A graph of the income stream of a professional athlete generally starts with a spike and then has a fairly swift drop and, if a player is good and lucky, has a long tail. The average length of an NFL career is three seasons or so. Video clips of particular plays will be watched and […]

Magistrate Judge Jeffrey J. Keyes, the newest Magistrate judge in the district, has issued an order on a motion for discovery sanctions that practitioners will want to take note of. Judge Keyes reminds practitioners of the existence and importance of local rules on such motions, and cites to an important if somewhat hidden resource: Practice […]

Oral argument took place today at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. A recording of the argument is available for download through Itunes here. Here is a quick take on the argument.

Originally filed in November, 1999, the environmental clean-up litigation has gone back up to the Eighth Circuit and back down to the U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota (Rosenbaum, J.), repeatedly. Ten years of litigation seems excessive perhaps until it is measured against years of polluting and contamination that may remain for generations or require […]

Having authored the Credit & Collections Chapter of the Minnesota Business Torts Deskbook (focusing on the Federal Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the Truth-in-Lending Act, et al.), I again reach a bit beyond Minnesota and Eighth Circuit law to report an outside development — a Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision reversing summary judgment […]

Plaintiff functioned as a broker to arrange for the sale of a business in exchange for a broker fee. Defendant Merrill Lynch (and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity Inc.), purchaser, told Plaintiff that the deal could only go through financially if Plaintiff took a fee of $1.5 million rather than the $7.15 million that it […]

Plaintiffs (a couple) bought an unoccupied duplex in North Dakota, insured the property for $50,000; the house burned down and insurer American Family denied Plaintiffs’ insurance claim on the ground that the fire was a result of arson for which one of the Plaintiffs was responsible. Plaintiffs brought suit against American Family, claiming that it […]

Last October, this blog predicted a win for MERS (Mortgage Electronic Registration System) and yesterday, the Minnesota Supreme Court continued this blog’s “undefeated” record in the risky world of making predictions on the outcomes of pending cases. In short, in a 6-1 decision (Page, J., dissenting), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that “transfers of the […]

The Minnesota Litigator blog strays from Minnesota and Eighth Circuit jurisprudence to touch on subject matter of interest to the few and the proud who care about appellate procedure — a recent decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. Non-profits, trade groups, and others interested in appellate decisions with far-reaching implications […]

It is common if not universal for loan documents to provide for attorneys’ fees for costs of enforcement in the event of default but also somewhat common for courts to be reluctant to award fees — often finding some way to deny requests or discount them substantially, for example. Judge Donovan Frank, however, in this […]