Filing clocks, arbitration, fees, and getting through the courthouse door.
Minn. R. Civ. P. 65.01 is captioned 'Temporary Restraining Order; Notice; Hearing; Duration' — and unlike Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(b)(2), it contains no 14-day limit, no outside date, and no extension mechanism. What actually ends a Minnesota TRO, and what the Dahlberg factors really require.
Read →Minnesota's default rule says judgment 'shall be entered' — but 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 single design choice creates the traps that end Minnesota cases: no service by mail, a 'usual place of abode' that is a fact question, publication grounds that must 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 the doctrine most litigants call tolling is really estoppel — which carries a due-diligence requirement tolling does not.
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 no longer governs 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 was not driving does not 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 contains 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 three ways past a parent who will not consent — and the six-month abandonment presumption is switched off in exactly the case where stepparent adoptions arise.
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 ends with the money back in the participant's account.
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 disqualify 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.
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 is in a better procedural position 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 is not the law that applies. A Minnesota Supreme Court decision struck one subdivision and rewrote the burden of proof for the rest.
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 cannot invade is not the one most clients assume.
Read →The OFP/HRO choice is decided by the relationship, not the severity of the conduct — and it controls firearms, custody, and every other remedy available.
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 is governed by § 518.18's endangerment standard instead — and the burden allocation usually decides the rest.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 518.552 once told 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 is no longer where practitioners look for it.
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. Different clocks, different comparisons, and a zone where one 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 will not agree on an ADR process does not avoid 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 is 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 is not itself an injury. 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 →In Minnesota the 60-day appeal clock runs from entry for a judgment but from service of written notice of filing for an order — and the motions that toll it 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 quality of contacts beats quantity.
Read →Minn. R. Civ. P. 60.02 never mentions 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 is overstated in both directions. Here is the precise scope of the intake-search rule, the questions the Court expressly reserved, and what the Eighth Circuit still treats as actionable.
Read →State law creates property interests; the Constitution does not. 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 may not 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, is on neither 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 twice reshaped the malicious prosecution claim since 2022, and the Eighth Circuit added a requirement in 2025.
Read →A constitutional violation is not priced by the importance of the right. Carey, Stachura, Smith v. Wade, and City of Newport set 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 does not 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 is 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 is how each piece works.
Read →Why a Minnesota wrongful-conviction damages case is decided on the prosecutorial-investigative line and the Eighth Circuit's bad-faith rule, not on the Brady violation itself.
Read →Wells Fargo opened accounts its customers never authorized — and enforced the arbitration clauses in the accounts they did authorize. How the maneuver worked, and where a Minnesotan's version of it would be decided.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 590.11 and the Incarceration and Exoneration Remedies Act give an exonerated Minnesotan a damages route that does not 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 different cases, and the Eighth Circuit pleading rule that has ended 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 — the tradeoffs behind choosing a statute, not a calendar.
Read →Maslowski v. Prospect Funding Partners abolished champerty in 2020 and, in 2023, held that a litigation financing agreement is not subject to Minn. Stat. § 334.01's usury cap. What survives is unconscionability — a doctrine that 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 above it — and the felony is only half the test.
Read →A Minnesota consumer lawyer on three quiet forces—tougher pleading rules, buried class-action waivers, and plain cost—that are shutting ordinary people out of the courts.
Read →42 U.S.C. § 1988 lets a prevailing civil rights plaintiff recover fees from the defendant. Who counts as prevailing, how the lodestar works, and the traps — Buckhannon, nominal damages, Rule 68, and fee waivers in 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 do not line up.
Read →A § 1983 claim and a Minnesota battery claim arising from the same arrest run on different immunities, different damages ceilings, and different clocks. Pleading only one is a decision, and it is 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. A rare decision that opens the courthouse door.
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 must arbitrate. Two of the three name arbitration expressly — which is precisely the feature the Federal Arbitration Act treats with suspicion.
Read →Section 1983 has no 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 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 a single incident.
Read →When a Minnesota notice requirement is missed, the sanction is usually loss of the entire right: no lien, no claim, a void deed, a dismissed case. But the exceptions are not random — the cure goes to the party with less leverage.
Read →Qualified immunity is not a defense on the merits — it is 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, two different answers.
Read →Minnesota's Legislature wrote a deadly-force rule stricter than the federal constitutional floor — necessity plus a three-part threat test. Here is what it says and where it bites.
Read →In Enbridge Energy, LP v. Nessel, a unanimous Court held the 30-day removal deadline cannot 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 abolished the common-law prohibition against champerty. Third-party litigation funding is enforceable in Minnesota. The protections that remain are 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. It is the most underused remedy in Minnesota consumer law.
Read →In Postal Service v. Konan, a 5–4 Court held the FTCA's postal exception bars claims for intentional nondelivery. Minnesota law starts foreclosure clocks, surplus-claim clocks, and response deadlines from the moment something is mailed.
Read →In Hain Celestial Group v. Palmquist, a unanimous Court held that erroneously dismissing a non-diverse defendant after removal does not cure the jurisdictional defect. A federal jury trial and a defense judgment were vacated for want of jurisdiction.
Read →In Berk v. Choy, the Supreme Court held that a state affidavit-of-merit requirement does not apply in federal court. Minnesota has two of them — and Minnesota's Attorney General signed the brief urging 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 must still be filed within a reasonable time. In Minnesota, where 82% of debt-collection cases in district court end in default, that is 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 arriving 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 are not 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 forbids a complaint from seeking punitive damages and requires a motion, affidavits, and a prima facie showing first. Read with § 549.20 and § 544.36, it means a Minnesota complaint may not say what the case is worth.
Read →A deadline running from a filing is a calendar entry. A deadline running 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 forfeit rights.
Read →Minnesota shifts attorney fees in some claims, refuses to in others, and in one instance caps the fee at $5. Read together — § 8.31, § 325F.70, § 181.171, § 337.10, § 325C.04, § 302A.461 — the pattern is not about the seriousness of the wrong.
Read →Read § 322C.0110, § 337.02, § 337.05, § 337.10, § 336.9-602, § 325E.61, and § 504B.365 together and a pattern appears: Minnesota's non-waivable core is not substance. It is access, information, and forum.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 609.748 defines harassment to include repeated intrusive or unwanted acts 'regardless of the relationship between the actor and the intended target' — the opposite of the order for protection under Minn. Stat. § 518B.01, which begins and ends with relationship.
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 are actually 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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