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.
This Tiny Detail is a Big Deal.
Current mortgage interest rates in the United States are around 3%. The one-year LIBOR (London Interbank Offer Rate) is 0.33%. So if you can get a 10% interest rate as a lender, that’s pretty good. Most people (even lawyers) do not normally think of plaintiffs in lawsuits as “lenders” or “creditors” but, in a way, […]
If You’re Going to Sue a Lawyer, Hire A Lawyer With Experience Suing Lawyers.
You might not like the procedural requirements for legal malpractice cases under Minnesota law, but you still have to heed them (or lose your case). So held the Minnesota Court of Appeals (AGAIN) this week in Mittelstaedt v. Henney (see pp. 13-14). And you cannot maneuver around the statute by calling your claim a “breach […]
An Important Minnesota Appellate Decision on the Attorney-Client Privilege?
The Minnesota Court of Appeals granted a writ of prohibition in Stephen A. Lawrence, et al. v Rihm Family Companies, et al., halting the trial court’s order that a party had waived its attorney-client privilege. In a nutshell Party A sold a business (X Co) to Party B, delivered the electronic files of X Co. […]
Pet Debt: Keeping Your Dog on a Short Lease?
Update (December 8, 2020): Apparently, the defendant in the “pet lease class action,” which was the subject of an earlier post, is not a particularly deep-pocketed defendant, at least based on the modesty of the recently approved class action settlement. The class action plaintiffs were awarded a maximum of $50,200 (to be distributed pro rata […]
The Next Big Wave: Dead & Dying Boomers? (Trust/Estate Litigation)
Update (10/27/2021): The Minnesota Supreme Court has now weighed in on this complicated dispute over the disposition of assets (farmland) in a trust. In our original post, we declined to make a prediction and we feel vindicated. The Court’s analysis is complicated and any attempt to predict it in advance would have ended badly. Original […]
Attorney Discipline Better Late than Never
Update (November 6, 2020): It took the Board of Professional Responsibility more than three years to get to this point but, by clear and convincing evidence, earlier this week they finally issued “Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, Recommendations for Discipline,” finding several ethics violations by Minneapolis lawyer, Dan Biersdorf. Mr. Biersdorf is the subject […]
Spearman v. Taylor: A Case Study on Corporate Governance
Update (October 28, 2020): After most of a year of procedural threshold battle, the plaintiffs’ case has been thrown out for failure to add the company (Envoy) as a party in a lawsuit that is all about the company. This is an obvious set-back to the plaintiffs, possibly a fatal one, although the Court dismissed […]
New Court Rules You Will Need To Know
A post from Karen R. Cole: The Problem: Thousands of legal documents are filed in Minnesota courts every year incorrectly filing confidential information in a way that is publicly accessible. About 100 noncompliant documents are filed each week. Over 400 documents with confidential information were improperly filed as public documents in one week alone. That […]
The ANSI/OSHA Compliant Ladder Fight Continues…
Long time readers of Minnesota Litigator will remember our earlier posts about Wing v. Tricam, a dispute between competing ladder manufacturers about the defendant’s claim that its ladder is “OSHA/ANSI Compliant.” (Earlier posts are here, here, and here.) Plaintiff Wing argues that Defendant Tricam’s claim is false advertising. As is clear from our earlier posts, […]
Haste Makes Waste.
They say that one person’s trash is another person’s treasure…but one failed trash business might have caused another’s disastrous business decision (or, to put it another way, one person’s trash might be (and often is) another person’s trash). We turn to Vermillion State Bank vs. Tennis Sanitation, a case that was accepted recently for review […]