New Minnesota court rules took effect on July 1, 2015. The changes are, in the main, prompted by increased digitization of document filing, service and access.
Court staff presented training sessions on the new rules around the state.
A few highlights from the sessions follow.
When and how you must efile and eserve:
- You must efile now for almost all cases in the 11 pilot counties. You may efile now in all other counties. That will become mandatory for cases statewide around July 1, 2016.
- Once you efile a document in a particular case, you must continue to do so for that case.
- You can efile up to 11:59 pm on the date a document is due. But if you efile after 5:00 pm, your opponent gets an extra day to respond.
- Your efiling is effective as of the time you submitted the document, unless it is rejected. There are limited grounds for rejecting an efiling (e.g., failure to pay a filing fee).
- A filed document will be available for downloading via the system for 30 days.
A few words on eservice:
- You must serve conventionally to start an action. After that, eservice works.
- Discovery may be served through the electronic system, but should not be efiled (unless, for example, it is attached to an affidavit in support of a motion).
About the content and format of efiled documents:
- Restricted identifiers (like social security numbers and bank account numbers) may not be filed in publicly available documents. If court staff see that a filing improperly includes restricted identifiers, it will be segregated for a period of time to allow time to correct the document. It is the filer’s responsibility, though, to assure that restricted identifiers are handled correctly.
- As you can see, I really like bullet points. But you should not use bullets in efiled and eserved documents. (For some technical computer reason.) A few other symbols may not be used. But most other symbols may be used. Including ¶ and §.
The new rules include many more twists. To see a guide to efiling for users, click here. To see the rule amendments, click here and go through each set of amended rules. Additional resources are available here.