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.
A Contract’s Remedy Clause Does Not Conclusively Establish Irreparable Harm
Update (July 2, 2018): Notch another successful prediction of Minnesota Litigator. The Minnesota Supreme Court, as we predicted below, reversed the Minnesota Court of Appeals this past week. Phew! A private party cannot hog-tie and force a trial court to issue an injunction, so-called equitable relief, and it follows that private parties cannot “stipulate and agree” […]
Schools Challenged When Coping with Student Bodies
Look at the happy students! Imagine the infra-cranial chaos behind every single one of these kids as their still-developing brains grapple with the leap from the innocence of childhood to the fraught and complex interrelations, interactions, politics, and power of adult relationships! This week, Sr. U.S. District Court Judge Donovan W. Frank (D. Minn.) dismissed all […]
Messina v. North Central Distributing, Inc. d/b/a Yosemite Home Décor: Is This Really Headed For Trial Finally?
Update (July 25, 2018): No. (And so, today, Minnesota Litigator is one for two on predictions.) Original post (June 22, 2018): Richard Messina and his lawyers at Halunen Law have been wrestling with Mr. Messina’s former employer, Yosemite, since 2014. Defendant Yosemite successfully sought appeal of the denial of its motion to compel arbitration, but […]
Another Bad Week for Neil Lapidus
Update (June 20, 2018): Lurie LLP and its lawyers from the Maslon law firm, Bill Pentelovitch and Martin Fallon, can celebrate now. They fought back Mr. Lapidus’ appeal in the case described below. Readers may point out that Defendant Neil Lapidus and his formidable trial team can still take this to the Minnesota Supreme Court and […]
Dog Whistles, Racism, & Cognition
In the Great White Northland of Minnesota Nice, few of us regularly see overtly racist — that is anti-black — behavior. On the other hand, a great many of us (but unfortunately not all of us) are aware of subtler, thinly veiled, and pervasive anti-black attitudes and racism in Minnesota, perhaps more than many other […]
Another Post about Reputation, Marketing, the Internet, and Defamation
Regular Minnesota Litigator readers will note that, among other recurring themes, we are preoccupied with marketing for legal services and lawyers and reputation. We should not have to point out the critical overlap of these areas of interest. We have also found defamation in the internet age to be a fertile ground for posts and, again, the overlap […]
Changes to Minnesota’s Rule 56
July 1, 2018. Amendments to the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure will take effect on that day. Many of the proposed amendments will bring Minnesota’s civil procedure rules into conformity with the federal rules. Parts of rule 56 governing summary judgment will be amended. It is hard to compare the rule 56 provisions as they […]
Judicial Independence Day — June 12
Judicial Independence Day – June 12 – marks the passage of the Act of Settlement in England in 1701. For the first time, the King of England could not remove judges at will. Judges could be removed only by Parliament, and served for life during “good behavior.” This was an important step towards […]
Here we go again. In a Situation of Alleged Sexual Misconduct, Uncertainty as to Who The Victim(s) is/are….
Only last week, we noted how schools and colleges are the bomb factories where our kids’ hormonal fire-works are set off. Kids are alleged to have behaved badly. Schools investigate and, where they believe it is warranted, discipline perceived wrong-doers. Someone ends up charged with wrong-doing (or not) and sometimes it seems the school is […]
Under Minnesota Law, “Indefinitely,” By Itself in a Contract, Means “Finitely.”
Update (June 8, 2018): Minnesota Litigator is proud of its accurate predictions but we also own our botched predictions. We got a recent prediction way wrong. In Glacial Plains Co-op v. Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company, the primary case described in earlier posts, below, the issue was whether a contract that expressly provided that it had […]