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.
Still more on “Data Darwinism,” Reputation, and Lawyers
A Minnesota business, Rust Consulting Services (“Rust”), has been in the business of “legal administration services” for forty years. That is, it administers class action settlements, regulatory settlements, mass tort settlements, remediation programs, data breach responses, and product recalls. Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky Wotkyns LLP is a California-based “national plaintiffs’ law firm handling complex high-stakes litigation” […]
A Mystery
How in the world can one explain lawyers drafting a “Memorandum in Support of Motion for Order to Release Funds at Financial Institution,” an accompanying declaration (with an exhibit), and a proposed order, to get an order from the court (a writ) to recover $47.95 from a bank account? Without question, the cost of the […]
Another Appeal to Eliminate “Unpublished” Minnesota Court of Appeals Decisions
Minnesota litigators have complained about so-called unpublished Minnesota Court of Appeals opinions for several years. See Lawrence R. McDonough, To Be or Not To Be Unpublished: Housing Law and the Lost Precedent of the Minnesota Court of Appeals, 35 Hamline L. Rev. 1, 22 (2012). Minnesota Supreme Court Justice David Lillehaug brought attention to the issue […]
Bruno Brulé.
Update (March 21, 2018): Another successful prediction by Minnesota Litigator… Original post (November 8, 2017): Esmeralda Sorchaga sued Ride Auto in connection with her purchase of a used pick-up truck (specifically, a 2008 Ford F-350) from Ride Auto. She alleged fraud by the salesman. Following a bench trial, the district court awarded Sorchaga $14,366.03 in […]
Top Six Mistakes in Settlement Agreements
Update (March 23, 2018): The original post, below, is nearly 10 years old. We still stand by it. These remain valuable practice pointers. The lawsuit between Blu Dot Manufacturing against Stitch Industries d/b/a Joybird in U.S. District Court (D. Minn.) seems to be an illustration of Mistake #6, “buyer’s remorse.” At least according to Blu Dot, the […]
“Discovery About Discovery” = “Disputes About Disputes” = BAD?
There is a significant risk in our civil litigation system of legal disputes “flipping upside-down.” We use the expression as it is used in the context of mortgage lending: after the 2008 mortgage meltdown, the debt attached to a property (i.e., the mortgage loans) exceeded the value of the properties in many cases. This is […]
8th Circuit ERISA Litigators: Heads-Up!
This post is for the small number of civil litigators in Minnesota (and other 8th Circuit States) who do ERISA litigation. This past week, U.S. Mag. Judge Katherine Menendez (D. Minn.) held that the “fiduciary exception” applied to the insurer’s asserted attorney-client privilege in Christoff v. Unum Life Insurance Company. The 8th Circuit has yet to […]
Heads Up – Changes to Deadlines Under the Civil Rules May Be Coming
Minnesota litigators all know the basic rules for calculating deadlines under the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure. For example, we know that weekends and holidays are excluded in calculating deadlines for time periods less than 7 days. That rule – and other rules governing time calculations – may be changing down the road. The Minnesota […]
Forfeiture and The Constitutionality of Deadlines
When people are arrested and charged with a crime, their paramount concern is generally their personal freedom and the accused (the smart ones, at least) quickly retain criminal defense lawyers or work with public defenders assigned to them. But there are often tag-along proceedings that follow criminal prosecutions: forfeitures, which are particularly prominent in the context of […]
The Super Low Value of SuperValu Data Breach Cases
It is looking like plaintiffs’ class action lawyers may end up empty-handed after nearly four years of litigation against SuperValu based on a data breach of SuperValu’s credit card processing system caused by malicious hackers. The bottom line: the plaintiffs’ lawyers were apparently unable to find a single customer who can establish that he or […]