Minnesota Litigator
News & Commentary
Do not consider the blog to be a substitute for obtaining legal advice from a qualified attorney licensed in your state.
Just STOP IT!
The linked order from Judge Vanessa D. Gilmore of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas has been bouncing around the internet for most of December so many Minnesota Litigator readers have undoubtedly stumbled across it already. It is a cry from the heart of a federal judge that lawyers and clients, […]
Prof. Edward Adams is waiving his constitutional right to a speedy trial big time.
Update (December 21, 2018): It’s looking like the criminal trial of University of Minnesota law professor Edward Adams will be moved from January, 2019 to October of 2019, based on 35,000 emails seized from the professor’s Yahoo email accounts that still need to be reviewed and one of Prof. Adams’ lawyer’s maternity leave. The pressure’s […]
The Pleading Standard for Defamation Clarified under Minnesota Law (Or Maybe Not)
We have covered defamation cases on Minnesota Litigator a lot. We do so because, for the past twenty years, the “publication costs” for disseminating information have dropped by orders of magnitude to very nearly $0.00. In our view, there has been an explosion of false and harmful disinformation because of the sharp drop in dissemination […]
Broken Healthcare Collides with Broken Law: The Minnesota Supreme Court Steps In
In a galaxy far far away, tort victims sue their tortfeasors for the harms that the tortfeasors wrongfully inflicted on the victims. The cost to the victims to vindicate their rights against the wrongdoers is zero (because why would one short-pay or penalize tort victims, effectively charging them money for compensation and justice?). The validation […]
TAAFOMFT, v. 10: Hairsplitting Gotchas
Regular and long-time readers of Minnesota Litigator will remember our TAAFOMFT series (“These are a few of my favorite things….”) in which we engage in the fine art of whining via irony. We complain about aspects of the practice of civil litigation that we like the least. (We view it as a good sign that we […]
Entitled To Costs for Winning at Trial? Sorta, not really…
Update (December 11, 2018): Speaking of the disappointment of winning one’s “costs” after a win in course, in a wholly separate case from the one described in yesterday’s post (below), Allnurses, the victororious defendant (at least pending appeal) sought “costs” of about $135,000 and was awarded only $1,092.45. Here’s why: [click link]. And how much do […]
Lessons Learned from 12 Years Investigating Minnesota Lawyer Misconduct
Before commenting on the lessons learned from 12 years as a volunteer investigator for the Fourth District Ethics Committee on behalf of Minnesota’s Office of Lawyers Professional Responsibility, we start by urging all Minnesota lawyers (and even non-lawyers) to consider volunteering. It is not a huge commitment of time. It is, in our view, an […]
Unitherm v. Hormel, A Hog Clipping is the Latest News from the Front in Pig War II
Update #8 (November 30, 2018): We have covered Unitherm v. Hormel, the so-called Bacon Battle, for some years now (see the string, below) but we only recently learned that we might more appropriately call it Pig War II, or PW II, because history already has had a Pig War. (However, we’re partial to variant names […]
The Enigma of “Foreseeability”
Blake School facilitated a student athletic trip and a Blake student and 16 year-old recently licensed driver lost control of his car, crossed the centerline, crashed into JeanAnn and Gary Fenrich, killing Mr. Fenrich and badly injuring Ms. Fenrich. Was the accident “foreseeable” to the school? Was “the specific danger…objectively reasonable to expect, not simply […]
On Deposition Errata Sheets, Does This Fly: “I said, ‘No,’ but I meant, ‘Yes'”?
Updated post (November 14, 2018): The post below discusses whether a witness can change the substance of deposition testimony in a later-completed “errata sheet” (written corrections to prior oral testimony). We took the position that this is and should be permissible under normal circumstances (the right can obviously be abused), recognizing that there are some […]