A client with a serious injury case dies eighteen months in, of a heart attack that has nothing to do with the crash. Or the drunk driver who caused it dies before the case is tried. In either situation, the first question anyone asks is whether the case is over.
For most of Minnesota’s history the answer to the first question was, on the face of the statute, yes. Minn. Stat. § 573.01 said so in four words: a personal injury cause of action “dies with the person.” That sentence is gone. The Legislature struck it in 2023, replaced it with the opposite rule, and made the change apply to cases that were already on file.
Practitioners routinely conflate two statutes here, and it is easy to see why — one of them is captioned “SURVIVAL OF CAUSES” and the other is captioned “ACTION FOR DEATH BY WRONGFUL ACT; SURVIVAL OF ACTIONS.” They do different work. Getting them straight is the difference between a claim that survives and a claim that is defended on standing.
What did the 2023 amendment actually change?
It reversed the default. Minn. Stat. § 573.01 now reads, in full:
A cause of action arising out of an injury to the person survives the death of any party in accordance with section 573.02. All other causes of action by one against another, whether arising on contract or not, survive to the personal representatives of the former and against those of the latter.
The first sentence of that section, in the Revisor’s 2022 edition, read: “A cause of action arising out of an injury to the person dies with the person of the party in whose favor it exists, except as provided in section 573.02.”
Laws 2023, ch. 52, art. 19, § 32 struck “dies with the person of the party in whose favor it exists, except as provided in” and inserted “survives the death of any party in accordance with.” The effective-date clause attached to that section states: “This section is effective the day following final enactment and applies to causes of action pending on or commenced on or after that date.” Chapter 52 was presented to the governor May 18, 2023 and signed May 19, 2023, which puts the operative date at May 20, 2023.
Three things follow from the amended language, and only three.
One. The rule is no longer death-of-the-plaintiff-specific. The old text killed the claim on the death of “the party in whose favor it exists.” The new text speaks to “the death of any party” — plaintiff or defendant.
Two. Survival is not free-standing. It is “in accordance with section 573.02.” Section 573.01 tells you the claim lives; § 573.02 tells you who may bring it and by when. A survival argument that stops at § 573.01 has not finished.
Three. The second sentence of § 573.01 was not touched. Every cause of action that is not one “arising out of an injury to the person” — contract claims, property damage, statutory consumer claims, conversion — has always survived “to the personal representatives of the former and against those of the latter,” and still does, without reference to § 573.02 at all. If your claim is a breach of contract claim, the trustee machinery below is not your problem.
My client died of unrelated causes mid-case. Which subdivision applies?
Subdivision 2 of § 573.02 — not subdivision 1, and not the wrongful death article you have probably read. Subdivision 2 provides:
When injury is caused to a person by the wrongful act or omission of any person or corporation and the person thereafter dies from a cause unrelated to those injuries, the trustee appointed in subdivision 3 may maintain an action for all damages arising out of such injury if the decedent might have maintained an action therefor had the decedent lived. An action under this subdivision may be commenced within three years after the date of death provided that the action must be commenced within six years after the act or omission.
Both bolded words matter. Before the 2023 act, subdivision 2 authorized an action for “special damages” only. Laws 2023, ch. 52, art. 19, § 34 struck “special damages” and inserted “all damages,” and added the limitations sentence, which did not previously exist in subdivision 2. That is a substantial change in the value of a survival claim, and it applies to causes of action that were pending on May 20, 2023.
The distinction between the two subdivisions is causal, not procedural:
| § 573.02, subd. 1 | § 573.02, subd. 2 | |
|---|---|---|
| When it applies | “When death is caused by the wrongful act or omission” | When injury is caused by the wrongful act “and the person thereafter dies from a cause unrelated to those injuries” |
| What is recovered | Damages suffered by the decedent before death and the pecuniary loss resulting from the death | “all damages arising out of such injury” |
| For whose benefit | “the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, proportionate to the pecuniary loss severally suffered by the death” | The subdivision does not say |
| Who sues | Trustee appointed under subd. 3 | Trustee appointed under subd. 3 |
| Limitations | Three years after the date of death; six years after the act or omission; separate rules for professional negligence and for murder | Three years after the date of death; six years after the act or omission |
The trustee requirement is the trap. It is easy to read subdivision 2 as an ordinary substitution problem — the client died, so the estate steps in. It is not. Subdivision 2 gives the action to “the trustee appointed in subdivision 3,” and subdivision 3 says the appointment comes on “written petition by the surviving spouse or one of the next of kin,” after which “[t]he trustee, before commencing duties shall file a consent and oath.” That is the same appointment procedure used in a wrongful death case, and the mechanics are in Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 144 — which we cover in detail in Minnesota does not let a family sue for a wrongful death; it lets a trustee sue for them. Rule 144.05 governs distribution of “money recovered under Minnesota Statutes, section 573.02,” without limiting itself to subdivision 1.
Two questions the text does not answer, and you should not assume answers to: subdivision 2 contains no “exclusive benefit” or proportionate-loss language of its own, and subdivision 3 conditions the appointment on a petition by a surviving spouse or next of kin, which supposes there is one. Where those provisions run out, the point is governed by case law and by the district court’s exercise of its Rule 144 authority, not by anything the statute says on its face.
What if the decedent had already sued?
Then the second paragraph of subdivision 1 is in play, and it does something different from either subdivision:
If an action for the injury was commenced by the decedent and not finally determined while living, it may be continued by the trustee for recovery of all damages for the exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, proportionate to the pecuniary loss severally suffered by the death. The court on motion shall make an order allowing the continuance and directing pleadings to be made and issues framed as in actions begun under this section.
Read where that paragraph sits. It is inside subdivision 1 — the death-caused-by-the-wrongful-act subdivision — and it converts a pending injury suit into the statutory death action, with the death action’s beneficiaries and the death action’s distribution. It is a continuation provision, not a general survival provision, and it directs the court to enter an order “directing pleadings to be made and issues framed as in actions begun under this section.”
An unrelated death mid-case is not that situation. There, § 573.01 supplies survival, subdivision 2 supplies the claim and the deadline, subdivision 3 supplies the party, and Minn. R. Civ. P. 25.01(a) supplies the vehicle: “If a party dies and the claim is not extinguished or barred, the court may order substitution of the proper parties.” Note what Rule 25.01(a) does not contain. Its federal counterpart provides that “[i]f the motion is not made within 90 days after service of a statement noting the death, the action by or against the decedent must be dismissed.” Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(a)(1). The Minnesota rule has no such sentence. It says the motion “may be made by the successors or representatives of the deceased party or by any party” and, together with the notice of hearing, must be served under Rule 5 on parties and under Rule 4 on non-parties. That difference matters in a case that could be removed.
What happens when the defendant dies?
This is where the 2023 amendment did the quiet work, and where § 573.02 gives you nothing.
Section 573.01 now says the injury claim “survives the death of any party.” Every operative provision of § 573.02, however, is written for a deceased plaintiff: a trustee for the next of kin, a petition by the surviving spouse, damages measured by pecuniary loss to survivors. There is no subdivision addressed to a deceased tortfeasor. So the survival rule comes from § 573.01, and the machinery comes from somewhere else:
- Minn. R. Civ. P. 25.01(a) for substitution in a pending case, on the same terms as above — but only where “the claim is not extinguished or barred.”
- Minn. R. Civ. P. 25.01(b) if there are co-defendants: “In the event of the death of one or more of the plaintiffs or of one or more of the defendants in an action in which the right sought to be enforced survives only to the surviving plaintiffs or only against the surviving defendants, the action does not abate. The death shall be indicated upon the record and the action shall proceed in favor of or against the surviving parties.”
- The probate nonclaim statute. Minn. Stat. § 524.3-803(a) bars claims against a decedent’s estate that arose before death unless presented within four months of published notice to creditors, within the later of four months from first publication or one month from service for a creditor served under § 524.3-801(c), and in all events “within one year after the decedent’s death, whether or not notice to creditors has been published or served under section 524.3-801.” We treat that structure at length in the four-month claim window in a Minnesota probate.
And then the provision that saves most of these cases. Section 524.3-803(c) states that nothing in the section affects or prevents:
(2) any proceeding to establish liability of the decedent or the personal representative for which there is protection by liability insurance, to the limits of the insurance protection only;
That is the answer to the ordinary case. The at-fault driver died; there is an auto policy; the nonclaim bar does not close the door on a proceeding to establish liability, but the recovery is capped at the insurance. If you want anything beyond policy limits from the estate, you are a creditor of the estate and you are on the § 524.3-803 clock like every other creditor. If the estate’s personal assets do not cover the debt, chapter 573 goes on to make heirs and devisees “liable to an action by a creditor of a deceased person to recover a debt, to the extent of the value of any real property inherited by or devised to them,” and only on the conditions § 573.09 spells out — a route that is rarely worth the trouble and never a substitute for finding the policy.
Does the six-year cap in subdivision 2 shorten my case?
Sometimes, and it is the deadline most likely to be missed.
Ordinary negligence claims for personal injury run six years under Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5), which covers actions “for criminal conversation, or for any other injury to the person or rights of another, not arising on contract, and not hereinafter enumerated.” Product claims based on strict liability run four years under § 541.05, subd. 2. Our survey of Minnesota civil limitations periods maps the rest.
Subdivision 2 layers a two-part rule on top: three years after the date of death, provided that the action must be commenced within six years after the act or omission. The proviso controls when the two conflict. An injured person hurt on January 1, 2021 who dies of unrelated causes on January 1, 2026 leaves a trustee with three years by the first clause and roughly one year by the second. The second wins. A survival case that arrives with a five-year-old injury is not a three-year case, whatever the first clause seems to promise.
One narrow overlay is worth knowing about. Minn. Stat. § 573.021, subd. 2, enacted in the same 2023 act, provides that a subdivision 2 action that accrued during the March 14, 2020–July 1, 2021 peacetime emergency, “against a health care provider alleging malpractice, error, mistake, or failure to cure regarding treatment, transmission, or vaccination related to the infectious disease that was the subject of the peacetime emergency must be filed within one year from the date of death of the former patient or resident.” Long-term care and assisted living facilities are inside the section’s definition of health care provider. If your file involves a COVID-era facility death, check that section before you rely on the three-year rule. It bears on many of the fact patterns we describe in Minnesota nursing home neglect claims.
What to do with a file when someone dies
- Classify the death. Caused by the wrongful act, or unrelated? That single fact selects subdivision 1 or subdivision 2 and changes the measure of damages.
- Petition for a trustee either way. Subdivision 2 is not an estate substitution. The party is a court-appointed trustee under subdivision 3, with a consent and oath on file before duties commence and a bond before receiving money.
- Compute both deadlines. Three years from death and six years from the act or omission, and take the earlier. Then check § 573.021 if the claim is a COVID-era health care claim.
- On a defendant’s death, find the policy first. Section 524.3-803(c)(2) preserves the liability proceeding to the limits of the insurance. Anything above that requires timely presentment of a claim in the estate.
- Do not stop at § 573.01. It is a one-sentence pointer. The claim, the party, and the deadline all come from § 573.02.
- Check whether the claim is a personal injury claim at all. If it is not, the second sentence of § 573.01 survives it to and against personal representatives, and none of this applies. Whether a particular claim can be transferred, continued, or pursued by someone other than the original holder is a related but distinct question, which we take up in what claims can be sold in Minnesota.
The observation
The 2023 amendment is one line long and it moved the baseline of Minnesota injury practice. A rule that had been stated as a common-law survival exception — the claim dies, unless — is now stated as a rule of survival with a cross-reference. Defense counsel who learned the old sentence will still occasionally plead it.
But the amendment did not build any new machinery. Section 573.02 still contemplates a decedent on the plaintiff’s side of the caption, still requires a trustee, and still says nothing about how a surviving injury claim proceeds against a defendant who is dead. Those answers live in Rule 25.01 and in the probate code, and the most valuable sentence in this article is probably the one about § 524.3-803(c)(2).
Madgett Law, LLC handles Minnesota personal injury and wrongful death matters, including survival claims under Minn. Stat. §§ 573.01 and 573.02, trustee appointments under Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 144, and claims against the estate of a deceased tortfeasor. If someone connected to an injury case has died — on either side of it — the deadlines change immediately. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 573.01 (survival of causes — first sentence, survival of an injury cause of action on the death of any party in accordance with § 573.02; second sentence, survival of all other causes of action to and against personal representatives); Minn. Stat. § 573.02, subd. 1 (death action — trustee as the party, the derivative “might have maintained an action” condition, measure of recovery, exclusive benefit of the surviving spouse and next of kin, and the second-paragraph continuation provision for an action commenced by the decedent and not finally determined while living), subd. 2 (injury action — unrelated-cause death, “all damages,” and the three-year/six-year limitations sentence), subd. 3 (trustee for action — written petition by the surviving spouse or one of the next of kin, consent and oath, bond); Minn. Stat. § 573.021, subd. 1(b)–(c) and subd. 2 (peacetime emergency injury action; one-year period from date of death); Minn. Stat. § 573.09 (heirs and devisees liable to a creditor to the extent of the value of real property inherited or devised, and only on the conditions stated); Minn. Stat. § 524.3-803(a)(1)–(3) (presentment periods) and § 524.3-803(c)(2) (proceeding to establish liability where there is liability insurance, to the limits of the insurance protection only); Minn. Stat. § 541.05, subd. 1(5) (six-year period) and subd. 2 (four-year strict product liability period) (Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, 2025 Minnesota Statutes). Prior text of § 573.01 taken from the Revisor’s 2022 edition of Minnesota Statutes. Laws 2023, ch. 52 (S.F. No. 2909), art. 19, § 32 (amendment to § 573.01 with struck and inserted language and effective-date clause) and § 34 (amendment to § 573.02, subd. 2, striking “special damages” and inserting “all damages” and adding the limitations sentence); the chapter was presented to the governor May 18, 2023 and signed by the governor May 19, 2023. Minn. R. Civ. P. 25.01(a) (substitution on death where the claim is not extinguished or barred; service under Rules 4 and 5) and 25.01(b) (no abatement where the right survives to or against surviving parties); Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 144.01 (application for appointment of trustee) and 144.05 (distribution of money recovered under Minn. Stat. § 573.02) (Minnesota Court Rules, as published by the Office of the Revisor of Statutes). Fed. R. Civ. P. 25(a)(1) (90-day period after service of a statement noting the death), quoted for contrast only. No case law is cited in this article; the open questions identified under subdivisions 2 and 3 are governed by authority we have not cited here. This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. No outcome is promised or implied.