How about where a retailer sells an item, calling the price, a “sexy price” and a “crazy give-away” at $179.99? Can a consumer sue, claiming the price is not sexy, the price is not crazy, and the product is not being given away? I am generally pro-consumer and skeptical of the tactics of businesses, which […]
A new and ferocious competitor is entering the arena of Minneapolis-St. Paul Big Law: Jones Day. Multiple reliable sources have reported that a number of lawyers from Barnes & Thornburg‘s Minneapolis office will be opening up a Minneapolis branch of Jones Day. This is bad news for Barnes & Thornburg, which has reportedly lost three preeminent […]
“Lawyering is 99% podiatry and 1% brain surgery,” my father (a lawyer) used to say. In other words, lawyering is for the most part dull, routine, and uncomplicated paper-pushing and posturing. Then, from time to time, it is critically important, intricate, and fascinating. Another analogy that occurs to me is trench warfare, monotonous, uneventful, boring, until, […]
Notwithstanding fleeting, ad hoc respites, Minnesotans spend about five months of every year in uncomfortably cold weather, November 1 through April 1. (The wimps among us would tack on two or three weeks to either end of that, while the thicker-skinned might pare a similar number.) Either way, it is a fact that, when the […]
Common practice in Minnesota civil litigation is for defendants’ answers to allegations made against them in civil complaints to look something like this (I paraphrase): Paragraph 1: I admit that I am who you say I am. Paragraph 2: I deny Paragraph 2-10 of your complaint. Paragraph 3: Paragraph 11 of your complaint quotes a […]
Imagine that Manufacturer A has been selling products of Company B for downstream sale to retailers for many years throughout the state (or some other defined region). Imagine that A & B’s agreement was for a one year term, automatically renewing unless and until either party gives 90 days advanced notice to the other of its intent […]
As all civil litigators know, a “default judgment” occurs when a plaintiff wins her case because the other side “defaults.” In other words, the defendant has notice of the lawsuit and does not bother to defend itself for one reason or another. It’s a pretty extreme outcome. One side loses the lawsuit without any finding that […]
I have been repeatedly documenting and lamenting the horrible prospects for U.S. lawyers in recent years (here and here, for example). Altman Weil, Inc. is a Pennsylvania-based legal consultant. Law360 is an on-line legal industry publication, which disseminated the results of an Altman Weil survey this past week in an article by Melissa Maleske. In […]
Update (May 20, 2016): Below, I noted a rare granting of a motion to reconsider. It is not all that surprising when a court agrees to change its decision after it has already agreed to “reconsider” an earlier decision. That happened here. Congratulations, again, to ADM counsel, Curtis Ripley of Stinson Leonard. As a bonus, ADM counsel was […]
Critics are relentless in their criticism but they are stingy with their gratitude. After all, people enjoy critics because critics voice opposition. Having said that, if a critic does not acknowledge progress in those whom he criticizes, does the critic not become a mere nattering nabob of negativity? Is there not a big and important line […]