exercise personal jurisdiction. Minn. Stat. § 543.19, subd. 1 (2018). Among other things,
it authorizes personal jurisdiction when a defendant’s acts committed outside Minnesota
cause injury in Minnesota, but it provides that jurisdiction cannot extend to situations in
which “the burden placed on the defendant by being brought under the state’s jurisdiction
would violate fairness and substantial justice.” Id., subd. 1(4)(ii). The statute therefore
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extends personal jurisdiction to the full extent allowed under the Due Process Clause.
Valspar Corp. v. Lukken Color Corp., 495 N.W.2d 408, 411 (Minn. 1992). And we may
rely on federal caselaw to discern those limits. Id.
Zimmer argues that personal jurisdiction exists based on specific contacts, or, as
shorthand, specific jurisdiction. Specific jurisdiction exists when a defendant has
“purposefully directed his activities at residents of the forum” and the alleged injuries
giving rise to the litigation “arise out of or relate to those activities.” Burger King Corp. v.
Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 472, 105 S. Ct. 2174, 2182 (1985) (quotations omitted). This
requires a relationship between the defendant, the forum, and the litigation. Helicopteros
Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414, 104 S. Ct. 1868, 1872 (1984).
Minnesota courts consider five factors when assessing whether the exercise of
personal jurisdiction over a defendant comports with due process. Juelich, 682 N.W.2d at
570; see also Hardrives, Inc. v. City of LaCrosse, 240 N.W.2d 814, 817 (Minn. 1976)
(first adopting the five-factor test in Minnesota). Those five factors are: “(1) the quantity
of contacts with the forum state; (2) the nature and quality of those contacts; (3) the
connection of the cause of action with these contacts; (4) the interest of the state providing
a forum; and (5) the convenience of the parties.” Juelich , 682 N.W.2d at 570. Although
Minnesota courts have applied all five factors when analyzing claims of specific
jurisdiction, see, e.g., Rilley, 884 N.W.2d at 328, because specific -jurisdiction cases
typically involve relatively few contacts and rest on the degree to which the lawsuit derives
from those contacts, the second and third factors are the most relevant. See, e.g., Marquette
Nat’l Bank of Minneapolis v. Norris, 270 N.W.2d 290, 295 (Minn. 1978) (recognizing that,
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when the defendants’ contacts with the state consisted of a single transaction, the
forum-interest, litigation-convenience, and quantity -of-contacts factors were not decisive
and the nature-and-quality factor was dispositive). We will focus our analysis on the nature
and quality of the Kornfeld defendants’ contacts as well as the connection between those
contacts and the cause of action.
Accepting as true the complaint’s allegations, the Kornfeld defendants had two
relevant contacts with Minnesota. The first is the telephone contact initiated by Prince’s
agents, who called the defendants seeking advice about emergency treatment for Prince.
During the phone conversations, the defendants failed to say that Prince should be admitted
to a treatment facility immediately. The second is Andrew Kornfeld’s flight to Minnesota.
The Kornfeld defendants sent him to Minnesota to administer medicine to Prince, but he
arrived in Minnesota too late, at about the time that Prince died. We address each contact,
beginning with the latter.
Andrew Kornfeld’s airplane travel to Minnesota does not establish minimum contacts
because the travel was not sufficiently related to the cause of action.
Zimmer maintains that Andrew Kornfeld’s travel to Minnesota supports specific
jurisdiction because the alleged malpractice occurred by the defendants “sending [their]
unqualified agent into Minnesota to provide medication to a known Minnesota resident.”
The Kornfeld defendants accurately note that the complaint does not allege that Andrew is
the defendants’ agent. B ut taking the allegations in the complaint as true and drawing
inferences in their favor, we will assume for the purposes of this opinion that Andrew was
acting as the defendants’ agent when he flew to Minnesota.
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Even with this agency assumption, we conclude that Andrew’s flight does not
establish specific personal jurisdiction because the contact is immaterial to the
wrongful-death action. To establish sufficient minimum contacts, “it is the defendant’s
conduct that must form the necessary connection with the forum [s]tate.” Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 285, 134 S. Ct. 1115, 1122 (2014) (emphasis added). By arriving in
Minnesota at about the time that Prince passed away and having no interaction with Prince
or his agents, Andrew engaged in no conduct in Minnesota related to the allegedly
death-causing negligence of the Kornfeld defendants. The complaint does assert that
Andrew was medically unqualified to treat Prince and that he was not licensed to
administer medication, but the complaint demonstrates that he never treated Prince or
administered medication. This lack of allegedly improper contact is not contact at all, let
alone the kind of meaningful contact that establishes jurisdiction. The untimely nature of
Andrew’s arrival in Minnesota likewise cannot establish personal jurisdiction. Zimmer’s
implied logic to the contrary suggests that a sufficient specific-jurisdictional contact
occurred when Andrew arrived too late to administer the medication that he was prohibited
by law from administering. Zimmer cites no case corroborating this notion, and we reject
it as legally and logically unsupported. Zimmer’s insistence that Andrew “would have
likely continued to treat Prince in Minnesota” if Prince had not passed away is also
unavailing because the necessary minimum contacts must relate to the defendants’ actual
conduct in the forum state, not their possible conduct in some hypothetical scenario.
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Because Andrew’s flight to Minnesota has no nexus to the alleged negligence in the
wrongful-death action, the contact does not provide a basis for specific personal
jurisdiction. We turn to the telephone discussion.
The phone discussion between the Kornfeld defendants and Prince’s agents does not
establish specific personal jurisdiction because the Kornfeld defendants did not make or
solicit the contact.
The telephone communication between the Kornfeld defendants and Prince’s agents
also does not establish specific personal jurisdiction. Zimmer correctly observes that the
Kornfeld defendants need not have been physically present in Minnesota during the
discussion for specific jurisdiction to exist. See Marquette, 270 N.W.2d at 295 (“The fact
that the nonresident appellants were never physically present in the state in the course of
their transaction, which was accomplished entirely by telephone and mail, is clearly of no
significant consequence.”). And he also correctly observes that there is some connection
between the telephone contact and the cause of action. According to the complaint, it was
during the telephone discussion that the Kornfeld defendants both developed and failed to
meet their alleged duty to advise Prince’s agents that Prince should be admitted promptly
to a treatment facility. The complaint alleges that this omission fell below the standard of
acceptable medical practice, implying that the defendants’ allegedly deficient advice
during the telephone discussion caused Prince’s death. This connectedness factor supports
Zimmer’s position, but for the following reasons, it is not sufficient.
Personal jurisdiction depends on the defendants’ conduct and connection with the
forum state, and the conduct must be such that they “should reasonably anticipate being
haled into court there.” Kreisler Mfg. Corp. v. Homstad Goldsmith, Inc., 322 N.W.2d 567,
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571 (Minn. 1982) (emphasis omitted) (quoting World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 297,
100 S. Ct. at 567). And “[t]he unilateral activity of those who claim some relationship with
a nonresident defendant cannot satisfy the requirement of contact with the forum [s]tate.”
Hanson v. Denckla, 357 U.S. 235, 253, 78 S. Ct. 1228, 1239–40 (1958). The complaint
demonstrates that it was Prince’s agents who unilaterally initiated the telephone contact
with the Kornfeld defendants, and the communication was limited to a single occurrence.
The complaint alleges vaguely that the Kornfeld defendants provided medical services for
addiction “to patients throughout the U.S.,” but it does not allege that the defendants
advertised or sought patients in Minnesota. The Kornfeld defendants did not reach into
Minnesota; Prince’s agents reached out to them from Minnesota. This was the only relevant
contact, and it does not support personal jurisdiction because it is not of a nature that would
cause the Kornfeld defendants to reasonably expect to be brought to court in Minnesota.
Cases from other jurisdictions have similarly declined to recognize specific
jurisdiction in the context of medical- malpractice lawsuits brought against out-of -state
physicians who had only a single communication with someone in the forum state. In
Wright v. Yackley, for example, the Ninth Circuit held that Idaho lacked personal
jurisdiction over a South Dakota physician who provided a patient with copies of her
original prescriptions after the patient moved to Idaho so that she could have the
prescriptions refilled there. 459 F.2d 287, 288, 291 (9th Cir. 1972). The Wright court
reasoned that the act of sending copies of the prescriptions to Idaho did not show that the
physician was directing his activities at Idaho because the patient’s residence in Idaho was
“irrelevant and incidental” to the treatment that the physician had provided in South
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Dakota. Id. at 289–90. Similarly in Harris v. Omelon, the District of Columbia Court of
Appeals held that the District of Columbia did not have jurisdiction over a Virginia
physician when the physician’s only contact with the District of Columbia was a single
phone call to a pharmacy to fill a prescription. 985 A.2d 1103, 1104, 1106 (D.C. 2009).
Like the physicians in Wright and Harris, the Kornfeld defendants’ contact with the forum
state was a single communication separate from any actual medical treatment.
We recognize that if a defendant engages by telephone in communication that
constitutes an intentional tort, such as fraud, then that type of active conduct might establish
specific jurisdiction. See Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 789– 90, 104 S. Ct. 1482, 1487
(1984) (holding that the court had personal jurisdiction o ver out-of-state defendants who
committed “intentional, and allegedly tortious, actions” aimed at the forum state when the
defendants knew that the injury would be felt in that state); see also Oriental Trading Co.
v. Firetti, 236 F.3d 938, 943 (8th Cir. 2001) (holding that minimum contacts were sufficient
to exercise jurisdiction over out- of-state defendants who engaged in fraudulent
communications by phone and facsimile despite the defendants not being present in the
forum state). But the Kornfeld defendants’ alleged non-conduct differs in nature from the
active conduct in those cases. They neither initiated the communication nor misadvised
Prince’s agents or intentionally or even negligently provided inaccurate advice. Applying
the rudimentary principles of due process, we do not believe it is fundamentally fair for the
state to exercise its power to summon California defendants to court in Minnesota based
on contact that the plaintiff unilaterally initiated and that rests on the defendants’ not giving
advice. A plaintiff cannot manufacture personal jurisdiction in this way.
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We add for clarity that we are not suggesting anything about the merits of the case.
If the allegations are true, the Kornfeld defendants may have entered into at least some sort
of preliminary physician-patient relationship with Prince. And Minnesota law does not
require the existence of a physician-patient relationship to maintain a medical-malpractice
action. Warren v. Dinter, 926 N.W.2d 370, 375 (Minn. 2019). So the phone conversations
between Prince’s agents and the Kornfeld defendants are relevant to the cause of action
even if a physician-patient relationship had not yet been created. Our limited focus here is
not on the nature of the relationship between Prince and the Kornfeld defendants, but on
the nature of the defendants’ contact with Minnesota. We hold only that the contact was
not of the nature and quality to establish specific personal jurisdiction. The district court
correctly dismissed the complaint with respect to the Kornfeld defendants.
Zimmer has not sought jurisdictional discovery.
At the close of his brief, Zimmer offers an alternative afterthought, saying, “At the
very least, Kornfeld should answer jurisdictional discovery to determine its Minnesota
contacts.” District courts generally allow requested jurisdictional discovery before ruling
on a motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. Behm v. John Nuveen & Co., Inc.,
555 N.W.2d 301, 305 (Minn. App. 1996). Zimmer seems to imply that the district court
abused its discretion by deciding the jurisdictional issue without first requiring the
Kornfeld defendants to answer discovery, but he does so without outlining any procedural
abnormality or developing the statement into an actual legal argument. And he then “asks
this [c]ourt to remand to the lower court with instructions that Kornfeld answer
jurisdictional discovery.” The Kornfeld defendants did not respond to the bare request.
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Given Zimmer’s failure to develop a legally and logically supported argument, neither do
we. See Brodsky v. Brodsky, 733 N.W.2d 471, 479 (Minn. App. 2007) (recognizing that
inadequately briefed arguments are forfeited).
Affirmed.