In July, I posted on “computer assisted review” (CAR). After that, I had the pleasure of a meeting with Ben Legatt of Shepherd Data Services. Shepherd Data offers a “CAR product” and Ben offered to discuss how it works. The following is an edited version of my talk with Ben about some of the mechanics […]

Update (August 5, 2016): A jury decided against Bob Cattanach in his lawsuit against the BNSF railroad company. Today U.S. District Court Chief Judge John R. Tunheim (D. Minn.) rejected Cattanach’s bid for a new trial.  Update (September 29, 2015): Bob Cattanach’s gets gets some real ink (a nice article by Randy Furst in the Star […]

United South Central High School, “Home of the Rebels,” in Wells, Minnesota, about 26 miles West of Albert Lea, went on “lock-down” on April 15, 2014 so the school could search the premises for illegal drugs (a.k.a. “controlled substances”). Drug-sniffing dogs “alerted on” a girl’s locker, as the Minnesota Supreme Court put it. School officials found […]

Let’s say XYZ Company sells stock on a publicly traded exchange. And let’s say that XYZ Company’s publicly available financial information inaccurately overstates the company’s value.  XYZ’s share price does not reflect the company’s actual, lower, value; it is inflated based on the false information. Every trading day while the truth is unknown, XYZ shares change […]

Lawyers “plead in the alternative.” (“There is no evidence that my client shot the man, but, if you think he did, it was self-defense.”) Most people have a problem with such double-talk. Most people overlook that, in a pleading — a legal complaint or an answer to a legal complaint — a lawyer is simply invoking every possible claim or […]

ML: You’ve just now finished your year stint as MSBA president. That is a privilege and an honor that very few Minnesota lawyers ever get to enjoy. I wonder if you could tell me your high points and low points of taking that position? Mike Unger: I would say, in general, the high points are […]

A recent change in Minnesota’s rules regarding service of a lawsuit on a party, and filing the lawsuit with the court, has been somewhat controversial. Formerly a plaintiff and a defendant could litigate between themselves without any court filing or court involvement until one of them decided to file the lawsuit with a court. There […]

The American Bar Association (ABA) tapped Minnesota Litigator as a top 100 law blog nationwide in 2012 but since then, it has not made the list, even though I have gotten enormous amounts of positive feedback, mostly from Minnesota lawyers and even some judges (and also from my mother). Kind of like public radio, you get Minnesota Litigator without […]

In February, 2015, thirteen year-old Duluth native, Tristan Seehus, fatally shot himself with a gun. Seehus went to a school where bullying allegedly occurred. A little more than a year before Tristan died, his father posted on Facebook that he was proud of Tristan for standing up to and fighting a schoolmate, who, he said, had […]

Last week, I posted on “CAR,” computer assisted review, as a significant challenge to U.S. civil litigators’ business models. Then I came across a recent “order on discovery of hard copy and electronically stored information” in a civil case (linked here). Looking back on still other Minnesota Litigator posts, I note scores of posts on the high cost […]