I have had the pleasure of knowing Karin Ciano for about five years and the privilege of hiring her for help as I prepared for trial last year. Karin was a pleasure to work with and her work-product was outstanding. Whether you are in a pinch or whether, before you are in a pinch, you […]
Update (November 18, 2015): Following up on the issues raised in the Bacon Battle below…. So, can you depose the corporate C.E.O. of a huge corporation in a relatively small commercial dispute? Answer: That depends. Does the C.E.O. have “unique knowledge relevant to the issues in [the] case and [an adversary] has not been able to obtain the same […]
This post is a call to action. Please help. There seems to be interest in the Minneapolis/St. Paul legal community for experienced lawyer mentors. There are junior lawyers who feel at sea in one sense or another. There are, believe it or not, experienced lawyers who look for the opportunities to help junior lawyers. What, […]
In the case of MidCountry Bank v. Rajchenbach, et al. pending before U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Nelson (D. Minn.), MidCountry Bank lent money to SK International, Inc. and MidCountry Bank required that humans step up as guarantors of the loan to SK, as is extremely common when lending money to businesses. Banks generally […]
Update (November 11, 2015): Somehow, it snuck past me that the Minnesota Supreme Court granted a petition for review a few weeks ago by the law firm of O’Neil & Murphy in the case, discussed below. Mechanics lien lawyers might be interested in this case if the Supreme Court will be addressing the underlying lien […]
In Friday’s post, I took the controversial position of favoring (or at least defending) “turgid legalese” over “beautiful writing” for most lawyers’ writing most of the time. Clients don’t curl up in their free time to read and relish our legal pleadings, our confidentiality agreements, letters of intent, Hart/Scott/Rodino filing forms and on and on and we should not […]
Legal grammarian/SNOOT pundit Bryan Garner has said is that, “While lawyers are the most highly paid rhetoricians in the world, we’re among the most inept wielders of words.” I am not so sure Mr. Garner is right about that. Lawyers and judges are not writing to give pleasure to their readers. They are rarely writing for […]
Because of our state/federal political system, we have a so-called dual court system so many legal disputes can be fought out in either state or federal courts. If that were not complicated enough, we also have developed a third branch of the third branch, so to speak, private arbitration. Alongside, on top of, underneath, or […]
The docketing in U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota of a multi-million dollar “foreign” judgment (from a federal court in New York) against a law firm got my attention this week. The judgment came after a trial for professional malpractice against Antonelli Terry Stout & Kraus (“ATS&K”), a law firm (formerly?) located in the […]
Justice Scalia was in town last week. Maybe you had a chance to hear him talk. His visit prompted me to pick up one of the books he’s authored with Bryan Garner. Making Your Case is a short, readable guide to written and oral argument. I found some familiar principles laid out clearly and […]