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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Update (December 19, 2016): The Minnesota punitive damages statute  provides: (a) Punitive damages shall be allowed in civil actions only upon clear and convincing evidence that the acts of the defendant show deliberate disregard for the rights or safety of others. (b) A defendant has acted with deliberate disregard for the rights or safety of […]

Sometimes when someone sues another for an injury, the injury is on-going at the time of trial. Medical treatment and costs can persist through the lawsuit and for the rest of the life of the injured person. This injects inherent uncertainty into the important question of compensating victims. How is a jury to figure out […]

Last week, Minnesota Litigator posted on a recent class action filed against Walden University and Laureate Education, not holding back our condemnation of those who exploit the critical importance of higher education in our 21st century economy, those who fleece consumers with hyped, over-priced, and possibly useless products. Minnesota School of Business (MSB) might also belong in […]

This week, the Star Tribune covered a recent lawsuit brought by a new mother whose two day-old baby was accidentally handed over to the wrong mom and breast fed by this unrelated woman at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. The plaintiff’s lawyer is Wayne A. Jagow. How much do you think this case is worth? What […]

Update (December 7, 2016): The original post, below, highlights the inherent and dramatic uncertainty of the course of civil litigation. I recently discovered that the saga continues. Minneapolis law firm, Nilan Johnson Lewis (“NJL”) is sitting on a pile of money ($2,300,653.64) related to the settlement of the underlying lawsuit but the handful of litigants […]

If the allegations in the 145-page complaint are true, I hope that the recently filed class action against for-profit on-line graduate schools, Walden University and Laureate Education, Inc. shuts these scams schools down for good. Distilled to its essence, the class action complaint alleges that the schools claim to sell graduate school educations and doctoral […]

Update (December 2, 2016): Shattuck-St. Mary was not able to strip me of my successful prediction below.  Update (November 23, 2016): It is no surprise that requests to file motions for reconsideration (perhaps more accurately called, “You’re Doing it All Wrong, Boss” Motions) face long odds. We’ll see if Shattuck-St. Mary is able to strip […]