One of the most nauseating parts of the life of a trial lawyer, in this trial lawyer’s opinion, is the issue of waiver as applied to the work of the trial lawyer (as distinguished from waiver in other contexts like contractual waiver). To have a Court of Appeal hold that one’s argument may or may […]
As the Minneapolis/St. Paul legal community already knows, if not the entire state and the national legal community, the Minnesota law firm of Briggs & Morgan is being devoured by another midwest law firm (without a previous presence in Minnesota): Taft Stettinius & Hollister. Of course, the law firms do not characterize the transaction as […]
We recently highlighted that unsophisticated litigants sometimes have unrealistic understandings of their potential financial recoveries (or potential financial risk, if they are defendants), i.e., their likely damages. This phenomenon, in turn, can be a recipe for disaster for plaintiffs’ lawyers. The lawyers might, for example, work for more than two years on a hard-fought contingent […]
Unsophisticated litigants sometimes imagine they can just pick a number from thin air and claim it as their damages. (See, e.g., here and here (Congressman Nunes’ complaints claiming over $1 billion in defamation damages in two separate lawsuits).) As most civil litigators know (putting aside Congressman Nunes’ lawyers, perhaps), in general, there is considerably more […]
Mr. David Modeen allegedly left his employer PetroChoice last April. He allegedly fibbed about the next stop in his professional life, claiming to take “an executive marketing position with a promotional products company.” Instead, PetroChoice alleges, Mr. Modeen went to a direct competitor of PetroChoice, Como Lube. Moreover, he is alleged to have misappropriated PetroChoice […]
Regular Minnesota Litigator readers will have noticed a drop-off in the frequency of Minnesota Litigator posts since early October. On October 2 at about 5:20 p.m., a man driving a BMW 5 Series southbound on Colfax Ave. South crossed 28th Street without looking both ways. Riding my bike home from work that late afternoon, the […]
When a U.S. federal court throws out all federal claims with prejudice in a case and then dismisses the case (which includes additional claims under state law), can “the prevailing party” bring a motion for award of attorneys’ fees (based on a contract provision) in the federal court that just threw the case out? (“Prevailing […]
Update (November 15, 2019): The case described below was argued before the Minnesota Supreme Court this week. In the underlying district court decision by retired Hennepin County District Court Judge Mel I. Dickstein, it seems clear that Judge Dickstein felt required to rule against the plaintiff by established law and strongly suggested the possibility that […]
Update (November 11, 2019): Linked here is the defendants’ response to the plaintiff’s efforts to obtain documents and testimony withheld from discovery on claims of attorney work product doctrine (discussed below). It is strong advocacy; given our experience of rather broad and deferential treatment of privilege claims, we predict these defenses will win the day. […]
Being a solo civil litigator presents enormous challenges — far too many to list in this post. But one obvious one is document management. In those eighteen letters and two simple words, there can be a horrifying and bottomless abyss for solo (or small firm) lawyers (or even large law firms or corporations). E-discovery poses […]