Collectors, garnishment, credit reports, identity theft, and guaranties.
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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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."
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
Read →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.
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