“Welcome to Options Residential…People Deserve the Opportunity to Fully Experience Life.” Many of us have experienced a nightmare of being paralyzed, immobilized, and mistreated — from mere teasing and threats to, in the worst instances, pursuit, abuse, or torture. The combination of powerlessness, apprehension and pain is horrifying. Consider Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Some […]
Over a year ago, I posted about Bison Advisors v. Kessler, et al., focusing on a garden-variety discovery dispute which I characterized as slightly demeaning to the lives and livelihoods of civil litigators — deadlocked impasse as to whether a deposition should be allowed to go for 2 hours or 7 hours. The two sides fought […]
The City of Minneapolis battled with a plaintiff in a civil rights case, negotiated a settlement and included in the settlement an offer to pay the plaintiff’s lawyer, $49,999. The plaintiff’s lawyer would not agree to accept anything less than $52,088.50. So they went before U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (D. Minn.) to resolve their […]
Updated post (August 22, 2016): Minnesota Litigator notches another successful prediction in a posted prediction last March in the Storms v. Mathy Construction case discussed below after the break. The Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the intermediate Court of Appeals last week. The point of my original post was that I believed that the trial court reached […]
Minnesota Litigator focuses on “news and developments” in Minnesota civil litigation but it tends to be even more focused on the kinds of Minnesota civil litigation that its writers practice. As a result, there is very little focus on family law, intellectual patent litigation, ERISA litigation or other areas of law outside of the zone […]
U.S. District Court Judge Patrick J. Schiltz (D. Minn.) must have stunned Derrick Weber of Messerli & Kramer when Mr. Weber sought sanctions against his adversary, Bennett Hartz, along with Hartz’s client, Ms. Bendickson. The Court, in response, came down on Weber like a ton of bricks. The case involved debt collection by Messerli & Kramer and its […]
For more than five years, I have repeatedly chided the Star Tribune for running stories that rely heavily on court documents but failing to link to the documents themselves. Last week they did it again, this time in the context of a $3.5 million award based on sexual-orientation discrimination in favor of Mr. Stephen Habberstad against two small […]
Update (August 12, 2016): Although Susan Humiston, the new director at the Minnesota Board of Professional Responsibility, seems to be making great strides at speeding up the system, it remains concerning that the discipline of Mr. James C. Duchon took as long as it did (see below and the linked petition of discipline). What is even […]
Initially, I left question 4(d) blank because the answers for 4(a) through (c) were answered no. But the computer system would not let me leave 4(d) blank. It forced me to answer even though the question presupposes a “yes” to a previous response… You would not think that professional malpractice insurer would be so sloppy in generating […]
Northern States Power (“NSP”) has an easement to run power lines over property owned by Chanhassen residents, Jarvis Jones and Laura Kaplan (“Jones/Kaplan”). In October 2014, NSP asked for permission to come onto the Jones/Kaplan property to prune an oak tree to clear it from a powerline, a right that NSP held as part of its […]