Recently the Minnesota Court of Appeals unanimously, and correctly it would seem, reversed a decision by a very able Hennepin County judge to dismiss a FELA case in Gallagher v. BNSF. ((FELA stands for Federal Employer’s Liability Act, which is a century old federal law creating fault based liability for railroads when their employees are […]
Link Snacks, Inc., the makers of JACK LINK’S brand beef jerky, has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the district of Minnesota (federal court, that is) alleging that 100 anonymous eBay users have sold counterfeit coupons and violating their trademarks. Link Snacks has also filed a motion for early discovery. Will […]
Update #3 (March 28, 2012): The BNSF railroad defended this terrible crossing accident case (described below) by arguing that the railroad met applicable standards of care under Minnesota law and then, after the case was tried before a jury, tried to prevail on a federal preemption theory — that is, arguing to the court that the […]
Update #2 (February 27, 2012): [Note from Editor: Depo International has contacted Minnesota Litigator and asked that its rates be removed from this post. Minnesota Litigator has voluntarily removed the pricing pursuant to the caller’s request. Suffice it to say that there is variation among fees/charges of court reporting agencies and lawyers and their clients may […]
[UPDATE: Mag. Judge Jeanne Graham (D. Minn.) rejects the defendant’s theory of the breadth of privilege from discovery but provides a procedure to evaluate a subset of some of the privilege claims made.] Arguing for a protective order of a scope and breadth that this author’s not seen before, counsel for Taren Ibn Zayad Academy […]
Updating a previous post regarding a Holiday fire-drill thanks to plaintiffs’ emergency motion for a temporary restraining order and expedited discovery, the “emergency” motion was denied by Judge Rosenbaum on 12/29. Plaintiffs keep up the pressure with a motion for immediate discovery (not awaiting the Rule 26(f) scheduling conference). One wonders if there might have been a […]
We recently covered Defendant TiZA’s extremely broad view of a proposed protective order in the case. We now have the ACLU’s response (here). Of particular interest is the news that threats and intimidation have apparently caused a third-party witness whom the ACLU wished to depose to cancel the deposition. “Stopping TIZA’s intimidation of potential witnesses […]
Mag. Judge Arthur J. Boylan (D. Minn.) ruled on Friday (1/15/10) on a discovery dispute in ADT Security Services v. Selige Swenson, et al., Civil File No. 07-cv-2983 (JRT/AJB), that ADT could amend deposition testimony — not to change “Laurence” to “Lawrence,” or some other minor correction but, rather, to reverse testimony completely. The case […]
Apparently Dennis Hecker’s former secretary decided to take some documents with her when she left her job working for him and, when served a subpoena by Chrysler Finance, who has a lawsuit against Hecker, she produced the computer files to Chrysler Finance. Now Hecker’s counsel not only wants the files returned, because they were allegedly […]
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 […]