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.

Thomas J. Lyons, Jr. – Indefinite Suspension

Minnesota Litigator strives to provide news and developments in Minnesota civil litigation and aspires to avoid “non-newsworthy,” also known as “gossip,” but, as mentioned recently, some developments hover somewhere in between. This news item admittedly falls primarily on the gossip end of the spectrum.  On the other hand, Mr. Lyons is widely known in the […]

A Rare Legal Setback to the Mayo Clinic in a Medical Malpractice Case

It is fair to say that the Rochester, Minnesota-based Mayo Clinic is one of a few proverbial “crown jewels” of Minnesota (along with the boundary waters, Louise Erdrich, Prince and A Prairie Home Companion).  The Mayo Clinic’s preeminence in medical care is generally unchallenged and widely acknowledged.  Its unsurpassed reputation for patient care is presumably […]

Petters Sentenced: 50 years for $3.65 billion fraud (1 day for every $200,000 taken)

Defense counsel had asked for a four year sentence based on the relative size of Petters’ fraud vs. Bernie Madoff’s fraud ($64.8 billion) and Madoff’s 150-year sentence.  Using similar logic, the penalty for murderers of two people should get 1/84th the penalty meted out to Timothy McVeigh?  Again, using “the Madoff measure,” presumably the theft […]

The Quagmire of Discovery Disputes, Revisited

Back in January, Minnesota Litigator covered the Loparex v. MPI discovery dispute in which MPI sought third-party discovery from Briggs & Morgan, seeking discovery responses served by MPI in a Minnesota lawsuit, in connection with Loparex’s litigation against MPI in federal court in Indiana. MPI’s response was that Loparex was seeking documents in Minnesota that […]

Pro Malo Free Legal Work?

Civil litigators have a special name for free legal services normally:  “pro bono,” short for “pro bono publico,” translated as “for the public good.”   (And for some civil litigators another term for free legal services : contingent fee work (for a lost case)). In two recent decisions from the U.S. District Court (D. Minn.) […]

Custody Battle Over Frozen Embryos: 10 years and counting…not over yet…

Patricia Dodson and Dr. Jackson Lay participated in an in vitro fertilization program in 1995, divorced in ’97, disagreed on whether Ms. Dodson could be implanted with Lay-fertilized eggs in ’99, and the issue has been touring the Arkansas state court system and the federal courts ever since.  

Rucker v. Schmidt, Rider Bennett LLP: Res Judicata & Client (and/or?) Attorney Wrong-doing

Monday Morning was to have been  the time for argument before the Minnesota Supreme Court in the Rucker case against attorney Steven Schmidt and the now-defunct Twin Cities law firm of Rider Bennett  LLP.  Argument has been rescheduled (though the rescheduled time is not evident on the Court’s calendar online). The lawsuit arises in the […]

Remedy for a broken heart?

The heading for this post has a double meaning, referring to products liability claims arising from Medtronic’s recalled Sprint Fidelis “lead,” an implantable cardiac defibrillator (that is, a remedy for a broken heart?), and also the efforts of a flotilla of products liability plaintiffs to revive their lawsuit, which was resoundingly rejected by U.S. District […]

Akanthos, Whitebox v. Compucredit: Hasta la vista…

As covered on Minnesota Litigator at some length roughly over 1Q, ’10 (here, here, and here), plaintiff/Compucredit debt-holders came in, guns blazing, in the waning days of 2009 but their blitz was rebuffed time and time again. Now the fight, if it is to continued at all, will head to Compucredit’s home turf of Atlanta, […]

The Challenge of ESI Problem Solving in Large Litigation

The linked order from U.S. Mag. Judge Janie S. Mayeron (D. Minn.) may be useful for Minnesota litigators to get a feel for how litigants and the Court approach requests for large amounts of electronically stored information (ESI).