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Minnesota's junk fee exemption is keyed to fees authorized by law, not to car dealers. And the doc fee cap is the lesser of $350 or ten percent of the sale.
Minnesota's club-contract sections ban the gym termination fee and give an injured member damages plus attorney's fees. The junk fee law gives you an injunction.
The price on the listing page and the price at checkout are two different numbers. Section 325D.44, subd. 1a(a) says the first one has to include the fee.
Minnesota's junk fee law shelters automatic and mandatory gratuities. The bold-type notice that lets a house keep a service charge says the charge isn't one.
Minn. Stat. § 325G.051 permits a card surcharge, caps it at five percent, and names no plaintiff. Who can sue, and why I read a cashless counter as breaking the junk fee law by following this one.
Minn. Stat. § 256B.0595, subd. 2(b)(2) starts the penalty clock only when the applicant is otherwise eligible and in care — not when the gift was made. And the lookback only runs backward: subd. 1(b) reaches transfers made 'any time after' the request for payment, with no forward boundary at all.
Chapter 144G gives a family no damages for an undisclosed assisted living fee. I read one sentence in § 144G.11 to borrow the remedy in § 504B.120.
Minnesota decides church property fights with neutral principles of law. And the denomination's trust clause is usually the weakest document in the file.
Chapter 253B runs in six-month blocks, but Minn. Stat. § 624.713, subd. 1(3) bars anyone who 'is or has ever been committed' from possessing a firearm, with no expiration and only one way out. Here are the standards, the deadlines, and the consequences nobody explains at the hearing.
Phipps v. Clark Oil covers an employee fired for refusing to break the law, and nothing else. Minnesota's Supreme Court has refused three times to widen it.
The implied consent petition stopped being a 30-day filing on July 1, 2017. What Minn. Stat. § 169A.53 actually makes you file and serve, what the hearing can decide, and where the search-warrant track under § 171.177 splits off.
Minnesota doesn't ask who called the police. It asks who supplied the decision to charge, and what the officer or prosecutor was told.
Minn. Stat. § 572B.23(a) lists six grounds for vacating an arbitration award, and being right isn't one of them. The clock in subsection (b) starts when you receive notice of the award, not when judgment enters, and not when your client decides to fight.
Chapter 13D never defines a meeting, never voids a decision, and almost never removes anyone from office. Here's what it does do, section by section.
Minn. Stat. § 358.645 spells out remote identity proofing down to the number of questions — a method NIST now prohibits. And a bad notarization rarely voids a deed.
Minnesota's 2026 forged-likeness amendment is criminal only, and no Minnesota statute creates a right of publicity. Here's what's actually left to plead, and what it pays.
After 2019, federal law built a whole caller-authentication apparatus — STIR/SHAKEN, traceback, the Robocall Mitigation Database. None of it is a plaintiff's tool, and here's why attribution still fails.
Rent plus every nonoptional fee, added up on page one: Minn. Stat. § 504B.120 requires it on leases signed since January 1, 2024, reaches the listing, and trebles damages.
Minn. Stat. §§ 332.71–332.75 let an abuse victim get a debt declared coerced and enforcement enjoined. It reaches only debts incurred on or after January 1, 2024, it excludes secured debt, and it gives the debtor no damages and no fees.
18 U.S.C. § 2724 fixes liquidated damages at $2,500 with no showing of injury. But the Eighth Circuit applies the occurrence rule to the four-year clock, and Minnesota classifies driver data by a federal cross-reference frozen at May 23, 2005 — which the legislature loosened in 2026.
For thirty-two years the Eighth Circuit said malicious prosecution wasn't a constitutional violation at all. Thompson v. Clark ended that, and left four questions open.
Minnesota's supreme court says materials prepared in anticipation of litigation are 'not work product' unless they carry counsel's mental impressions — and by rule, a party may take an opponent's nonparty witness statements without any showing at all.
The FBI tagged 460 of its 31,675 identity theft complaints with any AI reference in 2025, and the FTC's dataset has no AI field at all. What the federal sources actually document, and how you defend against it.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-603, subd. 2, makes words of survivorship a sufficient contrary intent. The legislature repealed the older section in 2001 and wrote this one in its place. And there's no § 524.2-706: the only nonprobate antilapse rule Minnesota wrote lives in the transfer on death deed statute.
Minnesota's privilege statute has no crime-fraud exception in it. Here's the judge-made test, the prima facie showing it demands, and why in camera review isn't the shortcut lawyers think it is.
Chapter 116B lets any Minnesota resident sue to protect a natural resource. It gives you no damages, no attorney fees, and an injunction the plaintiff has to prove.
Chapter 14 review of a contested case and common-law certiorari both land in the Court of Appeals on a writ of certiorari. The real fork isn't which court. It's which clock: 30 days from receipt, or 60 days for the writ to issue. No court can extend either one.
The FCRA makes employers build a five-document paper trail before rejecting you over a background check — and the step they skip is the one you can't see.
Minnesota decides the duty to defend from the complaint plus the facts the insurer knows, and those facts cut both ways. Here's what that means for mixed complaints, reservations of rights, and refusals.
The federal bar is now the easier one: a prosecution that ended without a conviction. Minnesota never said that — and the three dispositions clients want most are the three worst ways to end a case if you may want to sue.
Under Minn. R. Civ. App. P. 108, an appeal doesn't stay enforcement. You buy the stay (bond, letter of credit, or cash) in the district court first, and Minn. Stat. § 550.36 hides a ten-day statutory alternative.
Hoppe v. Klapperich gives the tort two elements, no favorable-termination requirement, and no probable-cause requirement, so it can be pleaded as a counterclaim while the underlying case is still open. Here's why nearly every Minnesota claim still fails anyway.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 23 tracks the 2003 federal rule, but certification appeals run through a 30-day Rule 105 petition, settlement approval skips the federal factor list, and leftover money has a statutory destination.
Minn. Stat. § 604.101 governs only if both sales postdate August 1, 2000. It bars two things, and it leaves plain negligence, statutory claims, and fraud standing.
Minnesota gives emergency vehicles four narrow statutory privileges, and none of them cancels the due-regard duty. But the decision to pursue is protected by official immunity, so the injured bystander's money usually comes from somewhere else.
Minnesota's informed consent claim is negligent nondisclosure, and its disclosure duty has three separate triggers. Causation is objective, and you need expert testimony for some elements but not for the one that decides most cases.
Minn. Stat. § 340A.802's notice and two-year bar are written to § 340A.801 claims against licensees. A § 340A.90 claim against the adult at the house runs on § 541.05, subd. 1(2): six years. And the parental carve-out everyone cites is in the criminal statute only.
Full faith and credit closes the merits of an out-of-state judgment. What survives is jurisdiction. In an identity-theft case the fight is over service, the address the thief supplied, and whether a creditor can prove an electronic signature was your act under Minn. Stat. § 325L.09.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.135 sets the notice period, but an 1891 counting rule decides when the notice actually works — and the 14-day nonpayment notice to quit isn't in the statute anymore.
Minnesota doesn't judge a stipulated-damages clause from a single moment in time, and when the clause is struck, the plaintiff doesn't lose the case. The two questions most treatments skip.
Minnesota treats the parol evidence rule as substantive contract law, not evidence. And a merger clause, however airtight it looks, doesn't defeat a fraud-in-the-inducement claim.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 50.02 lets you move for judgment as a matter of law after the verdict 'whether or not' you moved before. That's the opposite of federal practice. Rule 59.03 is the deadline that actually decides what an appellate court will read.
Criminal restitution, the Crime Victims Reimbursement Board, and a civil suit are three separate recoveries under Minnesota law, and ch. 611A wires each one to reduce or credit the others.
Minnesota rejected Daubert. Here's the Frye-Mack two-prong standard, what actually triggers a hearing, and the standard of review on each prong.
Every Minnesota contract carries an implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing — except employment contracts. What the covenant forbids, what it won't do, and how to plead it.
Minnesota has let you sue over a civil lawsuit since 1889, with no arrest, no attachment, and no special injury required. Here's what it demands instead, and why the claim still almost always fails.
Minn. Stat. § 86B.341, subd. 2 makes the owner and operator of a watercraft jointly and severally liable and presumes family members had consent. Meanwhile § 65B.43 keeps boats out of no-fault entirely: no PIP, no UM, no UIM. What's left is a straight negligence case with unusual evidence rules.
Minnesota lets a 14-year-old work eight hours a day until 9 p.m. Federal law caps the same kid at three hours on a school day. A practitioner's read of Minn. Stat. ch. 181A.
Chapter 555 lets a Minnesota court settle a dispute before anybody breaches. Section 555.11 decides whether the declaration you win is worth anything at all.
Chapter 15C gives a relator treble damages and up to 30 percent of the recovery. In seventeen years it's produced one published appellate decision, and the relator lost.
Minn. Stat. § 524.3-805(a) sets seven classes of claims, not six, and § 524.3-715(18) lets the personal representative pay the top of that list without any claim being presented at all.
Minnesota's civil claim for a fake sexual image carries a statutory penalty ten times the one for a real image — and it drops an element. Four statutes, two clocks, one federal lever.
Minn. Stat. § 500.20, subd. 2a ends private covenants at 30 years, but eight enumerated exceptions carve out condominiums, cooperatives, CICs under ch. 515B, shared-structure buildings, and affordable housing. What's left is the plain platted subdivision — and a two-year renewal window most claimants never see.
Minnesota riparian rights attach to ownership of the shore, and can also arise from ownership of the bed, but no titleholder gets exclusive control of the surface. Johnson v. Seifert lets every abutting owner use the whole surface regardless of navigability and regardless of who owns the bottom, and three different legal lines decide where your lakeshore ends.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 65.01 is captioned 'Temporary Restraining Order; Notice; Hearing; Duration' and, unlike Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2), sets no 14-day limit, no outside date, and no extension mechanism. What actually ends a Minnesota TRO, and what the Dahlberg factors really demand.
Minnesota Chapter 168B lets a lot hold your car until you pay. It doesn't let them hold your ID or your medicine, or, for a lot of owners, anything else in it. Plus the notice, sale, and deficiency rules.
Minnesota doesn't let the transferor pick a termination age, and § 527.42 leaves a whole class of older custodial accounts still ending at 18. Chapter 527 also redefines 'adult' as 21, which rules out most young custodians.
Minnesota's occupational safety act lets a retaliated-against employee sue in district court, in front of a jury. Federal law does not. What Minn. Stat. ch. 182 actually hands a worker — and where it stops.
Minn. Stat. §§ 325G.56–.63 govern subscriptions that renew themselves. They're unusually specific about what sellers must do and say nothing about damages. The strongest consumer remedies in them work on their own.
Minn. Stat. § 550.371, subd. 1 affirmatively makes 11 U.S.C. § 522(d) available here. Three or four line items decide the choice, and one Minnesota subdivision can lock a separately filing spouse out of the other set for three years.
Minn. Stat. § 181.531 prohibits punishing an employee who declines an employer's political or religious meeting. It doesn't ban the meeting. The state's own poster says so, and the private action expires 90 days after the violation.
The cartway statute says the town board 'shall' establish a road to a landlocked five-acre parcel. You can enforce that word by mandamus. But it settles whether, not where, and the petitioner pays for all of it.
Minnesota Statutes chapter 309 says you register with the Attorney General before you solicit. The small-charity exemption is gone the moment anybody gets paid.
Habitability, security deposits, late-fee caps, the 14-day notice, fee reciprocity: residential only. But distress for rent is abolished for everyone, redemption reaches commercial leases, and there's no duty to mitigate.
Minnesota's default rule says judgment 'shall be entered' — don't take that at face value. The clerk track is far narrower than the federal one, a late defendant can defeat the motion outright, and a federal affidavit the rule never mentions applies to every case.
Minn. Stat. § 181.722 was a misrepresentation statute until July 1, 2024. The rewrite dropped the misrepresentation element, added individual liability, and made the penalties recoverable by the worker.
Minnesota's all-in pricing law sits in § 325D.44, subd. 1a — inside the one consumer statute whose only remedy is an injunction. Here's where the money claim actually comes from.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.285, subd. 2, shifts the burden to the landlord inside 90 days. But by its own words it reaches only a tenancy terminated by notice to quit. Here's where Minnesota's real retaliation law lives now.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.46, subd. 3 deems a rider's injuries not to arise from the use of a motor vehicle 'although a motor vehicle is involved in the accident.' That one sentence is why there's no PIP, why the tort threshold is an open question, and why your auto policy's UIM may not follow you onto your own bike.
Minn. Stat. § 524.5-202 makes a parental appointment effective on death, an adjudication of incapacity, or a physician's written determination — whichever comes first. And a one-page objection can end it.
Minn. Stat. § 181.173 makes a 30-employee Minnesota employer put a starting salary range in every job posting. Then, in the same act, the legislature left it off the commissioner's compliance-order list in § 177.27 and off the private-action list in § 181.171.
Minn. Stat. § 524.3-108 bars probate and appointment proceedings three years after death. But the property already passed at death, and the determination-of-descent route only opens once the three years have run.
Minnesota's Public Contractors' Performance and Payment Bond Act replaces the mechanic's lien on public work. The payment bond claim runs on a 120-day notice and a one-year deadline to sue.
Minn. Stat. §§ 325E.311–.316, the state no-call registry and its caller-ID provision, expired December 31, 2012. Here's what survives, what replaced it, and where the private remedy is.
Minnesota's pay-history inquiry ban sits inside the Human Rights Act. That means a one-employee threshold, a one-year clock, treble damages, and a mandatory penalty paid to the state.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 3.01 commences an action by service. That one design choice sets the traps that end Minnesota cases: no service by mail, a 'usual place of abode' that's a fact question, publication grounds that have to actually be true, and a one-year filing clock that dismisses with prejudice without a motion.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-803 passes the estate 'as if the killer had predeceased the decedent.' That's a rule of substitution, not forfeiture — and it means the killer's own children can take the share the killer lost.
No-fault does not reach snowmobiles or ATVs, no statute requires anyone to insure one, and no auto UM coverage is owed — but a 2024 amendment to § 169.09 may have just made the machine's owner liable for the friend who was driving it.
Minn. Stat. § 541.15 suspends the clock for four disabilities, but only for the person who has one. Minnesota has no general discovery rule, and what most litigants call tolling is really estoppel — which carries a due-diligence requirement tolling doesn't.
Minnesota's reasonable-use rule is symmetric. The neighbor who berms, plugs, or fills to keep water out is exposed on the same four factors as the neighbor who ditches it downhill.
Minnesota's anti-SLAPP statute was struck down in 2017 and stayed dead until May 25, 2024. What Leiendecker actually held, what UPEPA brought back, and the two remedies the legislature didn't.
Minnesota's public benefit corporation statute doesn't require a company to do any good. It takes away the liability for doing good — and gives almost nobody the power to enforce it.
Minn. Stat. § 518A.39, subd. 2(f) makes a support modification retroactive only to the date the motion was served. The four exceptions the Supreme Court applied in Gully are gone, and since 2024 the section doesn't govern spousal maintenance at all.
Minn. Stat. §§ 513.075 and 513.076 bar a cohabitant's property claim without a signed writing, but only where cohabitation is the sole consideration. Eriksen, Palmen, and Obert define the exception, and § 513.075 has a second requirement almost nobody reads.
The MCDPA lives at Minn. Stat. §§ 325M.10–.21, not in a chapter of its own. Its 21 exclusions are where the surprises are: the small-business exemption carries a carve-back with no size threshold, and there's no general exemption for nonprofits.
Since January 1, 2022, the owner who wasn't driving doesn't file a lawsuit. She writes a letter to the prosecutor, and the State then has 30 days to sue her. Minn. Stat. § 169A.63 after Olson v. One 1999 Lexus.
How Minn. Stat. ch. 325L turns emails, DocuSigns, and typed names into legally binding signatures — and the short list of documents Minnesota still wants on paper.
The word 'nondisparagement' doesn't appear anywhere in the Minnesota Statutes. The Speak Out Act reaches only clauses signed before the dispute arose. The most useful Minnesota provision is a 15-day rescission right in the Human Rights Act that most severance packets never mention.
Minn. Stat. § 548.27 says a foreign judgment is subject to the same procedures and defenses as a Minnesota judgment. Matson v. Matson says Rule 60.02 doesn't apply the same way — the grounds are a closed list, the merits are off the table, and the case was usually won or lost in the rendering state.
Minn. Stat. § 325G.53 forbids any expiration date or fee on a gift certificate. But I read its 'tangible record' definition, six carve-outs, and the one appellate case on it as the whole ballgame.
Minn. Stat. § 145C.10(e) creates no presumption for anyone who never signed a directive. And the chapter is asymmetric: a direction to provide life-sustaining care carries a statutory duty; a direction to stop carries only immunity.
The $100,000 backstop in Minn. Stat. § 326B.89 requires a final judgment against a licensed contractor. Hire someone unlicensed and you lose it, along with the written-contract rule and the insurance requirement. But § 514.02 runs the other way.
Owner rights under MCIOA beyond assessments: records, meetings, voting, fines, amendments by silence, and the 2026 amendments that take effect January 1, 2027.
Minn. Stat. § 500.19, subd. 5 lets one joint tenant sever a joint tenancy by recording a single instrument, and § 507.02 exempts that severance from the rule requiring both spouses to sign anything touching the homestead. A judgment creditor gets no such power.
Minnesota's break law got teeth on January 1, 2026: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and liquidated damages. The 48-hour overtime rule didn't change, and it usually isn't the one that governs.
Chapter 518 has no companion-animal provision. The dog is personal property divided under § 518.58, and § 518.582 is about pensions. But Minn. Stat. § 518B.01, subds. 6(a)(14) and 7(a)(6) have let a court direct a pet's care and possession, ex parte, since 2010.
Frey v. Snelgrove confirmed the Pierringer release was already Minnesota practice and set the procedure. What it did not do is make settlement money a credit — and the indemnity clause the plaintiff signs can take money back out of the judgment years later.
Minn. Stat. § 559.217 is permissive — a purchase agreement that cancels by its own terms is already dead. What the statute really decides is the deposit, first-to-serve, and § 82.75 makes it the only way most brokers can release it.
Minn. Stat. § 259.24, subd. 1, gives you three ways past a parent who won't consent. And the six-month abandonment presumption is switched off in exactly the case where stepparent adoptions come from.
Chapter 58B's private right of action is in § 58B.09, subd. 4, not where most people look. Its 45-day notice and 30-day cure provisions are conditions on the claim, and they're why the class action is the enforcement vehicle.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-513 lets an unwitnessed list you can rewrite any time control who gets your tangible personal property, if your will says one sentence and you respect three exclusions.
Minnesota has no statute requiring a vacation or PTO payout. The Supreme Court held § 181.13 is a timing statute, so the employer's own documents decide the case.
Minn. Stat. § 325F.662 gives a car with 150,000 miles a warranty the same car wouldn't get at 60,000 miles, and exempts franchised new-car dealers from the tier that covers it. The warranty also exists whether or not the dealer wrote one.
Variances, conditional use permits, the 60-day rule of Minn. Stat. § 15.99, and why where you go for judicial review turns on whether a city or a county said no.
Minnesota real estate in a nonresident's estate doesn't always need a Minnesota probate. Chapter 524, article 4 gives the out-of-state personal representative a way around it, and any Minnesota creditor can shut that door within 60 days.
Skipping the ch. 333 assumed-name filing doesn't void your contracts. It stays your lawsuit until you file, and it hands the other side $250 in costs whether they win or lose.
Two Minnesota rules decide these cases and almost nobody knows them: no traffic violation in chapter 169 is negligence per se, and a cyclist who rolls a stop sign with no car in the vicinity hasn't broken any law at all.
Chapter 344 makes adjoining landowners split the cost of a boundary fence, but since May 31, 2017, only where both parcels are used to produce or maintain livestock. The leading cases construe a trigger the Legislature deleted.
Minnesota gives tenants four express termination rights. Since August 1, 2024, it also has a non-waivable duty-to-mitigate statute that can end the lease outright when a landlord sits on an empty unit.
Seven Minnesota leaves that have nothing to do with illness: what each one costs an employer, and why the remedy is almost always narrower than the duty.
Proving the assault is usually the easy part, and the conviction is often already in hand. What decides these cases is a two-year clock with a six-year exception, and an insurance exclusion built to beat exactly this claim.
Minnesota's contempt power under chapter 588: where civil ends and criminal starts, the Hopp requirements, purge conditions, and why you can't jail a judgment debtor just for not paying.
Minnesota's Uniform Disclaimer of Property Interests Act has no time limit; the nine-month clock is federal tax law. But Minn. Stat. § 524.2-1106(b)(4) bars an insolvent disclaimant outright, and no federally qualified disclaimer gets around it.
QDROs for ERISA plans, § 408(d)(6) transfers for IRAs, and what Minn. Stat. §§ 518.58 and 518.581 do for public pensions — plus the 18-month federal clock that can end with the plan paying out as if there were no order.
The 2024 Debt Fairness Act ended spousal liability for medical bills, banned medical debt credit reporting, and created a one-way fee shift for debtors who win. Here's what ch. 332C actually does — including what 'medical debt' leaves out.
Minn. Stat. §§ 259.10–.14 govern legal name changes — plus § 518.27 and § 517.08. Two of the routes are free by statute, one carries a criminal-history report to the BCA, and a felony conviction changes everything.
Minnesota's premises duty is a duty to deter crime, not to prevent it. And since the supreme court's January 2026 decision in Glay v. R.C. of St. Cloud, the superseding-cause instruction that used to end these cases is out when the crime a bar blames is the same crime it had to foresee to be negligent.
Minnesota nonprofit corporations don't have to be charitable, their directors aren't trustees, and the volunteer-immunity statute has a hole right where the risk is. A practitioner's walk through ch. 317A, ch. 309, and ch. 501B.
Minnesota's director standard-of-conduct statute never mentions the business judgment rule. Here's what § 302A.251 does say, what the 2025 officer amendment changed, and where the real protection comes from.
Chapter 278 petitions rarely die on the filing deadline. They die on May 16, on August 1, and behind a one-way door in the Tax Court's Small Claims Division that locks 30 days after you walk through it.
Minnesota's Termination of Sales Representatives Act doesn't make a rep un-fireable. It makes the manufacturer use a door it didn't write into the contract, and it voids the out-of-state choice-of-law clause it was counting on.
A chapter 429 assessment is limited by the increase in market value the improvement produced. But the assessment roll is prima facie proof the city got it right, and a signed written objection at the hearing is what keeps the fight alive.
Minn. Stat. § 518.195 lets a court administrator enter a divorce decree without a judge. But eight criteria frozen since 1997 knock out nearly everyone, and the alternative is usually just as fast.
Since August 1, 2024, a Minnesota employer has to hand over the full credit-card tip with no deduction for processing. And a mandatory service charge is legally a gratuity unless the customer got notice in the right type size.
Minn. Stat. § 561.04 trebles tree-trespass damages almost automatically. The fight is never about the multiplier. It's about the number being multiplied, and Minnesota's default measure of tree damage is the drop in the value of the land.
Minn. Stat. § 181.145 pays commission salespeople fast and penalizes employers who stall. But it covers independent contractors, not employees, and the penalty clock runs out four years before the contract clock does.
The 80 percent figure in Minnesota law is a title-branding trigger under ch. 168A. The statute that governs what your insurer must pay for a totaled car is § 72A.201, subd. 6, and Morris holds you can't sue to enforce it.
Minnesota has said since 1950 that there's no civil action for conspiracy. So why plead it? Because of what it does to joint and several liability under § 604.02.
Minn. Stat. § 337.10 is a pass-through statute with a 5% retainage cap and a mandatory fee shift. What it obligates, who's excluded, and how public projects work differently — including the new § 15.72 payment-transparency rule.
Minn. Stat. § 604.14 can double what you recover for stolen property. But courts read 'steals' narrowly, there's no fee-shifting, and the independent-duty rule kills most business claims.
Minnesota has automatically sealed nearly 1.9 million records. An automatic grant is still weaker than a petitioned order in three specific ways. Here they are.
Minnesota had no working anti-SLAPP statute from 2017 to 2024. UPEPA rebuilt it — and its first published decisions already show it's narrower than defendants expect.
Minnesota reads a handbook one provision at a time. In 2021 the Supreme Court held a general 'this is not a contract' disclaimer was ambiguous and sent the question to a fact-finder.
Minnesota tenants don't have to prove the landlord's case was baseless anymore. Here's what §484.014 requires now, and what expungement does to screening reports.
Minnesota measures fraud damages by out-of-pocket loss, not benefit of the bargain — and the negligence version of the claim usually isn't available in an arm's-length deal.
Under Minn. Stat. § 257.75, subd. 3, an ROP has the force of a parentage judgment, and the mother keeps sole custody until a court says otherwise. The adjudicated father ends up in a better procedural spot than the one who signed at the hospital.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0408 makes a trust for an animal enforceable — and lets a court cut the funding if you leave too much. How you draft it decides which one happens.
Minn. Stat. § 559.01 lets you clear an adverse claim only if you're in possession or the land is vacant. What the statute grants, what it doesn't reach, and why registered land runs on a different track.
Minnesota forms a partnership "whether or not the persons intend to form a partnership." No filing, no agreement, and, by default, every partner personally liable for what the business owes.
Minn. Stat. § 518.18 imposes a one-year bar after the decree and a two-year bar after a prior motion — both with exceptions. The real chokepoint is Nice-Petersen and Goldman: no evidentiary hearing at all unless the affidavits alone make out four elements.
Under Minn. Stat. §§ 302A.471 and 302A.473, a shareholder has to object before the vote, demand within 30 days, and demand again within 30 days of the check — and can't undo the deal absent fraud.
Minnesota's no-fault law never saw e-bikes and rental scooters coming. The result is strange: hit by a car, a rider is often better insured than a motorcyclist.
The statute on the page isn't the law that applies. The Minnesota Supreme Court struck one subdivision and rewrote the burden of proof. Here's where these cases are actually won and lost.
A Minnesota jury can find your agent knew you were relying on him, knew you needed the coverage, and was 80% at fault — and you can still lose. Failure to procure and the special-circumstances exception.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.211 requires a reasonable business purpose, not less than 24 hours' notice, a stated time window, and entry between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m. Then subdivision 6 adds a per-violation penalty, rescission, and fees.
Minnesota enforces liability waivers — but only if the release actually says the business is off the hook for its own negligence. Here's how exculpatory clauses work after Justice v. Marvel.
Minnesota's revocation-on-divorce and slayer statutes are state law, and state law is exactly what ERISA and FEGLIA preempt. Same facts, three different outcomes.
Minn. Stat. § 518.003, subd. 3b says the increase in value of nonmarital property is nonmarital. Nardini, Antone, and Baker read a marital-effort exception into that text. And the one nonmarital shelter § 518.58 can't invade isn't the one most clients assume.
Minnesota's zone-of-danger rule decides who can bring an NIED claim, not what they can recover. A practitioner's guide to Engler, Stadler, K.A.C., and the three ways emotional distress becomes compensable.
The OFP/HRO choice turns on who the other person is to you, not how bad the conduct was — and it decides firearms, custody, and every other remedy you can get.
The relocation statute governs only an out-of-state move, only by the parent the child lives with, and only where the decree has no locale restriction. Miss one and the motion falls under § 518.18's endangerment standard instead — and the burden allocation usually decides the rest.
Minnesota calls promissory estoppel equitable. That usually means no jury, a judge deciding "injustice" as a policy question, and a remedy that can be cut down to what you actually lost.
Not your executor, not your agent under a power of attorney, and not necessarily your family. A twelve-rung statutory ladder decides — and it decides fast.
Minn. Stat. § 541.073 sets different limitations rules for perpetrators, negligent institutions, and vicarious liability claims. A close read of the current statute and the 2013 amendments.
Minn. Stat. § 518.552 used to tell courts to award permanent maintenance whenever the need was uncertain. Since August 1, 2024, three rebuttable presumptions keyed to the length of the marriage decide duration instead, and the modification standard isn't where practitioners look for it anymore.
Minn. Stat. § 541.053, effective August 1, 2013, provides that an expired consumer-debt limitations period "is not revived by the collection of a payment on an account, a discharge in a bankruptcy proceeding, or an oral or written reaffirmation of the debt."
Under Kallok v. Medtronic, a plaintiff can recover the attorney fees of the underlying contract suit as damages from the interferer. Under Sysdyne Corp. v. Rousslang, a defendant can beat the same claim by reasonably relying on advice of counsel that turned out to be wrong.
Minn. Stat. §§ 325F.56–.66 govern auto, appliance, and dwelling repairs. Laws 2024, ch. 114, art. 3, § 48 struck the upper dollar limit, so the big-ticket engine job is now inside the Act, with treble punitive damages available under § 325F.63.
In Minnesota, "unjust" means closer to unlawful than to unfair — and a legal remedy you had but never used will sink the claim. Here's what actually has to be pleaded and proved.
Minnesota's well disclosure certificate can block a county recorder from accepting your deed. The septic disclosure can't, and the statute says so in as many words.
A fired Minnesota employee has 15 working days to demand the truthful reason for the termination in writing, and the employer then has ten working days to answer.
Minn. Stat. § 548.101 makes a debt buyer prove its case even when nobody shows up. That's seven evidentiary items, and a missing one is grounds to attack the judgment.
Minn. Stat. ch. 581 lets a mortgagee foreclose through a lawsuit instead of a sheriff's advertisement. The chapter is twelve sections long, and the reason to use it is in § 582.30: the deficiency judgment.
Under Minn. Stat. ch. 521A, a custodian's online tool beats your will, your will beats the terms of service, and without express consent your executor gets the envelopes — never the letters.
A Minnesota severance release comes with a 15-day rescission right, a federal 21-day clock for workers 40+, and a short list of claims no employer can buy at any price.
Minnesota's conciliation court now hears claims up to $20,000. Here's filing, service, trial, the 21-day removal window, and how you turn the judgment into money.
Minn. Stat. ch. 327A gives every new-home buyer 1-, 2-, and 10-year statutory warranties the builder can't waive. Then come sixteen exclusions, a six-month written-notice rule, and a mandatory repair process, and those decide who actually collects.
Minn. Stat. § 47.60 caps a consumer small loan at $350, 30 days, and an APR of 50 percent that includes every fee. A 2026 amendment stretched the definition of lender to anyone arranging the loan, and the Revisor's codified display doesn't show it yet.
Minn. Stat. § 500.24 bars corporations, LLCs, trusts, limited partnerships, and pension or investment funds from farming or owning agricultural land, unless the entity fits one of twenty listed definitions, has a conservation plan, and files an annual report. General partnerships sit outside the subdivision entirely.
Minn. Stat. § 507.18, subd. 2 already voids the covenant, no matter what year the instrument was executed. The free statutory form in subdivisions 5 and 6 cleans up the title record. It doesn't change the covenant's legal effect, and by its own terms you can't use it on Torrens property.
Under 20 U.S.C. § 1232g(d), FERPA rights pass to the student at 18 or on attending a postsecondary institution, whichever comes first. Minn. Stat. § 13.32 then adds nineteen clauses of permitted disclosure, a parent veto over juvenile justice requests, and a ban on monitoring school-issued devices.
Minn. Stat. § 117.031(a) compares the final award to the condemning authority's last written offer, not its appraisal, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has held the 40 percent figure is a minimum eligibility threshold, with the amount set by lodestar. Sections 117.186 and 117.187 add going-concern and minimum-compensation damages, each on its own conditions.
Under Minn. Stat. § 571.72, subd. 2, cl. (5), a garnishee holds the debtor's money until a writ of execution is served. Chapter 551 — attorney's summary execution — is the step that turns a freeze into a payment, and it comes with its own caps, notices, and void-on-failure rules.
Minn. Stat. § 181.974 has no employer-size threshold, no agency to exhaust, and a treble-damages private action. It also protects less information than GINA does, and it has no exceptions at all.
Minn. Stat. §§ 325G.06–.11 give a three-business-day right to cancel a home solicitation sale. The sentence that covers a seller who never gave notice is in § 325G.08, subd. 2 — and I read it as answering how the buyer may cancel, not, in terms, the deadline.
Minnesota recognized no common-law privacy tort until 1998. Lake v. Wal-Mart adopted three branches and refused a fourth — and it decided nothing about the elements, which later cases have mostly narrowed.
Minn. Stat. ch. 327C gives lot leases seven statutory termination grounds plus park closure, and § 327C.02, subd. 2a, can leave a park owner winning the rule fight and still not getting possession. Chapter 504B keeps applying underneath. Here's exactly where.
Under Naig v. Bloomington Sanitation and Minn. Stat. § 176.061, an injured employee can settle the damages a compensation carrier has no subrogation interest in — on notice, and on proof of what the settlement covers. The opinion says the employee gives up the statutory one-third in exchange.
Minn. Stat. § 181.75 bars an employer from soliciting or requiring 'a polygraph, voice stress analysis, or any test purporting to test the honesty' of an employee or applicant. Those words aren't limited to a machine. And the statute backs them with a misdemeanor, an attorney general injunction, and a private action with fees.
Minn. Stat. § 13.43 makes eight categories of government personnel data public, voids confidentiality terms in public-employment settlements, and applies that same rule to court orders.
Minn. Stat. § 325E.59 gives a private business seven things it may not do with a Social Security number, plus a duty to lock down who can see the numbers it holds. It has no penalty, damages, or enforcement subdivision at all. So the remedy question gets answered from outside the section.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.375 lets a locked-out residential tenant present a verified petition and get an immediate possession order the sheriff enforces. The section supplies possession, costs, and fees. The damages live in other sections.
Minnesota defines employment misconduct by statute, then carves ten categories right back out. Most unemployment denials are won or lost inside that list, not on the appeal deadline.
Minnesota conditions a deduction for a broken tool or a till shortage on a writing the employee signs after the loss occurred, or on a court judgment. Any contrary agreement is void, and the remedy is double.
In a chapter 176 case the fee isn't what my retainer says. It's what Minn. Stat. § 176.081 says: 20 percent of the first $275,000, capped at $55,000 per injury. Laws 2026, ch. 103, § 9 finally conformed the required notice, effective May 19, 2026.
Minn. Stat. § 176.031 makes workers' compensation the employer's exclusive liability. Then it hands the employee of an uninsured employer a choice and strips that employer of the fellow-servant, assumption-of-risk, and contributory-negligence defenses.
Minn. Stat. § 176.82 holds two claims. Subdivision 1 runs against 'any person' and carries fees plus punitive damages up to three times the compensation benefit. Subdivision 2 is a capped one-year-wages claim that never touches an employer with 15 or fewer full-time equivalent employees.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.271 and § 504B.365, subd. 3, run on different clocks, different sale procedures, and different liability. Which one applies turns on how the tenant left and where the property ends up stored.
Minn. Stat. § 519.11 invites the parties to bar each other of all rights in their respective estates. Minn. Stat. § 524.2-213 reads that exact formula as waiving the elective share and nothing else. Two statutes, two sets of formalities, and one drafting habit that fails both.
Minn. Stat. § 559.17 is titled 'Mortgage Not a Conveyance; Mortgagee Cannot Possess.' Subdivision 2 is the way around it, and every condition in it carries weight.
Minn. Stat. § 3.736, subd. 5 requires notice to the attorney general and to every state employee from whom compensation will be sought. Chapter 466 requires one letter to a governing body. It's the smallest difference between the two acts, and it's the one that ends cases.
Minn. Stat. § 548.22 and § 548.23 authorize judgment without an action. Section 548.23 requires the authorizing instrument to be 'distinct from' the instrument evidencing the debt, and 16 C.F.R. § 444.2(a)(1) takes the device out of consumer credit entirely.
Chapter 13 gives the subject of government data four separate rights: the Tennessen warning, a ten-business-day access clock, a 30-day correction procedure, and § 13.08 damages. The use limit in § 13.05, subd. 4 is the one with teeth.
Minnesota lets a fired employee sue over a defamatory statement only the employee ever repeated. But the qualified privilege, the proof bar from Rouse, and a one-sentence statute sink most of these claims before a jury ever sees them.
The 1-hour-per-30-worked rule is the easy part. The real exposure is in the 80-hour carryover bank, the ban on attendance points, and a damages provision that fixes liability at 48 hours a year when the employer has no records.
Section 181.64 bars inducing a worker to relocate by knowingly lying about the job, and § 181.65 adds actual damages plus attorney fees. The limits are where these cases are won or lost.
Under MCIOA, the association's assessment lien sits behind any first mortgage. Then the mortgage forecloses and six months of common expenses ride along to whoever takes title. Here's how § 515B.3-116 works, and what the 2026 amendments changed.
Minn. Stat. § 557.02 lets any party to an action affecting title record a lis pendens without a judge. Here's what the statute requires instead — and what a wrongly recorded notice actually exposes you to.
Everyone knows the 40-year rule in Minn. Stat. § 541.023. The useful law is in the exceptions: registered land, persons in possession, railroads and religious corporations, and covenants that run on a different clock entirely.
Minnesota Statutes use the word 'biometric' in 17 sections, and none of them is an Illinois-style BIPA. What actually reaches a fingerprint, faceprint, or voiceprint here is chapter 13, one honesty-testing statute, and a school fingerprint-card rule.
The accommodation statute people still cite was repealed in 2021. Here's where the duty lives now, why a four-person employer owes it, and what can and can't be counted against the 12-week leave.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 68 shifts costs, but only if the offer 'expressly refers to Rule 68.' Minn. Stat. § 549.09, subd. 1(b), reallocates interest off any written offer. They run on different clocks, compare different numbers, and leave a zone where one of them does nothing.
Sections 325M.30–.34 make a platform publish statistics about itself, and they give nobody a private cause of action. Section 325M.40, added by Laws 2026, ch. 111, creates a $10,000 statutory-damages claim for a child or parent — but not until July 1, 2027.
Minn. Stat. § 575.02 hands a creditor an order compelling the debtor to appear and answer under oath, but only after an execution issued to the right sheriff comes back unsatisfied. Then chapter 575 does a lot more than ask questions.
What Torrens registration under Minn. Stat. ch. 508 actually cuts off, the seven exceptions in § 508.25, and why a reference on the record isn't notice but off-record knowledge is.
Section 197.46 gives a covered veteran a hearing before removal and names mandamus as the remedy — which in Minnesota means a jury-triable civil action that carries a damages judgment.
Minnesota made wage theft a theft offense, but the criminal clause borrows its measuring stick from the wage notice and earnings statements required by § 181.032. The paperwork is the case.
Minn. Stat. § 481.13 gives a lawyer a lien on the cause of action itself from service of the summons, and under City of Oronoco the cause-of-action lien needs no filing to outrank third parties. What the fired lawyer recovers is reasonable value, not the contract fee.
Entry, docketing, and execution are three different acts. Under Minn. Stat. § 548.09, subd. 1, the lien starts at docketing, but the judgment survives only ten years from entry. And renewing an ordinary money judgment under § 541.04 means a new lawsuit, not a form.
Minn. Stat. ch. 521A gives a personal representative the catalog of a decedent's electronic communications by default and the content only with consent. And a provider's online tool overrides your will.
Minnesota sanctions evidence lost before suit under a court's inherent authority, and it has no spoliation tort. Rule 37.05's federal-style intent-to-deprive threshold reaches only electronically stored information.
Homestead descent, the $15,000 exempt property selection, and the family allowance outrank creditors and the will under Minn. Stat. §§ 524.2-402 to 524.2-405 — but the homestead right is deemed waived unless the spouse files. I explain the clock.
Informal probate is granted by a registrar, not a judge, and Minn. Stat. § 524.3-711 lets the personal representative deal with estate property 'without notice, hearing, or order of court'. Real estate waits 30 days after letters issue. And Minnesota repealed its counterpart to the UPC's notice of appointment to heirs in 1975.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-102 doesn't give the whole estate to a surviving spouse whenever there are stepchildren on either side, and that includes the surviving spouse's own children from a prior relationship.
Under Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 114.04(b), a party who won't agree on an ADR process doesn't get out of ADR. The court 'shall order' a non-binding one. Seven exceptions, a separate inability-to-pay provision, and a 21-day clock that turns a 'non-binding' arbitration award into an unappealable judgment.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-301 gives a spouse married after the will an intestate share, and § 524.2-302 protects only children born or adopted after the will was signed. Both statutes are narrower than they look.
Minn. Stat. § 524.3-712 measures a personal representative's breach 'to the same extent as a trustee of an express trust,' and § 524.3-1005 bars claims six months after the closing statement — except for three things it doesn't cover.
Minn. Stat. § 524.6-204(d) lets a will change a survivorship or POD designation by specific reference. That isn't the rule in most states, and the exception is narrower than it sounds.
Minn. Stat. § 65A.01, subd. 3 writes appraisal into every Minnesota fire policy — 20 days to name an appraiser, an itemized award of any two — and says nothing is waived by a proceeding relating to appraisal. Hail runs on § 65A.26's ten days and one year.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-804 revokes beneficiary designations to a former spouse by operation of law. It survived a Contracts Clause challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court, and in 2025 it got broader.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 11 and Minn. Stat. § 549.211 both bar filing a sanctions motion until 21 days after it's served. Skip the window and Minnesota courts reject the motion — even where the conduct violated the rule.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 35 never uses the word 'independent'. The scheduling rule does. What Rule 35 actually requires is a motion, a condition 'in controversy,' 'good cause shown,' and an order specifying manner, conditions, scope and examiner. And if you request and obtain the examiner's report, your privilege waiver reaches any other action involving the same controversy.
Minn. Stat. § 80A.49 makes offering a security unlawful unless one of three exits applies, and § 80A.70(a) puts the burden of proving the exit on the issuer. The § 80A.76(b) registration claim needs no proof of intent and expires one year after the violation.
Under Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, subd. 4, the penalty turns on whether a written statement went out within three weeks. Miss it and the landlord owes the withheld amount again, on top of what was wrongfully withheld, plus up to $500 for each deposit in bad faith under subd. 7.
Minn. Stat. § 524.3-1201 moves a $75,000 estate on an affidavit with no court involvement. And the same statute is a collection tool the State can point right back at you.
Under Minn. Stat. § 524.3-720, a nominated personal representative who litigates in good faith gets his fees out of the estate whether or not the will he's defending gets admitted. That changes the money in every Minnesota will contest before anybody gets to the merits.
Minn. Stat. § 524.2-503 lets a court probate a will that fails the execution formalities on clear and convincing evidence of intent. It started as a temporary COVID window and was made permanent in 2021.
The Supreme Court held that a statutory violation isn't an injury on its own. For FCRA plaintiffs, the practical dividing line became whether the false information was ever sent to anyone, and 6,332 of 8,185 class members lost on that.
Reckless disregard counts as willful, but only where the defendant's reading of the statute was objectively unreasonable. That one word decides whether a case is worth statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 or nothing but proven actual damages.
The FCRA gives you a private claim against a furnisher under § 1681s-2(b) only. Subsection (a) belongs to the regulators, and the (b) duties switch on only when your dispute goes through a credit bureau.
Miller v. Shugart, 316 N.W.2d 729 (Minn. 1982), lets an insured settle a claim collectible only from the policy. Then the claimant has to prove the settlement was reasonable — to a judge, never to a jury.
Minnesota's 60-day appeal clock starts at entry for a judgment, but at service of written notice of filing for an order. Those are two different events, and the motions that stop the clock are a closed list.
Minnesota's elective share reaches past the will into revocable trusts, beneficiary designations, and joint accounts. But nine months after death, the nonprobate transfers drop out of the calculation.
Minn. Stat. § 543.19 reaches as far as due process allows, so the statute almost never decides the motion. Minnesota's five-factor constitutional test does, and in my experience quality of contacts beats quantity every time.
Minn. Stat. §§ 514.68–514.72 give hospitals — and only hospitals — a lien on the injury claim itself. The perfection clock is ten days, the enforcement clock is two years, and an inflated lien statement can void the lien entirely.
Minn. Stat. § 270C.56 reaches the owner on a track that has nothing to do with veil piercing: no fraud, no unity of interest, no injustice finding — and, unlike federal law, no willfulness element at all.
Under Minn. Stat. § 336.2-608, a buyer who has accepted goods has to prove substantial impairment, not just a defect. And § 325F.665's repair-attempt, out-of-service, and coverage thresholds leave out more buyers than they cover.
One telephone hearing builds the only record there'll ever be. Minn. Stat. § 268.105 closes it, and every deadline in the appeal path is written in calendar days.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 60.02 doesn't mention the four-factor test. It comes from a 1952 case decided under a repealed statute — and the factor that sinks most motions is the one movants treat as the other side's burden.
Section 1681o pays actual damages. Section 1681n adds statutory and punitive damages, but you have to show willfulness. Both shift fees. What separates a provable case from a frustrating one is almost always a paper trail somebody built months before I saw the file.
Schmidt v. Clothier buys your underinsured-motorist carrier 30 days' written notice before you release the at-fault driver. American Family v. Baumann made skipping it presumptively fatal, and it handed you the burden of proving no harm was done.
The FCRA demands a reasonable reinvestigation and procedures assuring maximum possible accuracy. The automated dispute pipeline asks one question, and there are whole categories of error it can't find.
Minn. Stat. § 626.89 is written for officers under investigation. For a civil plaintiff, it decides what investigative material has to exist, and a 2026 amendment just widened it.
Florence v. Board of Chosen Freeholders gets overstated in both directions. Here's the actual scope of the intake-search rule, the questions the Court expressly reserved, and what the Eighth Circuit still treats as actionable.
Minnesota K-9 bite cases run on specific Eighth Circuit law about warnings, bite duration, and qualified immunity — not on Graham v. Connor alone. Here's what the circuit has held, and where it hasn't.
Minn. Stat. § 466.03 lists 29 exceptions to Minnesota municipal tort liability. Subdivision 1 says landing in one of them means liability only under some other statute, and immunity if there isn't one — not the common law. And subdivisions 7 and 15 leave the list open-ended.
The Constitution doesn't create property interests. State law does. Roth, Perry, Loudermill, and Mathews v. Eldridge, applied to Minnesota public employment, licenses, and benefits.
Minn. Stat. § 572B.04 lists what a pre-dispute arbitration clause can't take away: the § 572B.16 right to a lawyer, the § 572B.12 neutral-arbitrator disclosures, and the § 572B.07 and § 572B.23 court role. What the arbitrator may award you, under § 572B.21, isn't on either list.
Minn. Stat. § 604.11 isn't a trial statute. The word 'verdict' doesn't appear in it. It's a discovery statute with three subdivisions, and one sentence in subdivision 2 gives every party an absolute veto over ADR.
Pickering's balance, Connick's public-concern gate, Garcetti's official-duties rule — and why the Eighth Circuit makes the employer prove the workplace disruption it claims.
For a Fourth Amendment false arrest claim, probable cause is a complete defense, and in the Eighth Circuit even arguable probable cause ends it. The Supreme Court has reshaped the malicious prosecution claim twice since 2022, and the Eighth Circuit added a requirement in 2025.
Minnesota's receivership statute, Minn. Stat. ch. 576, splits receivers into general and limited and hands a court-appointed stranger control of the assets. If you own the business, it's an emergency. If you buy distressed assets, it's an opportunity.
The Constitution doesn't come with a price list. Carey, Stachura, Smith v. Wade, and City of Newport decide what a § 1983 plaintiff can actually recover, and from whom.
A personal guaranty is a separate contract, and it outlives your company's collapse and its bankruptcy. Minnesota's statute of frauds says it has to be in writing. I find the waivers buried in the boilerplate are usually more dangerous than the guaranty itself.
Can a bank use the arbitration clause in an account you did open to force arbitration of claims about an account you never opened? Minnesota has a rule about contracts that never existed, and it doesn't answer this question.
Farmer v. Brennan's deliberate-indifference standard applied to suicide and inmate-on-inmate violence: the two prongs, the Eighth Circuit's subjective rule, and the Minnesota jail standards that produce the proof.
Minn. Stat. § 549.09 runs interest across three separate periods, each computed by a different official. And under subdivisions 3 and 4, a payment goes first to post-judgment taxable disbursements if the creditor has filed the subdivision 4 affidavit, then to accrued interest, and only then to principal.
In Chatrie v. United States, a divided Supreme Court held that pulling a person's location data from Google is a search. Minnesota's Legislature required a warrant for exactly that back in 2014 — before Carpenter, and long before this term.
Nieves v. Bartlett requires a retaliatory-arrest plaintiff to plead and prove the absence of probable cause, with one narrow exception. In the Eighth Circuit the bar's higher still, and Minnesota's obstruction statute is where the fight actually happens.
Exhaustion, the physical-injury rule, the fee cap, and three strikes. The PLRA decides prisoner cases before anyone reaches the constitutional question. Here's how each piece works.
A Minnesota wrongful-conviction damages case usually isn't decided on the Brady violation. It's decided on whether the prosecutor was acting as an advocate or an investigator, and on the Eighth Circuit's bad-faith rule for officers.
Minn. Stat. § 325E.61, chapter 325M, and chapter 13 run on three different definitions, three different triggers, and three different enforcers — and § 13.05, subd. 11 pulls private contractors into the Data Practices Act whether or not the contract says a word about it.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0701 lets a Minnesota LLC member petition a court when those in control act illegally, fraudulently, or oppressively. The remedy I care about isn't dissolution. It's a court-ordered buyout at fair value.
Wells Fargo opened accounts its customers never authorized, then enforced the arbitration clauses in the accounts they did authorize. Here's how the maneuver worked, and where a Minnesotan's version of that fight would get decided.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 1 orders the court to subtract no-fault benefits from a tort recovery. No motion, no deadline, and in the ordinary Minnesota crash, no subrogation right on the other side. The money doesn't go back to the carrier. It stays with the defendant.
Minn. Stat. § 590.11 and the Incarceration and Exoneration Remedies Act give an exonerated Minnesotan a damages route that doesn't depend on proving anyone violated the Constitution.
The Supreme Court held that federal pesticide law preempts a state failure-to-warn claim over Roundup's label. The rule it used came from a case about a device made in Fridley, and Minnesota's own statute already makes the federal label binding here.
Section 1983 creates no rights. It enforces them. Who counts as a 'person,' why official-capacity and individual-capacity suits are two different lawsuits, and the Eighth Circuit pleading rule that has killed Minnesota claims on a caption.
Damages caps, jury rights, fee shifting, exhaustion, and the election-of-remedies provisions in Minn. Stat. §§ 363A.04, 363A.07, and 363A.33. What you trade away when you pick a statute, not a calendar.
Maslowski v. Prospect Funding Partners abolished champerty in 2020 and, in 2023, held that a litigation financing agreement isn't subject to Minn. Stat. § 334.01's usury cap. What's left is unconscionability, and that doctrine lives entirely in the document.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0207 routes an LLC certificate to § 5.12, and § 5.26 defines good standing as compliance with Secretary of State filing requirements. That's all it certifies. Not taxes, not solvency, not authority.
Forming an LLC or a corporation doesn't end the question. Under Victoria Elevator Co. v. Meriden Grain Co., Minnesota courts pierce the corporate veil on a two-prong test: a non-exclusive list of relationship factors, plus injustice or fundamental unfairness.
Garner set the constitutional floor for shooting a fleeing suspect. Minn. Stat. § 609.066, subd. 2(a)(2) sits well above it — and the felony is only half the test.
A Minnesota consumer lawyer on three quiet forces that are shutting ordinary people out of court: tougher pleading rules, buried class-action waivers, and plain cost.
Minnesota's Data Practices Act gives a data subject a ten-business-day response deadline, a written-denial requirement that has to cite a statute, and two enforcement tracks. Most people use none of it.
Minn. Stat. § 181.988 makes employee non-competes void and unenforceable, with only two narrow exceptions. But it applies only to contracts and agreements entered into on or after July 1, 2023. Older agreements still get the common-law reasonableness review.
42 U.S.C. § 1988 lets a prevailing civil rights plaintiff collect fees from the defendant. Who counts as prevailing, how the lodestar works, and the traps I watch for — Buckhannon, nominal damages, Rule 68, and fee waivers bargained into a settlement.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0407 recognizes member-managed, manager-managed, and board-managed LLCs. The default is member-managed, you make the election in the operating agreement, and what the articles say about it doesn't control.
Section 1983 says a violator is liable 'to the party injured,' and says nothing about who sues when the injured party is dead. Federal law hands that question to Minnesota's wrongful death statute — and the Eighth Circuit has enforced it against an estate that got the wrong appointment.
Tyler v. Hennepin County made it unconstitutional for a county to keep your surplus after a tax forfeiture. In Pung v. Isabella County, the Court held the surplus is measured by the auction price, not what the home was worth, at least when the sale is fairly conducted. In Minnesota, you have six months to claim it.
A private plaintiff under ADA Title III gets injunctive relief and fees, not money. Minn. Stat. § 363A.11 reaches damages — but § 363A.331 requires a pre-suit notice, with at least 60 days to respond, before counsel files an architectural-barrier case.
Minn. Stat. § 363A.09 protects creed, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and status with regard to public assistance. The federal Fair Housing Act doesn't list those classes, and that gap decides which statute you sue under.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0807 lets a trustee delegate to anyone, including an affiliate. The liability shield in paragraph (c) depends on selection, scope, and ongoing monitoring — and Minnesota's Prudent Investor Act has no separate delegation rule.
In United States v. Hemani, the Supreme Court held that prosecuting a marijuana user for keeping a gun at home violated the Second Amendment. Minnesota's firearms statute already carved out adult-use and medical cannabis. The two systems still don't line up.
A § 1983 claim and a Minnesota battery claim from the same arrest run on different immunities, different damages ceilings, and different clocks. Pleading only one is a decision, and it's usually made by accident.
Title II of the ADA reaches police departments, and the Eighth Circuit has applied it to the transport of a disabled arrestee. Whether it reaches the arrest itself is still open. The Supreme Court declined to answer.
In FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital, the Court held there's no private right of action under Section 47(b) of the Investment Company Act. Minnesota's blue-sky statute gives you express private remedies, but some of them run out in as little as one year.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0817 lets a trustee cut off objections to a final distribution in 30 days — but only if the proposal told the beneficiary about the right to object and the time allowed. It also lets the trustee hold back a reserve.
In Keathley v. Buddy Ayers Construction, a unanimous Court threw out a test that killed injury claims based on a debtor's 'motive to conceal'. The Eighth Circuit, which covers Minnesota, has taken the better view since 2006.
How the MCWD's permits, the Wetland Conservation Act, and a half-dozen agencies pile onto one backyard project — and why the landowner carries the burden of proof.
Kingsley's objective standard governs excessive force against a pretrial detainee. The Eighth Circuit hasn't extended it to medical care. In Minnesota, plan on proving what the jailer actually knew.
Minn. Stat. § 13.825 classifies body-worn camera data as private or nonpublic and then carves out five exceptions. The retention floor is 90 days, and that's the number that decides most cases.
The Supreme Court says the FCC can fine your carrier without a jury. None of that money comes to you. Minnesota's Consumer Data Privacy Act took effect July 31, 2025, and it gives you real rights — but only the Attorney General can enforce them.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.1005 sets three years from an adequate report and six years otherwise. The math is never the fight. The fight is whether a piece of paper was a report that adequately disclosed a potential claim.
In Flowers Foods v. Brock, a unanimous Court held that last-mile drivers moving goods that traveled interstate are exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act, even if the driver never leaves the state. That's a rare decision that opens the courthouse door instead of closing it.
Minnesota's 2020 restraint limits are conditional, not flat bans. They turn on whether deadly force would be authorized. Plus the warrior-style training prohibition.
Under Minn. Stat. § 609.527, a Minnesota law enforcement agency must prepare a police report and give the complainant a copy, and courts must order at least $1,000 in restitution to each direct victim. Here's why that report unlocks your federal remedies.
Minn. Stat. ch. 572B, § 337.10, subd. 1, and § 181.988, subd. 3 each tell Minnesota parties something about where and whether they have to arbitrate. Two of the three name arbitration expressly, and that's exactly the feature the Federal Arbitration Act treats with suspicion.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0703 says a trustee who doesn't join in another trustee's action isn't liable for it, and then takes most of that back in paragraph (g). Here's what a dissenting Minnesota cotrustee actually has to do.
Minn. Stat. § 550.37 protects a long list of property from collection, and § 571.922 caps wage garnishment on a sliding scale. Exemptions aren't automatic. Don't claim an exemption and it's waived — and the amounts change every even-numbered year.
Section 1983 doesn't have a limitations period of its own. In Minnesota the borrowed period is six years, and the Eighth Circuit has said so in a published opinion. The citation trail behind that answer is a lot messier than the answer.
Minn. Stat. § 541.076 gives four years from accrual. But 'health care provider' in the limitations statute doesn't mean what it means in the minority-tolling statute, the expert-affidavit statute, or the death statutes.
Section 1983 has no respondeat superior. A Minnesota city answers only for its own policy or custom, and the Eighth Circuit's custom test asks for a pattern of similar misconduct, not one incident.
Exempt vs. non-exempt, tips, overtime, and wage theft in Minnesota — what the law actually says, told through everyday scenarios.
In M&K Employee Solutions v. IAM National Pension Fund, a unanimous Court held that withdrawal-liability assumptions don't have to be chosen by the measurement date. Minnesota has one of the most heavily unionized workforces in the country, so this one lands here harder than most places.
Miss a Minnesota notice requirement and the sanction is usually loss of the whole right: no lien, no claim, a void deed, a dismissed case. But the exceptions aren't random — the cure goes to the party with less leverage.
Minn. Stat. § 604.06 doesn't codify the common law fireman's rule. It switches it off for peace officers and public safety officers. And a 2026 amendment enlarged the covered class and applied the change retroactively to February 1, 2020.
Qualified immunity isn't a defense on the merits. It's a rule about how specific the prior case law has to be. In the Eighth Circuit, that usually means finding a case with facts close to yours.
In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, a unanimous Supreme Court held that negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers aren't preempted by the FAAAA. The freight-brokerage industry is centered in Minnesota, and so is the exposure.
Minn. Stat. § 604.03 makes expiration of a product's ordinary useful life a defense. It isn't a deadline. There's no date certain, the manufacturer's own stated service life is one of six nonexclusive factors, and it doesn't bar the claim.
The Federal Arbitration Act was written to help merchants settle commercial disputes. Four decades of Supreme Court decisions turned it into a tool that pushes consumers out of court.
The Fourth Amendment asks whether force was objectively reasonable. Minnesota's statute asks whether it was necessary. One incident, two standards, and they can come out two different ways.
Minn. Stat. § 336.9-610 makes every aspect of a collateral sale answer for its commercial reasonableness. A lender that sold carelessly, or skipped proper notice, can watch its deficiency shrink to zero.
Minn. Stat. § 548.251 isn't a damages rule. It's a written evidentiary proceeding on a ten-day fuse. It applies only where there's a verdict, it never reaches future benefits, and in an auto case it usually isn't the operative statute at all.
Minnesota's Legislature wrote a deadly-force rule stricter than the federal constitutional floor: necessity, plus a three-part threat test. Here's what it says and where it bites.
Under Minn. Stat. § 502.851, a Minnesota trustee can pour the assets of an old trust into a new one with better terms — no court order, 60 days' notice. How much can change depends entirely on the trustee's discretion under the original document. Here's how the statute works.
Until May 20, 2023, Minn. Stat. § 573.01 said a personal injury cause of action 'dies with the person.' Now it says the claim survives the death of any party. Here's what that changed, and what it didn't.
In Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel, a unanimous Court held the 30-day removal deadline can't be equitably tolled. Minnesota's Attorney General was on the winning side, and 337 miles of Enbridge pipeline run through this state.
Minnesota trust law next to South Dakota, Nevada, Delaware, Alaska, and Wyoming: asset protection, dynasty trusts, and taxes, and where the out-of-state pitch runs out of road.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0206 makes a signer who knew the record was inaccurate personally liable to anyone who suffers a loss by relying on it — and it reaches members and managers who never signed anything.
Minn. Stat. § 325E.61 requires notice 'in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay,' and notice to the national credit bureaus within 48 hours when more than 500 people are notified at one time. The statute names only the Attorney General as its enforcer, and GLBA financial institutions are exempt outright.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0705 terminates an LLC that misses the free annual renewal. Section 322C.0706 reinstates it retroactively and validates the contracts signed in the gap. But it does only three things, and only for domestic companies.
In Maslowski v. Prospect Funding Partners, the Minnesota Supreme Court threw out the common-law ban on champerty. Third-party litigation funding is enforceable in Minnesota. What protects you now is contract law and unconscionability.
A Minnesota deal lawyer's plain-English guide to asset vs. equity purchases: liabilities, successor risk, the non-compete ban, taxes, and why the choice matters.
Chapter 319B applies only if your organizational document says three specific things. Minn. Stat. § 319B.03, subd. 2 sets the election; § 319B.06, subd. 3 declines to change what you owe the person you served.
In Cox v. Sony Music, the Court wiped out a $1 billion verdict and held that an ISP isn't liable just for serving subscribers it knows are infringing. The last time the music industry couldn't reach the middleman, it sued a mother of four from Brainerd.
Minn. Stat. § 302A.751, subds. 2 and 3a make a buy-sell presumptively binding in a Minnesota buyout. Connelly v. United States says the same agreement is 'ordinarily not dispositive' for the estate tax. Section 507.071, ch. 523, and § 524.3-803 each miss the entity.
Minn. Stat. §§ 322C.0902 and 322C.0903 decide whether a member's claim survives the caption. Demand, futility, proper-plaintiff status, and the direct/derivative line can each get a case dismissed on its own.
You disputed the error and the bureau closed it as 'verified.' Why self-disputes fail, what the FCRA actually requires, and when it becomes a legal claim.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0701 lists six ways an LLC dissolves. I read it as a map of who holds which key: three triggers your operating agreement can rewrite, and two court powers it can't touch.
Minn. Stat. § 513.44 lets a creditor unwind a transfer made with actual intent to hinder, delay, or defraud — and lists eleven factors courts weigh. Most of them describe things people do without thinking they're doing anything wrong.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0803 requires a trustee to give 'due regard to the beneficiaries' respective interests', and the settlor usually made those interests unequal on purpose. The qualifier is the rule.
Minnesota taxes estates over $3 million even when no federal tax is owed. Here's who gets caught, why married couples are especially exposed, and how planning helps.
Minn. Stat. § 8.31, subd. 3a gives any person injured by a violation of Minnesota's consumer protection statutes a civil action for damages, costs of investigation, and reasonable attorney's fees. I think it's the most underused remedy in Minnesota consumer law.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0704 tells you when a Minnesota trusteeship vacancy has to be filled, when it doesn't, and the four-tier order I work through before anyone pays for a petition.
Benefits started January 1, 2026, and the first premiums were due April 30. A plain-English guide to the 2026 premium rate, the leave categories, the 20-week cap, and where Minnesota employers most often trip up.
In Postal Service v. Konan, a 5–4 Court held you can't sue the United States under the FTCA even when the mail is withheld on purpose. Meanwhile, Minnesota starts surplus-claim clocks and response deadlines the moment something is mailed.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.1009 makes a beneficiary's consent, release, or ratification binding — with two exceptions that turn on what the trustee knew and what the beneficiary was told.
In Hain Celestial Group v. Palmquist, a unanimous Court held that wrongly dismissing a non-diverse defendant after removal doesn't fix the jurisdiction problem. A federal jury trial and a defense judgment got thrown out for want of jurisdiction.
A plain-English look at what a revocable living trust does and doesn't do for a Minnesota home — probate, homestead, taxes, and the transfer-on-death deed alternative.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0802 holds three different rules with three different burdens. A fair price defeats a claim under paragraph (d) and does nothing at all under paragraph (b).
Minn. Stat. § 302A.751 lets a shareholder in a Minnesota corporation that isn't publicly held sue over conduct that's 'unfairly prejudicial' — and subdivision 3a tells courts to weigh the parties' reasonable expectations. The remedy is usually a buyout at fair value.
Since January 1, 2026, a Minnesota court can issue an order for protection against financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. It can freeze assets and lines of credit and bar contact. Here's who can ask for one and what a court has to find.
Minn. Stat. § 513.01, § 507.02, § 334.01, subd. 2, § 181.723, subd. 4(a)(9), and § 504B.291, subd. 1(c) all require a writing. Read together, they put the cost of an undocumented deal on the party who had the power and the reason to document it.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0708 lets a Minnesota court raise or lower the compensation a trust document specifies, and § 501C.0105(b)(7) makes that power one of the few things a settlor can't draft around.
Minnesota's LLC act fills every gap in your operating agreement with its own default rules. Here's what those defaults actually say, and the eight places I watch these agreements fall apart.
A transfer on death deed under Minn. Stat. § 507.071 moves real property at death without probate, stays revocable while you're alive, and costs a recording fee. I see the same four defects over and over: no recording, one spousal signature on a homestead, the public assistance clearance certificate, and no right of exoneration.
Minn. Stat. § 549.09, subd. 1(c) splits judgment interest at a $50,000 hinge: 4% for 2026 versus a flat ten percent. Section 337.10, subd. 3 charges 1-1/2 percent per month on construction payables. Sections 334.01 and 334.011 govern the private note.
Minn. Stat. § 544.41 lets a nonmanufacturer certify who made the product and get dismissed. That dismissal is conditional, it can be undone on five grounds, and it only reaches strict liability in tort.
In Berk v. Choy, the Supreme Court held that a state affidavit-of-merit requirement doesn't apply in federal court. Minnesota has two of them — and Minnesota's Attorney General signed the brief asking the Court to rule the other way.
Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subd. 1 made several liability the default in 2003 and kept joint and several liability for four categories — including any defendant whose fault is greater than 50 percent.
Minn. Stat. § 302A.661, subd. 4 limits an asset buyer's liability to what the contract or another statute imposes, and says an asset sale isn't a de facto merger. The federal courts read it as wiping out most of the old common-law exceptions. The Minnesota Court of Appeals has never squarely agreed.
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Minn. Stat. § 501C.1013 lets a trustee prove the trust with a six-item certificate instead of the dispositive terms. It has no consequence for a third party who refuses it, and knowing that changes how you make the argument.
In Coney Island Auto Parts v. Burton, the Court held that a motion attacking a void judgment still has to be filed within a reasonable time. In Minnesota, where 82% of debt-collection cases in district court end in default, that's not an academic rule.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0505 makes revocable trust property answerable to the settlor's creditors, in life and at death. It attaches no claims procedure and no deadline of its own, and that cuts against the trustee.
Minn. Stat. § 302A.457 lets shareholders do by agreement what bylaws can't: move the board's authority, and the directors' liability, to themselves. It's also what a court reads under § 302A.751, subd. 3a.
Minn. Stat. ch. 325C protects information with independent economic value that isn't readily ascertainable and is the subject of reasonable efforts to keep it secret. Exemplary damages up to twice compensatory, attorney's fees that run both ways, and a three-year clock from discovery under § 325C.06.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0410 gives a member of a member-managed LLC a broad, purpose-free right to records. A member of a manager-managed LLC gets a narrower one. And a dissociated member keeps a third right entirely.
Dissolution under Minn. Stat. §§ 302A.701–302A.791, with the LLC parallel at §§ 322C.0701–322C.0708. The claims procedure is what cuts off exposure: 90 days with notice, two years without — and an administratively dissolved corporation gets neither.
45 days for the subcontractor pre-lien notice, 120 days to record and serve the lien statement, one year to sue. Minn. Stat. ch. 514 forgives almost nothing, and the clocks start earlier than most contractors think.
Minn. Stat. § 80C.21, § 337.10, subd. 1, § 325E.37, subd. 7, and § 181.988, subd. 3 each void an out-of-state choice-of-law or forum clause in a defined class of contract. Read them together and you've got a rule. The FAA question at the edge is genuinely unsettled.
Minn. Stat. ch. 80C registers the sale of franchises. What a franchisee actually needs is § 80C.14's 90-day termination notice and 180-day nonrenewal rule, § 80C.17's fee-shifting, and § 80C.21, which voids any waiver or choice-of-law clause.
Minn. Stat. ch. 523 gives you a statutory short form power of attorney with fourteen categories of authority. You elect durability on the form, the principal's signature has to be notarized, and gifts to the agent themselves take a separate express authorization.
Prejudgment attachment under Minn. Stat. ch. 570 is Minnesota's rarest creditor remedy, because § 570.02 makes the grounds intent-based — and only four of the six can support an ex parte seizure under § 570.025.
Minn. Stat. § 336.9-626(a)(2) and (a)(4), § 302A.751, subd. 2, §§ 513.42(b), 513.44(c), 513.45(c), 513.48(g), and § 550.175, subd. 1 all answer the question 'what is this worth?' — and they hand the burden to a different party each time.
Minn. Stat. ch. 565 lets a claimant get personal property back before judgment: § 565.23 after notice and hearing, § 565.24 before it. Here's how the bonds, the redelivery rights, and the UCC Article 9 problem that sends a secured party to court work.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.321 sets the hearing 7 to 14 days out, and § 504B.291 lets a nonpayment tenant redeem the tenancy any time before possession is delivered. Skip the 14-day residential notice and the case gets dismissed and expunged.
Minn. Stat. § 604.07 was repealed in 1988 and §§ 604.08–604.09 in 1994. What's left is § 549.25 (a hearing, not a discount) and a past/future split that exists because the interest statute needs it.
Minn. Stat. § 626.557 creates a private treble-damages action for financial exploitation only. For neglect and abuse it gives you a mandatory report, a state investigation, and a public memorandum — and the negligence case still has to stand on its own.
Minn. Stat. § 541.05 gives six years for most contract and tort claims — but strict product liability gets four, and a long list of claims run on much shorter clocks. The most expensive mistake in civil litigation is showing up late.
Minn. Stat. § 302A.661, subd. 4 protects an asset buyer, and it expressly preserves liability imposed by 'other statutes of this state.' Those statutes include § 181.723, subd. 7(e) and the UVTA at §§ 513.41–.51, with federal MPPAA overlay at 29 U.S.C. § 1384.
Easements arise by grant, implication, and prescription, and Minn. Stat. § 508.02 wipes out the unrecorded ones on Torrens land. But if you're landlocked, Minn. Stat. § 164.08, subd. 2 says a town board "shall establish a cartway."
Minn. Stat. § 540.08 makes an unapproved settlement of a minor's claim invalid, and Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 145 does the rest. That includes a rule that reaches claims with no lawsuit on file, and a fund the child can't touch at 18 without a second order.
A buy-sell agreement decides what happens when an owner dies, divorces, quits, or gets forced out. In Minnesota it does more: under Minn. Stat. § 302A.751, subd. 3a, buy-sell agreements are presumed to reflect shareholders' reasonable expectations concerning the matters they deal with.
Minn. Stat. § 169.09, subd. 5a makes a permissive driver the owner's agent 'in case of accident.' No cap, no theft exception, no presumption of consent. And the leading cases all cite a statute number that doesn't exist anymore.
Minnesota's spousal consortium claim comes from Thill v. Modern Erecting Co. (1969), not from a statute, and it came with conditions attached, including a joinder rule that kills the claim if the injured spouse's case goes to trial without it.
Minn. Stat. § 513.55 requires disclosure of material facts "of which the seller is aware," and § 513.57 immunizes everything outside that knowledge. Section 513.60's waiver doesn't reach the well, septic, meth, or radon statutes.
Everyone reads the two lists in Minn. Stat. § 322C.0110 — what an operating agreement may not do, and what it may. I try duty-term disputes on subdivision 8, which fixes when, by whom, and on what record the term gets tested.
Adverse possession under Minn. Stat. § 541.02 and boundary by practical location are different doctrines with different elements and different proof. On registered land, Minn. Stat. § 508.02 bars the first and expressly keeps the second.
Minn. Stat. § 466.05 requires written notice to a municipality's governing body within 180 days of discovering the injury. Section 466.04 caps damages, § 466.03 lists the immunities, and § 466.06 holds the one lever most claimants never pull.
Minn. Stat. § 181.723 makes every individual performing building construction services an employee unless they operate as a business entity meeting all fourteen statutory requirements — with penalties up to $10,000 per worker and personal liability for owners.
Minn. Stat. § 169.685, subd. 4 makes proof of seat belt and child restraint use or nonuse inadmissible in any litigation involving personal injury or property damage from the use or operation of a motor vehicle. The bar runs both ways, with one exception.
Minn. Stat. ch. 580 lets a mortgagee foreclose without a lawsuit. But Minn. Stat. § 582.30, subd. 2 bars a deficiency judgment after an advertisement foreclosure with a six-month redemption period. The redemption period is the whole case.
Minn. Stat. § 62A.095 bars a health plan's subrogation clause unless it applies only after full recovery and is reduced by a pro rata share of fees and costs. Self-funded ERISA plans argue the limit doesn't reach them.
Minn. Stat. § 559.21 lets a contract for deed seller terminate the contract by serving a notice and waiting. The cure period is 60 days on most modern contracts, 30 on some, 90 on others — and almost everyone remembers the wrong rule.
Minn. Stat. § 544.42 and § 145.682 require expert affidavits in professional and malpractice cases, and both make dismissal with prejudice mandatory. Neither deadline runs from a court filing, and the two statutes aren't the twins they look like.
Minn. Stat. § 181.988 voids employee non-competes signed on or after July 1, 2023. What's left is ch. 325C and the DTSA, the carve-outs in subd. 1(a), § 181.9881, the sale exception, and the duty of loyalty.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.525 pushes no-fault benefit claims of $10,000 or less into binding arbitration under the Minnesota No-Fault Arbitration Rules. The arbitrator gets the last word on the facts. On the law, a court looks again from scratch.
Chapter 337 makes broad-form indemnity, additional-insured coverage for someone else's negligence, out-of-state choice of law and forum, and pre-payment lien waivers void in Minnesota building and construction contracts. And it writes a 10-day prompt-payment term into every one of them.
Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 3 bars noneconomic damages in a Minnesota motor vehicle case unless a threshold is met — and the $4,000 computation pulls diagnostic x-rays and rehabilitative treatment out of the total before it's measured.
Minn. Stat. § 363A.28, subd. 3(a) gives one year from the occurrence. Then § 363A.33, subd. 1 adds 45- and 90-day windows, § 363A.07, subd. 3 makes the forum choice exclusive, and § 363A.31 gives 15 days to rescind a release. Here's the whole machine, mapped.
A Minnesota revocable trust controls the property actually transferred to it. It reaches anything else only through an instrument that points at it — a pour-over will under Minn. Stat. § 524.2-511, a beneficiary designation, a transfer on death deed — and the pour-over route sends the assets you paid to keep out of probate straight through probate.
Minn. Stat. § 548.251 and § 604.01 answer two different questions, and § 548.251, subd. 3(c) fixes the order between them. Collateral sources come off before the fault reduction. Settlement credits come off after. Same dollars, different result.
Minn. Stat. §§ 181.960–181.966 give an employee the right to review and copy the personnel record on written request — seven working days, no fee — and § 181.963 bars the employer from using record material it left out in a later proceeding, unless the omission wasn't intentional and the employee gets a reasonable chance to review it first.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0901 judges a trustee's investments by process and at the portfolio level, not by results. The trustee who wrote down a strategy is defensible. The one who just held what the settlor left isn't.
Minn. Stat. § 325F.70, subd. 3 gives a consumer a direct damages remedy under the Consumer Fraud Act, and the statute itself deems that action to benefit the public. Everyone else is back in § 8.31 and Ly v. Nystrom. The Deceptive Trade Practices Act pays nobody.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.1005 gives a Minnesota beneficiary three years from a report that adequately disclosed a potential claim. The trustee decides when to send it, by a method that doesn't require you to receive it.
Under Minn. Stat. §§ 181.950–181.957 an employer may not request or require a drug or alcohol test except as authorized. And nothing is authorized unless it's done pursuant to a written policy meeting § 181.952, subd. 1.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.1205 protects a disabled beneficiary's public benefits, but only if someone else's money funds the trust. A settlement or an inheritance that lands first is a different, harder problem.
Minn. Stat. § 181.932 protects six categories of conduct. Since the 2013 amendment defining 'good faith' in § 181.931, subd. 4, there's only one state-of-mind question left: was the report knowingly false or reckless?
Under Minn. Stat. § 549.09, subd. 1(b), the party whose written settlement offer lands closer to the verdict controls who gets preverdict interest and on what amount. And subd. 1(c) sets a flat ten percent above $50,000.
Minnesota lets a trust split the trustee's job among an investment advisor, a distribution advisor, and a trust protector. Minn. Stat. § 501C.0808 decides who's liable, and the default surprises every settlor I explain it to.
Minn. Stat. §§ 604A.20–604A.27 strip a landowner's duty of care toward recreational users — but only for an owner 'who gives written or oral permission ... without charge.' And § 604A.27 keeps that permission from ripening into an easement.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0706(b)(4) is the cheapest removal ground in Minnesota trust law — and the easiest to plead badly. Read the trust's own removal clause before you file anything.
Minn. Stat. § 302A.461, subd. 4(a) gives a shareholder of a non-publicly-held Minnesota corporation an absolute right to inspect the share register and ten enumerated categories of record. No proper purpose to prove, and attorney fees if the company refuses. Here's how to use it.
Minn. Stat. § 573.02 hands the claim to a court-appointed trustee, not to the spouse or the children. Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 144 supplies the machinery — and a 2023 amendment quietly enlarged what that trustee may recover.
Minn. Stat. § 549.191 bars a complaint from seeking punitive damages. You need a motion, affidavits, and a prima facie showing first. Put it next to § 549.20 and § 544.36 and a Minnesota complaint may not say what the case is worth.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0605 gives a revocable-trust contestant three years — unless the trustee sends a copy of the instrument and a four-item notice. Then it's 120 days. And watch the section number.
Minn. Stat. § 347.22 makes a dog's owner liable for 'the full amount of the injury sustained' with no negligence, no prior bite, and no scienter. All that's left to fight about is provocation and whether the person was lawfully present.
Minn. Stat. §§ 501C.0410 through 501C.0417 give you six ways to modify or terminate an irrevocable Minnesota trust. Only one of them beats a material purpose, and only one needs no judge.
Minn. Stat. § 340A.801 gives a claim against a vendor who caused an intoxication by an illegal sale. Minn. Stat. § 340A.802 makes it depend on written notice served within 240 days of the date counsel is retained, and bars the action without it.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0111 lets interested persons resolve almost any trust matter by written agreement. You get speed and privacy. You also get a defect only a court order can cure.
Minn. Stat. ch. 65B pays $40,000 in basic economic loss benefits no matter who was at fault. Then § 65B.51, subd. 3 bars any recovery for noneconomic detriment unless a $4,000 net medical figure — or one of four injury categories — is met.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0813 is three paragraphs long. It sets no schedule, prescribes no report format, and reaches only irrevocable trusts. The real engine is § 501C.1005.
A deadline that runs from a filing is a calendar entry. A deadline that runs from 'the last item of work,' 'first furnished,' or 'should have been discovered' is a fact question — and in Minnesota, those are the ones that cost people their rights.
Seven of the eleven restrictions on a Minnesota operating agreement admit no exception at all — including the one that makes Minnesota law non-negotiable for a Minnesota LLC's internal affairs, and the one that follows a void term into the articles of organization.
Victoria Elevator makes a creditor prove a number of factors plus injustice. Minn. Stat. § 270C.56, § 302A.559, § 181.723, subd. 7(d), § 336.3-402, and § 513.48 skip all of that and reach the owner directly.
Minn. Stat. § 524.3-803 bars claims against a decedent's estate four months after published notice. But a 'known and identified' creditor gets served, and a personal representative who doesn't look for one has a problem of their own.
Minnesota shifts attorney fees in some claims, refuses to in others, and in one case caps the fee at $5. Lay § 8.31, § 325F.70, § 181.171, § 337.10, § 325C.04, and § 302A.461 side by side and the pattern has nothing to do with how serious the wrong is.
Minn. Stat. §§ 322C.1001–322C.1016 make merger, conversion, and domestication statutory transactions with a filed plan and a unanimity default. Section 322C.1010, subd. 1: the converted organization 'is for all purposes the same entity that existed before.'
Minn. Stat. § 513.42, § 302A.551, § 322C.0405, § 576.25, and 11 U.S.C. § 101(32) all turn on insolvency, and they don't all measure it the same way. Here's how a lawful LLC distribution can be a voidable transfer on the very same facts, and why a corporation's distribution is a different question.
Chapter 322C never addresses single-member companies except to confirm a sole member has an operating agreement. It doesn't say whether the § 322C.0503 charging order protects one. It does say the company dissolves 90 days after the owner dies.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0601 gives every member the power to walk out. Section 322C.0603 turns the interest into a bare transferable interest. There's no buyout — and § 322C.0102, subd. 15 quietly takes away the standing to ask for one.
Minnesota caps interest at $8 on $100 per year. But subd. 2 exempts written credit extensions of $100,000 or more entirely, and § 334.011 gives business and agricultural loans a floating cap. Blow the business cap and the entire interest is forfeited.
Minn. Stat. § 364.021 bars a public or private employer from asking about criminal history before the interview. But the direct-relationship standard in § 364.03 and the written-explanation duty in § 364.05 reach only public employment and licensing, and § 364.06, subd. 2(d) makes the private-employer remedy exclusive.
Chapter 322C never uses the words capital call, capital account, dilution, or forfeiture. Minn. Stat. § 322C.0401, subd. 5 says a member doesn't have to contribute at all. What's left is a contract, and it gets measured against Gorco Construction Co. v. Stein.
The Farmer-Lender Mediation Act conditions foreclosure, repossession, contract for deed cancellation, garnishment, and levy on a mediation notice. But the operative bars sit in Minn. Stat. §§ 336.9-601(h), 550.365, 559.209, and 582.039. Sections 583.20 to 583.32 expire June 30, 2027.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0408 makes indemnification and advancement of defense costs mandatory for Minnesota LLCs by default. Section 322C.0408, subd. 4 lets the operating agreement delete both.
Minn. Stat. § 524.5-310 and § 524.5-409 both require the court to find the respondent's needs can't be met by less restrictive means, and both name the alternative: a health care agent under ch. 145C, an attorney-in-fact under § 523.01. Here's how to use that.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0301 ends status-based agency for LLC members. Section 322C.0302 puts an optional filing in its place, and I rarely see anyone use it. It grants power broadly, limits it narrowly, and never expires.
Minn. Stat. §§ 322C.0405 and 322C.0406 put a fault-based clawback on the people who approved a distribution and a knowledge-based one on the people who took it. I read the two-year bar as covering a lot less than it looks like it does.
Minn. Stat. § 501C.0502 stops a creditor from reaching a beneficiary's interest or a distribution "before its receipt." Sections 501C.0504 and 501C.0506 mark the two edges of that protection — and Minnesota's chapter has no § 501C.0501 and no § 501C.0503 at all.
Under Minn. Stat. § 181.13, wages owed a discharged employee are due immediately on written demand, and the employer is in default 24 hours later, with a penalty of one day's average earnings for every day, up to 15. Attorney fees are mandatory.
Chapter 322C gives a deadlocked LLC member a dissolution petition and — read it closely — no buyout to go with it. The way out has to be written into the operating agreement first.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0503 makes the charging order the exclusive remedy against a member's transferable interest. Read it closely and it's narrower than either side usually thinks.
Minn. Stat. § 256B.15 defines "estate" to include life estates, joint tenancies, pay-on-death accounts, living trusts, and transfer on death deeds, and § 514.981 puts a lien on the house while the recipient is still alive. Avoiding probate stops neither one.
Read § 322C.0110, § 337.02, § 337.05, § 337.10, § 336.9-602, § 325E.61, and § 504B.365 side by side and you see the pattern. The core of what Minnesota won't let you sign away isn't substance. It's access, information, and forum. I make the case.
Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 makes the covenants of habitability unwaivable, and § 504B.385 lets a residential tenant deposit rent with the court administrator 14 days after written notice. Here's the catch, in subdivision 1(d): a tenant may not withhold rent.
Minn. Stat. §§ 325D.49–325D.66 mirror Sherman Act §§ 1 and 2 almost word for word. But § 325D.57 gives treble damages to anyone 'injured directly or indirectly', and the act has no provision telling courts to follow federal law.
Minn. Stat. § 510.02 shields hundreds of thousands of dollars of homestead value across as much as 160 acres, on an amount that can adjust on July 1 of an even-numbered year. But § 510.05 lists exactly what the shield doesn't stop, and § 510.07 lets you abandon it by accident. I walk through all four sections.
Minn. Stat. § 609.2335 makes financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult a crime, § 626.557 makes it reportable within 24 hours, and § 626.557, subd. 20 gives the adult a treble-damages claim. The definitions don't match.
Minn. Stat. § 626A.02, subd. 2(d) lets a party to a conversation record it, and § 626A.13 gives the person recorded a civil action worth at least $10,000 when it doesn't. Section 609.746 governs cameras, has no one-party rule, and creates no civil remedy at all.
Minn. Stat. §§ 336.2-313 to 336.2-316 create warranties on the sale of goods and tell the seller how to disclaim them. § 336.2-607(3)(a) bars the buyer who doesn't give notice. § 336.2-719 lets a seller cap the remedy — until the cap fails of its essential purpose.
The Minnesota Health Records Act, Minn. Stat. §§ 144.291–144.298, requires signed consent for releases that HIPAA permits outright. Section 144.292 sets a 30-day access deadline and a capped fee schedule; § 144.298 gives the patient a private action against the requester as well as the releaser.
Minnesota abolished the invitee/licensee distinction in 1972. But Minn. Stat. § 466.03, subd. 4 immunizes municipalities for snow and ice on most public sidewalks, § 466.03, subd. 6e immunizes parks, and § 466.05 gives a claimant 180 days to present notice.
Minn. Stat. ch. 558 governs partition actions commenced before August 1, 2025. The new Minnesota Partition Act, ch. 558A, governs everything after. It swaps 'great prejudice' for a seven-factor test and adds attorney fees you can enforce against the homestead.
Minnesota requires every auto policy to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage under Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a. Section 65B.49, subd. 4a sets the payout against what the at-fault driver actually paid, and subd. 10 now puts a four-year clock on UIM.
Minn. Stat. § 322C.0201 forms an LLC on filing and a $135 payment. Minn. Stat. § 302A.821, subd. 4(b) administratively dissolves a corporation that skips its annual renewal — and says that corporation 'is not entitled to the benefits of section 302A.781,' the claims bar.
Minn. Stat. § 604.18 gives a first-party insured taxable costs: half the proceeds above the insurer's pre-trial offer, capped at $250,000, plus fees capped at $100,000. But you only get there after a motion to amend, only from the judge, and never after arbitration or appraisal.
Minn. Stat. § 609.748 defines harassment 'regardless of the relationship between the actor and the intended target' — the order for protection under § 518B.01 is the opposite, because it begins and ends with relationship. Here's how both work, from both sides of the caption.
Minn. Stat. § 518A.34 sets a six-step computation, § 518A.35 supplies the guideline table, and § 518A.36 adjusts for parenting time by cubing each parent's annual overnights. Parenting time and imputed income under § 518A.32 are where Minnesota support cases actually get fought.
Minn. Stat. § 491A.01 sets the conciliation court limit at $20,000, but only $4,000 for consumer credit transactions, and eleven categories of claim are excluded outright. The 21-day removal window is where most of the real damage happens.
Minn. Stat. ch. 332B registers debt settlement providers and, at § 332B.09, subd. 3, forbids collecting any payment before the services are fully performed. Chapter 332A does the same job a different way for debt management. Both carry private rights of action with statutory damages and fees.
Minn. Stat. §§ 332.31–332.44 license collection agencies and debt buyers and list 24 prohibited practices in § 332.37, including a clause making any FDCPA violation a Minnesota violation. The private damages remedy, though, lives in the federal statute, 15 U.S.C. § 1692k.
Minn. Stat. § 541.051 gives you two years from discovery of the injury and ten years from substantial completion. The ten-year clause bars the claim from accruing, not from being filed. Read it next to ch. 327A's 1/2/10-year warranties and that changes what it does.
Nothing matches that.
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