For thirty-two years, if you filed a § 1983 claim in a Minnesota federal court and labeled a count “malicious prosecution,” you lost that count. Not because your facts were thin. Because the Eighth Circuit had held, over and over, that the thing you named was not a constitutional violation at all. Thompson v. Clark, 596 U.S. 36 (2022), ended that rule on April 4, 2022. What replaced it is a Fourth Amendment claim that shares a name with the Minnesota tort and shares almost nothing else — and that fails, in this circuit, on an element the state tort does not have.
That element is seizure. Not malice, not favorable termination, not want of probable cause. Seizure. The Eighth Circuit has now twice affirmed judgment against plaintiffs whose charges were dismissed, for whom probable cause never became the deciding question, and who still lost because being charged and told to show up in court is not a seizure. Meanwhile the question of which pretrial restraints do count has been open in this circuit since 2001, and the court said so again in 2025.
Minnesota’s common-law tort of malicious prosecution is a different body of law with different elements, and I treat it separately — see the elements of the Minnesota tort and the favorable-termination element on both sides. Federal law here is federal law. The moment you let the state elements bleed into the federal claim, you have lost the thread.
The Eighth Circuit spent thirty-two years saying there was no such claim
The formulation the circuit repeated for the next three decades comes from a Minnesota case. In Gunderson v. Schlueter, 904 F.2d 407 (8th Cir. 1990), a Minnesota resort partner was prosecuted after a running dispute with Department of Natural Resources officers, tried, and acquitted on every count. He sued under § 1983 on a malicious prosecution theory. The court disposed of it in three sentences at page 409, on a string cite that included its own earlier decision in Occhino v. United States, 686 F.2d 1302, 1311 (8th Cir. 1982) — another Minnesota case — alongside decisions from the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits:
The Constitution does not mention malicious prosecution, nor has Gunderson cited a case or statute establishing a federal action for malicious prosecution. In fact, this and other circuits are uniform in holding that malicious prosecution by itself is not punishable under section 1983 because it does not allege a constitutional injury. . . . Therefore, malicious prosecution can form the basis for a section 1983 action only if the defendants’ conduct also infringes some provision of the Constitution or federal law.
That last sentence is the whole doctrine. Malicious prosecution was not a claim; it was a label you had to cash in for something else. Sanders v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 984 F.2d 972, 977 (8th Cir. 1993), repeated it verbatim — “An action for malicious prosecution by itself is not punishable under § 1983 because it does not allege a constitutional injury” — and then dismissed the count. Kurtz v. City of Shrewsbury, 245 F.3d 753, 758 (8th Cir. 2001), sharpened it into the sentence district courts quoted for the next twenty years: “this court has uniformly held that malicious prosecution by itself is not punishable under § 1983 because it does not allege a constitutional injury.” Technical Ordnance, Inc. v. United States, 244 F.3d 641, 650 (8th Cir. 2001), stated the same thing as a background principle: “The general rule is that an action for malicious prosecution does not state a claim of constitutional injury.”
This was still the law in 2021. The court restated it the year before Thompson in Martin v. Julian, 18 F.4th 580, 584 (8th Cir. 2021) — as quoted in Dunn, below — where the rule was that a malicious prosecution claim is cognizable under § 1983 only if the “alleged wrongful conduct . . . also infringe[d] ‘some provision of the Constitution or federal law.’”
Two things about that line of cases are worth holding onto, because both matter to how you litigate today.
First, the Eighth Circuit never said no plaintiff could ever recover for a bad prosecution. It said the tort’s name did not do the work. A plaintiff who could point to a Fourth Amendment seizure, or a due process violation, still had a claim — under that constitutional provision, not under a free-floating malicious prosecution theory. That distinction was lost on a great many litigants and, judging by the briefing the Eighth Circuit describes in its recent opinions, on a fair number of defense lawyers too.
Second, the Eighth Circuit was an outlier and the Supreme Court’s own citations show it. When Thompson collected the courts of appeals that had recognized a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim, it cited decisions from the D.C., First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits. The Eighth is absent from that list. It had spent the preceding three decades holding the opposite.
What Thompson actually held, and what it only assumed
Thompson is narrower than its reputation. Larry Thompson’s sister-in-law, who suffered from a mental illness, called 911 from his Brooklyn apartment and claimed he was abusing his one-week-old daughter. The marks on the baby turned out to be diaper rash. Officers entered over Thompson’s objection, arrested him for resisting the entry, and charged him with obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest. He was held two days, released on his own recognizance, and the prosecutor moved to dismiss without explaining why. Under Second Circuit precedent he needed an affirmative indication of innocence to sue. The Supreme Court reversed, 6-3:
[W]e hold that a Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution does not require the plaintiff to show that the criminal prosecution ended with some affirmative indication of innocence. A plaintiff need only show that the criminal prosecution ended without a conviction.
That is the holding. It is about favorable termination and nothing else. The existence of the claim itself was a premise, not a ruling — the Court described “a Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution, sometimes referred to as a claim for unreasonable seizure pursuant to legal process,” and said “[t]his Court’s precedents recognize such a claim.” Fifteen years earlier, in Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 390 n.2 (2007), the same Court had written that “[w]e have never explored the contours of a Fourth Amendment malicious-prosecution suit under § 1983 . . . and we do not do so here.”
Two footnotes in Thompson now do more work in the Eighth Circuit than the holding does.
Footnote 2 supplies the element that decides cases here:
Because this claim is housed in the Fourth Amendment, the plaintiff also has to prove that the malicious prosecution resulted in a seizure of the plaintiff.
Footnote 3 removes an element nobody expected to be in doubt:
We need not decide whether a plaintiff bringing a Fourth Amendment claim under §1983 for malicious prosecution must establish malice (or some other mens rea) in addition to the absence of probable cause.
Read those together and the shape of the federal claim is odd on purpose. Its name says malice; the Court declined to say malice is required. Its name says prosecution; the Fourth Amendment reaches seizures. Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, opened his dissent by saying so with a metaphor that has stuck — “the Court creates a chimera of a constitutional tort by stitching together elements taken from two” different bodies of law — and concluded that “[t]his tort has no precedent in Fourth Amendment law” and that “we should simply hold that a malicious-prosecution claim may not be brought under the Fourth Amendment.” Three sitting Justices think the claim I am describing should not exist. Justice Thomas said it again two years later in Chiaverini, adhering to his “belief that a ‘malicious prosecution claim cannot be based on the Fourth Amendment.’” That is not a reason to avoid pleading the claim. It is a reason to plead the Fourth Amendment seizure with precision rather than relying on the tort’s name to carry you.
How fast the Eighth Circuit turned
Four months. Klein v. Steinkamp (8th Cir. Aug. 16, 2022), No. 21-3039, is the circuit’s first published opinion to reckon with Thompson, and it is flat: “As for federal law, the Supreme Court recently declared that malicious prosecution is actionable under the Fourth Amendment.” The panel then recited the elements straight out of Thompson’s account of the 1871 tort — proceeding instituted without probable cause, malicious motive, termination in acquittal or discharge — found probable cause on the face of the record, and affirmed.
The blunter statement came two years later. In Dunn v. Does (8th Cir. Sept. 5, 2024), Nos. 23-2220 and 23-2268, Des Moines officers argued in the district court that federal malicious prosecution claims “do not exist.” The panel’s answer ran three words: “That was wrong.”
So the threshold question is settled. A § 1983 malicious prosecution claim exists in the Eighth Circuit. Anyone still citing Kurtz for the proposition that it does not is citing a case the circuit has moved past — though I note that a district court in this circuit relied on Kurtz to hold that a plaintiff could not “sustain a civil rights claim under § 1983,” and the Eighth Circuit affirmed on a different ground rather than correct it. See Brown v. Boettigheimer (8th Cir. July 27, 2022), No. 21-2460, slip op. at 12 n.3. Expect the argument. Answer it with Dunn.
The element that actually decides these cases
In Brown v. City of Dermott (8th Cir. Aug. 20, 2025), No. 23-3073, a former Dermott police officer was charged with abuse of office and witness bribery. He was never arrested. He was summoned to appear. “The case was eventually dismissed because the prosecutor could not locate the parolee” whose accusation drove the charge. He sued for Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution and lost — not on probable cause, not on termination, but because he was never seized. The panel quoted Thompson’s footnote 2, then held that Brown “has not shown that he was seized within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,” resting on the observation that “[n]o court has held that a summons alone constitutes a seizure,” and collecting decisions from the First, Second, Third, Seventh, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits saying so.
Eight months later the court applied that squarely. In Ward v. City of Sherwood (8th Cir. Apr. 28, 2026), No. 24-3316, a plaintiff arrested for disorderly conduct challenged an added public-intoxication charge. The court assumed, for argument, that the officers had no probable cause for that charge — and affirmed anyway:
The initiation of charges by itself, or a summons to appear in court on an additional charge, does not constitute a seizure that supports a claim of malicious prosecution.
Ward had been seized. He had been taken down, handcuffed, and hospitalized. But he was seized on the disorderly conduct charge, and “a charge of public intoxication did not effect any further seizure.” The claim died on causation.
That is the discipline this claim demands. You are not proving that a prosecution was wrongful. You are proving that a particular unsupported charge produced a particular deprivation of liberty pursuant to legal process — an arrest on a warrant, a pretrial detention, a bail revocation, additional days in custody. If the answer to “what did this charge physically do to my client?” is “he had to come to court,” you do not have a Fourth Amendment claim in the Eighth Circuit. You may still have a state-law claim, and you should look hard at abuse of process, which does not require either favorable termination or want of probable cause.
Federal claim versus Minnesota tort, element by element
The two claims are constantly confused, including in complaints I have read. Minnesota states its tort in three elements and no more. The supreme court adopted the formulation in Leiendecker v. Asian Women United of Minnesota, 895 N.W.2d 623, 634 (Minn. 2017), quoting Kellar v. VonHoltum, 568 N.W.2d 186, 192 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997): the action must be “brought without probable cause or reasonable belief that the plaintiff would ultimately prevail on the merits”; it “must be instituted and prosecuted with malicious intent”; and it “must terminate in favor of the defendant.” Leiendecker adds a point that matters to anyone choosing a forum: “Both the probable cause and malice elements of a malicious prosecution claim are factual questions for the jury.” Set that against the federal claim and the divergence is not subtle.
| § 1983 Fourth Amendment claim (8th Cir.) | Minnesota common-law tort | |
|---|---|---|
| Want of probable cause | Required — Thompson, 596 U.S. at 43 | Required, and a jury question — Leiendecker, 895 N.W.2d at 634 |
| Malice | Expressly undecided — Thompson, 596 U.S. at 44 n.3; Dunn declined to reach it | Required, and a jury question — Leiendecker, 895 N.W.2d at 634 |
| Favorable termination | Prosecution ended without a conviction — Thompson, 596 U.S. 36 (2022) (the holding) | Termination in the claimant’s favor — Leiendecker, 895 N.W.2d at 634 |
| Seizure | Required — Thompson, 596 U.S. at 43 n.2; Brown v. City of Dermott | Not an element — Leiendecker, 895 N.W.2d at 634 |
| Who may be sued | Only a person acting “under color of” state law — 42 U.S.C. § 1983 | No such limit in the elements; see the elements article |
| Limitations period | Six years — Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5); Egerdahl, 72 F.3d at 618 n.3 | See the elements article |
One caution on that table. Minnesota’s list has three elements, and seizure is not among them, because the state tort has never needed one — which is exactly the point. The state tort redresses the wrongful bringing of a proceeding. The federal claim redresses an unreasonable seizure that a wrongly brought charge caused. They overlap; they are not the same claim, and the federal one is not the state tort with a federal caption on it. The full treatment of the state elements belongs to the elements article.
The seizure row is the one that decides cases today. The malice row is the one that will decide the next round of appeals — and note which way the asymmetry runs. Minnesota makes malice a required element and sends it to a jury. The federal claim may not require malice at all.
Four questions the Eighth Circuit has not answered
I do not think it is useful to describe this area as settled. It is settled at the threshold and unsettled everywhere it matters. Four specific gaps:
1. Which pretrial restraints are a seizure. The court answered this question with a negative in 2001 and has not improved on it since. Technical Ordnance, 244 F.3d at 651: “This circuit has never held that pretrial restrictions such as those alleged by appellees constitute a Fourth Amendment seizure.” The restrictions there were posting bond, being summoned to court, and having to answer charges. Twenty-four years later, in Brown v. City of Dermott at 5 n.3, the court collected out-of-circuit decisions holding that travel restrictions paired with regular mandatory reporting to pretrial services can be a seizure, and then wrote: “Brown has not alleged any pretrial restriction, and even if he had, they were not imposed by Evans or Heard.” The question remains open, and it is open in a form that rewards careful pleading. A Minnesota plaintiff released before trial on real conditions — GPS monitoring, a no-contact order, a travel restriction, mandatory check-ins with pretrial services — should plead each condition with specificity and tie it to the defendant’s charging conduct rather than to the court’s general practice. Nobody in this circuit has yet won on that theory. Nobody has squarely lost on it either.
2. Whether malice is an element, and what it means. Thompson footnote 3 left it open. Klein recited malice as an element without analysis, drawing the recitation from Thompson’s summary of the 1871 tort rather than from any holding. In Dunn, the district court had held that a jury may infer malice from want of probable cause under the federal standard even though Iowa law requires an affirmative showing of ill will — and the Eighth Circuit, finding the argument raised too late, wrote that it “decline[d] to address the appropriate standard for malice under the Fourth Amendment.” So the circuit has a district court holding that federal malice is inferable from lack of probable cause, a published opinion listing malice as an element, and an express refusal to resolve the standard. Plead malice. Prove want of probable cause well enough that a jury could infer it.
3. Whether the claim was clearly established before April 4, 2022. This is the sleeper. For conduct predating Thompson, a defendant will argue that a claim this circuit had “uniformly held” was not punishable under § 1983 cannot have been clearly established. In Dunn, defendants made exactly that argument, and the court declined to reach it because it was raised for the first time on appeal — again writing that it would not address “whether the claim was clearly established.” Given the six-year Minnesota limitations period, conduct from late 2020 and 2021 is still inside the window, and this fight has years left in it. If your operative facts predate April 4, 2022, do not build the case on the malicious prosecution count alone. Plead the underlying Fourth Amendment seizure directly, where the right has been clearly established since long before Thompson. On the general framework, see qualified immunity and the clearly-established prong.
4. The causation test when charges are mixed. Klein saw this coming and stepped around it: “we need not address whether grounds to arrest for only one offense would be sufficient to defeat a malicious prosecution claim as to both.” The Supreme Court answered the categorical half of the question in Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon, 602 U.S. 556 (2024), holding that a valid charge does not automatically defeat a claim based on an invalid one — “So if an invalid charge—say, one fabricated by police officers—causes a detention either to start or to continue, then the Fourth Amendment is violated.” But the Court expressly refused to choose a causation test, describing three competing versions urged by the petitioner, the United States, and the officers, and concluding: “The test for finding causation is no part of the question we agreed to review.” The Eighth Circuit applied Chiaverini’s causation requirement in Ward without picking a test, because Ward had no evidence under any of them. When the right record arrives, this circuit will have to choose among taint, but-for, and could-have-authorized. Build your record for the strictest of the three.
Who you can sue, and what immunity does to it
The defendant in these cases is almost always a police officer, not a prosecutor, and the reason is absolute immunity. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 431 (1976), holds “that in initiating a prosecution and in presenting the State’s case, the prosecutor is immune from a civil suit for damages under § 1983.” A charging decision is the paradigm case, and Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 275 (1993), put the point in terms no plaintiff wants to read: “The reason that we grant it for the latter function (malicious prosecution) is that we have found a common-law tradition of immunity for a prosecutor’s decision to bring an indictment, whether he has probable cause or not.” Read that last clause twice. Want of probable cause is the heart of this claim, and against a prosecutor’s charging decision it buys you nothing.
The immunity is functional, not personal, and it has two well-marked edges.
The first is investigation. Buckley, 509 U.S. at 273: “A prosecutor’s administrative duties and those investigatory functions that do not relate to an advocate’s preparation for the initiation of a prosecution or for judicial proceedings are not entitled to absolute immunity.” A prosecutor who works up the case alongside detectives before there is probable cause to arrest anyone is doing a detective’s job and gets a detective’s immunity.
The second is the oath. In Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118 (1997), a deputy prosecutor drafted an information and a motion for an arrest warrant — absolutely immune — and then personally swore to the facts in the supporting certification. That last act stripped the immunity. The Court’s sentence is one every civil rights lawyer should have memorized: “Testifying about facts is the function of the witness, not of the lawyer.” The same logic runs the other direction for police. An officer who procures a warrant on an affidavit that fails to establish probable cause is a complaining witness and gets only qualified immunity. Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 340-41 (1986).
That leaves the officer, and the officer’s exposure turns on a question the Eighth Circuit has been careful not to decide broadly: what it takes to have “initiated” a prosecution. In Boettigheimer, the court assumed without deciding that a detective “who was not present at the rally and who simply wrote the incident report documenting Brown’s arrest, initiated prosecution,” and then gave him qualified immunity because the arrest and the ensuing prosecution were supported by arguable probable cause. The court did not have to say whether writing the report was enough. In a case where the officer’s report is the only thing between the client and a dismissed charge, that is the question. For the broader framework on defendants and capacities, see who can be sued under § 1983.
One more point on qualified immunity specific to this claim. Because probable cause is an element of the claim and the operative fact for immunity, the two collapse. In Boettigheimer the panel skipped the constitutional question entirely and held only that the officers had arguable probable cause — enough to defeat the claim on the clearly-established prong without ever deciding whether probable cause actually existed. That is the ordinary posture. Assume your case will be decided on arguable probable cause and build the record accordingly. On the underlying standard, see false arrest and probable cause in Minnesota.
The two clocks, and the trap between them
Accrual is where good claims die of neglect, and this claim has a companion claim on a different clock.
Minnesota supplies the length of the period. Federal courts borrow the forum state’s personal-injury limitations period for § 1983, and in Minnesota that is six years under Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5), which covers “any other injury to the person or rights of another, not arising on contract, and not hereinafter enumerated.” Egerdahl v. Hibbing Community College, 72 F.3d 615, 618 n.3 (8th Cir. 1995), states it plainly: “In Minnesota, § 1983 claims are governed by the six-year limitations period of Minnesota’s personal-injury statute, Minn.Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5).” That period is generous by national standards — it is three times Iowa’s. See the § 1983 limitations period in Minnesota.
Federal law supplies accrual, and this is where the two claims split.
Wallace v. Kato governs the false-arrest side. Its holding, at 549 U.S. 397, is that the limitations period on “a § 1983 claim seeking damages for a false arrest in violation of the Fourth Amendment, where the arrest is followed by criminal proceedings, begins to run at the time the claimant becomes detained pursuant to legal process.” The Court explained why at 549 U.S. 389-390: a false imprisonment “ends once the victim becomes held pursuant to such process—when, for example, he is bound over by a magistrate or arraigned on charges,” and after that point “unlawful detention forms part of the damages for the ‘entirely distinct’ tort of malicious prosecution.” The Eighth Circuit applies this mechanically. In Klein, the false arrest claim accrued the day after arrest, when Klein was bound over for trial; the unlawful seizure claim accrued the day of the seizure itself.
McDonough v. Smith, 588 U.S. 109 (2019), governs the other side — and here I want to be exact, because the case is routinely miscited. McDonough was not a malicious prosecution case. Edward McDonough sued a special prosecutor for fabricating evidence, a due process claim. The Court held “that the limitations period did not begin to run until McDonough’s acquittal,” reasoning that “malicious prosecution is the most analogous common-law tort here” and importing its favorable-termination-triggered accrual rule by analogy. So McDonough tells you when a fabricated-evidence claim accrues, and it tells you that the Court treats malicious prosecution as accruing on favorable termination. It does not itself set the accrual date for a Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution claim. Cite it for what it says.
The practical consequence: in a case with an unlawful arrest followed by a bad charge, you have two claims and two start dates, and the earlier one can expire while the criminal case is still pending. Minnesota’s six-year period makes that far less dangerous than it is in Iowa or Arkansas, but the rule is the rule. Calendar the arraignment date the day you open the file.
One further sequencing point, and it belongs to the criminal side of the practice. Because the federal claim requires only that the prosecution ended without a conviction, a great many dispositions that clients want — an outright dismissal, a declination, a dismissal for want of prosecution — preserve the claim. Some do not. That analysis belongs to the favorable-termination element, and no defense lawyer should dispose of a charge without running it.
What I would do with one of these cases
Plead the Fourth Amendment seizure first and the malicious prosecution label second. Identify the specific charge you say was unsupported, and then identify the specific hours or days of liberty that charge cost your client, separately from every other charge in the case. If the answer is a court date and nothing more, tell the client the federal claim is not there and look at the state-law options. Plead malice, and prove want of probable cause well enough that a jury could infer malice from it. If the conduct predates April 4, 2022, plead the seizure as its own count so the case does not rise or fall on whether this claim was clearly established when the circuit was still saying it did not exist. Sue the officer who swore the affidavit rather than the prosecutor who signed the complaint. And docket the arraignment date, because that is the day one of your two clocks started running.
The damages follow the seizure too, which is the last reason to plead it precisely. The recovery is built out of the liberty the unsupported charge actually cost and the harm that flowed from it, and on top of that a jury may assess punitive damages against the officer individually “when the defendant’s conduct is shown to be motivated by evil motive or intent, or when it involves reckless or callous indifference to the federally protected rights of others.” Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 56 (1983). A plaintiff who cannot identify the seizure cannot measure any of it. On how the damage categories work in a § 1983 case, see nominal, compensatory, and punitive damages under § 1983.
Madgett Law, LLC represents people in civil rights actions against police officers and municipalities in Minnesota state and federal courts — false arrest, excessive force, unlawful search, and Fourth Amendment malicious prosecution under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 — and defends the underlying criminal charges with the later civil claim in view. If you were charged with something you did not do and it cost you your liberty, call 612-470-6529 or send us a message.
Sources: 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (text of the cause of action), verified at uscode.house.gov. Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5) (six-year period for “any other injury to the person or rights of another”), verified at revisor.mn.gov via statute extractor. Thompson v. Clark, 596 U.S. 36 (2022) (holding on favorable termination; slip op. at 5 n.2 for the seizure requirement; slip op. at 6 n.3 reserving malice; slip op. at 4 recognizing the claim; Alito, J., dissenting, slip op. at 1, 11, 12), read in full from the Court’s slip opinion PDF at supremecourt.gov; U.S. Reports pagination confirmed by the Court’s own 2021-term opinion index and by the Eighth Circuit in Ward and Brown v. City of Dermott. Chiaverini v. City of Napoleon, 602 U.S. 556, 563-65 (2024) (valid charge does not categorically defeat the claim; causation test left open), read in full from the Court’s U.S. Reports PDF at supremecourt.gov. McDonough v. Smith, 588 U.S. 109, 112 (2019) (holding; accrual of a fabricated-evidence due process claim runs from favorable termination, malicious prosecution being the most analogous common-law tort), read from the Court’s preliminary print at supremecourt.gov. Wallace v. Kato, 549 U.S. 384, 389-90, 390 n.2, 397 (2007) (accrual of a Fourth Amendment false-arrest claim; the Court had not then explored the malicious prosecution claim), read in full from the Caselaw Access Project archive. Imbler v. Pachtman, 424 U.S. 409, 431 (1976), Buckley v. Fitzsimmons, 509 U.S. 259, 273, 275 (1993), Kalina v. Fletcher, 522 U.S. 118, 130 (1997), and Malley v. Briggs, 475 U.S. 335, 340-41 (1986), all read from the Caselaw Access Project archive. Eighth Circuit: Gunderson v. Schlueter, 904 F.2d 407, 409 (8th Cir. 1990); Occhino v. United States, 686 F.2d 1302, 1311 (8th Cir. 1982) (cited in Gunderson’s string; dismissing a § 1983 malicious prosecution count under Minnesota law); Sanders v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., 984 F.2d 972, 977 (8th Cir. 1993); Kurtz v. City of Shrewsbury, 245 F.3d 753, 758 (8th Cir. 2001); Technical Ordnance, Inc. v. United States, 244 F.3d 641, 650-51 (8th Cir. 2001); Egerdahl v. Hibbing Community College, 72 F.3d 615, 618 n.3 (8th Cir. 1995) — all read from the Caselaw Access Project archive with star pagination. Post-2020 Eighth Circuit decisions read from the court’s own published slip opinions at ecf.ca8.uscourts.gov: Brown v. Boettigheimer, No. 21-2460 (8th Cir. July 27, 2022) (slip op. at 6-12 & n.3); Klein v. Steinkamp, No. 21-3039 (8th Cir. Aug. 16, 2022) (slip op. at 5-7); Dunn v. Does, Nos. 23-2220 & 23-2268 (8th Cir. Sept. 5, 2024) (slip op. at 18-20); Brown v. City of Dermott, No. 23-3073 (8th Cir. Aug. 20, 2025) (slip op. at 4-5 & nn.3-4); Ward v. City of Sherwood, No. 24-3316 (8th Cir. Apr. 28, 2026) (slip op. at 9-10). Martin v. Julian, 18 F.4th 580, 584 (8th Cir. 2021), as quoted in Dunn, slip op. at 18. Smith v. Wade, 461 U.S. 30, 56 (1983) (punitive damages standard under § 1983), read from the Caselaw Access Project archive. Minnesota tort elements: Leiendecker v. Asian Women United of Minnesota, 895 N.W.2d 623, 634 (Minn. 2017) (supreme court’s three-element statement and the jury-question point), quoting Kellar v. VonHoltum, 568 N.W.2d 186, 192 (Minn. Ct. App. 1997); both read from the Caselaw Access Project archive with star pagination. Minnesota law recognizes no special-injury or interference element for this tort; the three elements above are the whole list.
This article is general legal information about Minnesota and Eighth Circuit law. It is not legal advice, it does not create an attorney–client relationship, and no outcome is promised or implied.