Filing clocks, arbitration, fees, and getting through the courthouse door.
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.
Read →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.
Read →Minnesota doesn't ask who called the police. It asks who supplied the decision to charge, and what the officer or prosecutor was told.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →Minnesota rejected Daubert. Here's the Frye-Mack two-prong standard, what actually triggers a hearing, and the standard of review on each prong.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
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