Minnesota Litigator
News & Commentary
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Practice Pointer: A Deal’s A Deal
From the linked opinion, I gather that Plaintiff Christopher Ayala agreed to settle a case he brought against a Minnesota company, Aerotek, and then he changed his mind. (At least before the so-called “settlement” in the Ayala case, Mr. Ayala’s lawsuit was similar to the unfortunate Mr. Chandramouli Vaidyanathan’s protracted lawsuit, covered at some length in […]
Thoughts on Marketing and Deception
Last week was a bad week for Minnesota-based multi-million dollar wonder-company, “My Pillow,” which got spanked by the Better Business Bureau and sued in a nationwide class action on the same day. (Here is a link to the Star Tribune coverage and here is a link to the class action complaint.) At issue is a “buy […]
The Best Law Firm Holiday Card I Got by Far
Businesses send out and get piles of holiday cards every year but few come close to Merchant & Gould’s cards. What is the value of a cheap card? What is the ROI on holiday cards? (I am not the only or the first one to wonder.)
Short Sentences About Being Behind Bars…
We’ve recently come across a chilling Sundance TV series, “Rectify,” about a person exonerated after a twenty-year stint on death row (starring Aden Young). The series’ portrayal of the hardship of prison is heart-rending. Safety and security are fleeting. Paradoxically privacy is non-existent and total isolation is nearly constant. The burden on the human mind […]
A Personal and Private Situation With Potentially Great Public Importance
Update (January 5, 2017): The Court (U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Nelson (D. Minn.)) has postponed the hearing on summary judgment in the Rumble v. Fairview case described below in light of the recent development of an injunction issuing from a federal court in Texas (link below at bottom of original post). Linked here, […]
Bonner Burned by Minn. R. Civ. P. 5.04?
Minnesota lawyer, John F. Bonner, III, has had a very rough time in recent years. He has obviously been strapped for cash. This might have played a part in his bringing a lawsuit against longstanding clients of his now defunct law firm, Bonner & Borhart, Mark Lanterman and Computer Forensic Services, Inc. (“CFS”) for allegedly […]
New Year’s Message for 2017 from Minnesota Litigator
It’s a New Year! The election of Donald J. Trump as the President of the United States might make the coming years some of the most perilous faced in our country’s history. With a fickle, impulsive, vindictive, insulated, and inexperienced President, we face great risk on both domestic and international fronts. There remain, of course, […]
Minnesota Litigator Profile: Eric Nilsson
Minnesota Litigator spoke recently with Eric Nilsson, a Minnesota lawyer 35 years of experience in bank-related law. (For Eric’s contact information, click here.) Most recently, he’s taken on a highly specialized and extraordinarily complicated task, the reconciliation of U.S. commercial lending law and Sharia-compliant financial transactions for Muslim clients. As he discusses, he has found […]
A Look Back at 2016: the Paradox of the Civil Litigation Business
Financially, it has not been a great year for the law firm of LEVENTHAL pllc, notwithstanding significant wins for several clients — an arbitration with a 100% recovery (plus an award and recovery of 100% of the client’s attorneys’ fees), disputes resolved by a single carefully written letter, lawsuits stopped dead in their tracks on a […]
Minnesota Lenders Lose An Arrow in Their Debt Collection Quiver
A company (that we’ll call “Borrower”) borrowed $7.5 million from a lender and offered a piece of commercial real property as collateral (commonly known as a mortgage). Borrower defaulted on its payments under the loan agreement. At that point, Borrower and bank entered into a “written pre-negotiation agreement, in which [B]orrower agreed to, among other […]