Minnesota Litigator
News & Commentary
Do not consider the blog to be a substitute for obtaining legal advice from a qualified attorney licensed in your state.
Pet Debt: Keeping Your Dog on a Short Lease?
Update (December 8, 2020): Apparently, the defendant in the “pet lease class action,” which was the subject of an earlier post, is not a particularly deep-pocketed defendant, at least based on the modesty of the recently approved class action settlement. The class action plaintiffs were awarded a maximum of $50,200 (to be distributed pro rata […]
The Next Big Wave: Dead & Dying Boomers? (Trust/Estate Litigation)
Update (10/27/2021): The Minnesota Supreme Court has now weighed in on this complicated dispute over the disposition of assets (farmland) in a trust. In our original post, we declined to make a prediction and we feel vindicated. The Court’s analysis is complicated and any attempt to predict it in advance would have ended badly. Original […]
Attorney Discipline Better Late than Never
Update (November 6, 2020): It took the Board of Professional Responsibility more than three years to get to this point but, by clear and convincing evidence, earlier this week they finally issued “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, Recommendations for Discipline,” finding several ethics violations by Minneapolis lawyer, Dan Biersdorf. Mr. Biersdorf is the subject […]
Spearman v. Taylor: A Case Study on Corporate Governance
Update (October 28, 2020): After most of a year of procedural threshold battle, the plaintiffs’ case has been thrown out for failure to add the company (Envoy) as a party in a lawsuit that is all about the company. This is an obvious set-back to the plaintiffs, possibly a fatal one, although the Court dismissed […]
New Court Rules You Will Need To Know
A post from Karen R. Cole: The Problem: Thousands of legal documents are filed in Minnesota courts every year incorrectly filing confidential information in a way that is publicly accessible. About 100 noncompliant documents are filed each week. Over 400 documents with confidential information were improperly filed as public documents in one week alone. That […]
The ANSI/OSHA Compliant Ladder Fight Continues…
Long time readers of Minnesota Litigator will remember our earlier posts about Wing v. Tricam, a dispute between competing ladder manufacturers about the defendant’s claim that its ladder is “OSHA/ANSI Compliant.” (Earlier posts are here, here, and here.) Plaintiff Wing argues that Defendant Tricam’s claim is false advertising. As is clear from our earlier posts, […]
Haste Makes Waste.
They say that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure…but one failed trash business might have caused another’s disastrous business decision (or, to put it another way, one person’s trash might be (and often is) another person’s trash). We turn to Vermillion State Bank vs. Tennis Sanitation, a case that was accepted recently for review […]
King’s Cove v. Lambert Commercial Construction: Insurance Coverage Law Nerdfest
“A” sued “B” for breach of contract and negligence arising from construction work that B agreed to perform for A. B had insurance and asked its insurer for coverage and also to undertake its defense (and the costs of defense (including attorneys’ fees)) under the insurance policy. B’s insurer agreed that some of A’s claims […]
Cop or Not?
When a private party hires a uniformed police officer for security, when the police officer is working “off duty,” is the officer “acting in the performance of the duties of the position“? This matters. If the officer is “acting in the performance of the duties of the position,” he may be entitled to indemnification by […]
The Legislature Oversteps Its Bounds
There is always a flurry of bills at the end of a legislative session. One bill passed this past May made some changes to the statutes on guardians and conservators. The legislation required that a confidential “bill of particulars” be filed with the trial court that would lay out the confidential or nonpublic documents filed […]