Update (March 21, 2018): Another successful prediction by Minnesota Litigator… Original post (November 8, 2017): Esmeralda Sorchaga sued Ride Auto in connection with her purchase of a used pick-up truck (specifically, a 2008 Ford F-350) from Ride Auto. She alleged fraud by the salesman. Following a bench trial, the district court awarded Sorchaga $14,366.03 in […]

Update (March 23, 2018): The original post, below, is nearly 10 years old. We still stand by it. These remain valuable practice pointers.  The lawsuit between Blu Dot Manufacturing against Stitch Industries d/b/a Joybird in U.S. District Court (D. Minn.) seems to be an illustration of Mistake #6, “buyer’s remorse.” At least according to Blu Dot, the […]

There is a significant risk in our civil litigation system of legal disputes “flipping upside-down.” We use the expression as it is used in the context of mortgage lending: after the 2008 mortgage meltdown, the debt attached to a property (i.e., the mortgage loans) exceeded the value of the properties in many cases. This is […]

This post is for the small number of civil litigators in Minnesota (and other 8th Circuit States) who do ERISA litigation. This past week, U.S. Mag. Judge Katherine Menendez (D. Minn.) held that the “fiduciary exception” applied to the insurer’s asserted attorney-client privilege in Christoff v. Unum Life Insurance Company. The 8th Circuit has yet to […]

Minnesota litigators all know the basic rules for calculating deadlines under the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure.  For example, we know that weekends and holidays are excluded in calculating deadlines for time periods less than 7 days.  That rule – and other rules governing time calculations – may be changing down the road. The Minnesota […]

When people are arrested and charged with a crime, their paramount concern is generally their personal freedom and the accused (the smart ones, at least) quickly retain criminal defense lawyers or work with public defenders assigned to them. But there are often tag-along proceedings that follow criminal prosecutions: forfeitures, which are particularly prominent in the context of […]

It is looking like plaintiffs’ class action lawyers may end up empty-handed after nearly four years of litigation against SuperValu based on a data breach of SuperValu’s credit card processing system caused by malicious hackers. The bottom line: the plaintiffs’ lawyers were apparently unable to find a single customer who can establish that he or […]

A faithful reader directed Minnesota Litigator to a puzzling Minnesota statute passed in 1992 and adopting state-wide zero tolerance for violence. [H/T: AG] This is one of many odd statutes where one has to wonder what prompted it. Minnesota’s “zero-tolerance-for-violence” statute is located in Chapter 1 of Minnesota Statutes. Chapter 1 seems to include some […]

Update (March 8, 2019): Stop the presses! The U.S. Court of Appeals has knocked a Minnesota Litigator prediction out of the prediction loss column and into the prediction win column in the case discussed below. Update (October 2, 2018): Our original post below is not exactly a prediction so it is not, exactly, a failed […]

Update (March 7, 2018): There’s protracted litigation and then there is PROTRACTED litigation and the case of Mr. John Drewitz, described below, falls in the ALLCAPS camp. The duration of this civil lawsuit is particularly unsettling because it is not complex or massive multi-party litigation. Even worse, it probably qualifies as a “zombie case,” which […]