Crashes, dog bites, dram shop, and what an insurer actually owes you.
Minnesota gives emergency vehicles four narrow statutory privileges, and none of them cancels the due-regard duty. But the decision to pursue is protected by official immunity, so the injured bystander's money usually comes from somewhere else.
Read →Minnesota's informed consent claim is negligent nondisclosure, and its disclosure duty has three separate triggers. Causation is objective, and you need expert testimony for some elements but not for the one that decides most cases.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 340A.802's notice and two-year bar are written to § 340A.801 claims against licensees. A § 340A.90 claim against the adult at the house runs on § 541.05, subd. 1(2): six years. And the parental carve-out everyone cites is in the criminal statute only.
Read →Criminal restitution, the Crime Victims Reimbursement Board, and a civil suit are three separate recoveries under Minnesota law, and ch. 611A wires each one to reduce or credit the others.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 86B.341, subd. 2 makes the owner and operator of a watercraft jointly and severally liable and presumes family members had consent. Meanwhile § 65B.43 keeps boats out of no-fault entirely: no PIP, no UM, no UIM. What's left is a straight negligence case with unusual evidence rules.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 65B.46, subd. 3 deems a rider's injuries not to arise from the use of a motor vehicle 'although a motor vehicle is involved in the accident.' That one sentence is why there's no PIP, why the tort threshold is an open question, and why your auto policy's UIM may not follow you onto your own bike.
Read →No-fault does not reach snowmobiles or ATVs, no statute requires anyone to insure one, and no auto UM coverage is owed — but a 2024 amendment to § 169.09 may have just made the machine's owner liable for the friend who was driving it.
Read →Frey v. Snelgrove confirmed the Pierringer release was already Minnesota practice and set the procedure. What it did not do is make settlement money a credit — and the indemnity clause the plaintiff signs can take money back out of the judgment years later.
Read →Two Minnesota rules decide these cases and almost nobody knows them: no traffic violation in chapter 169 is negligence per se, and a cyclist who rolls a stop sign with no car in the vicinity hasn't broken any law at all.
Read →Proving the assault is usually the easy part, and the conviction is often already in hand. What decides these cases is a two-year clock with a six-year exception, and an insurance exclusion built to beat exactly this claim.
Read →Minnesota's premises duty is a duty to deter crime, not to prevent it. And since the supreme court's January 2026 decision in Glay v. R.C. of St. Cloud, the superseding-cause instruction that used to end these cases is out when the crime a bar blames is the same crime it had to foresee to be negligent.
Read →Minnesota's no-fault law never saw e-bikes and rental scooters coming. The result is strange: hit by a car, a rider is often better insured than a motorcyclist.
Read →Minnesota enforces liability waivers — but only if the release actually says the business is off the hook for its own negligence. Here's how exculpatory clauses work after Justice v. Marvel.
Read →Minnesota's zone-of-danger rule decides who can bring an NIED claim, not what they can recover. A practitioner's guide to Engler, Stadler, K.A.C., and the three ways emotional distress becomes compensable.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 541.073 sets different limitations rules for perpetrators, negligent institutions, and vicarious liability claims. A close read of the current statute and the 2013 amendments.
Read →Under Naig v. Bloomington Sanitation and Minn. Stat. § 176.061, an injured employee can settle the damages a compensation carrier has no subrogation interest in — on notice, and on proof of what the settlement covers. The opinion says the employee gives up the statutory one-third in exchange.
Read →In a chapter 176 case the fee isn't what my retainer says. It's what Minn. Stat. § 176.081 says: 20 percent of the first $275,000, capped at $55,000 per injury. Laws 2026, ch. 103, § 9 finally conformed the required notice, effective May 19, 2026.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 3.736, subd. 5 requires notice to the attorney general and to every state employee from whom compensation will be sought. Chapter 466 requires one letter to a governing body. It's the smallest difference between the two acts, and it's the one that ends cases.
Read →Minn. R. Civ. P. 35 never uses the word 'independent'. The scheduling rule does. What Rule 35 actually requires is a motion, a condition 'in controversy,' 'good cause shown,' and an order specifying manner, conditions, scope and examiner. And if you request and obtain the examiner's report, your privilege waiver reaches any other action involving the same controversy.
Read →Miller v. Shugart, 316 N.W.2d 729 (Minn. 1982), lets an insured settle a claim collectible only from the policy. Then the claimant has to prove the settlement was reasonable — to a judge, never to a jury.
Read →Minn. Stat. §§ 514.68–514.72 give hospitals — and only hospitals — a lien on the injury claim itself. The perfection clock is ten days, the enforcement clock is two years, and an inflated lien statement can void the lien entirely.
Read →Schmidt v. Clothier buys your underinsured-motorist carrier 30 days' written notice before you release the at-fault driver. American Family v. Baumann made skipping it presumptively fatal, and it handed you the burden of proving no harm was done.
Read →Minnesota K-9 bite cases run on specific Eighth Circuit law about warnings, bite duration, and qualified immunity — not on Graham v. Connor alone. Here's what the circuit has held, and where it hasn't.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 466.03 lists 29 exceptions to Minnesota municipal tort liability. Subdivision 1 says landing in one of them means liability only under some other statute, and immunity if there isn't one — not the common law. And subdivisions 7 and 15 leave the list open-ended.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.11 isn't a trial statute. The word 'verdict' doesn't appear in it. It's a discovery statute with three subdivisions, and one sentence in subdivision 2 gives every party an absolute veto over ADR.
Read →Farmer v. Brennan's deliberate-indifference standard applied to suicide and inmate-on-inmate violence: the two prongs, the Eighth Circuit's subjective rule, and the Minnesota jail standards that produce the proof.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 549.09 runs interest across three separate periods, each computed by a different official. And under subdivisions 3 and 4, a payment goes first to post-judgment taxable disbursements if the creditor has filed the subdivision 4 affidavit, then to accrued interest, and only then to principal.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 1 orders the court to subtract no-fault benefits from a tort recovery. No motion, no deadline, and in the ordinary Minnesota crash, no subrogation right on the other side. The money doesn't go back to the carrier. It stays with the defendant.
Read →Section 1983 says a violator is liable 'to the party injured,' and says nothing about who sues when the injured party is dead. Federal law hands that question to Minnesota's wrongful death statute — and the Eighth Circuit has enforced it against an estate that got the wrong appointment.
Read →Kingsley's objective standard governs excessive force against a pretrial detainee. The Eighth Circuit hasn't extended it to medical care. In Minnesota, plan on proving what the jailer actually knew.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 541.076 gives four years from accrual. But 'health care provider' in the limitations statute doesn't mean what it means in the minority-tolling statute, the expert-affidavit statute, or the death statutes.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.06 doesn't codify the common law fireman's rule. It switches it off for peace officers and public safety officers. And a 2026 amendment enlarged the covered class and applied the change retroactively to February 1, 2020.
Read →In Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, a unanimous Supreme Court held that negligent-hiring claims against freight brokers aren't preempted by the FAAAA. The freight-brokerage industry is centered in Minnesota, and so is the exposure.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.03 makes expiration of a product's ordinary useful life a defense. It isn't a deadline. There's no date certain, the manufacturer's own stated service life is one of six nonexclusive factors, and it doesn't bar the claim.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 548.251 isn't a damages rule. It's a written evidentiary proceeding on a ten-day fuse. It applies only where there's a verdict, it never reaches future benefits, and in an auto case it usually isn't the operative statute at all.
Read →Until May 20, 2023, Minn. Stat. § 573.01 said a personal injury cause of action 'dies with the person.' Now it says the claim survives the death of any party. Here's what that changed, and what it didn't.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 544.41 lets a nonmanufacturer certify who made the product and get dismissed. That dismissal is conditional, it can be undone on five grounds, and it only reaches strict liability in tort.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subd. 1 made several liability the default in 2003 and kept joint and several liability for four categories — including any defendant whose fault is greater than 50 percent.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.07 was repealed in 1988 and §§ 604.08–604.09 in 1994. What's left is § 549.25 (a hearing, not a discount) and a past/future split that exists because the interest statute needs it.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 626.557 creates a private treble-damages action for financial exploitation only. For neglect and abuse it gives you a mandatory report, a state investigation, and a public memorandum — and the negligence case still has to stand on its own.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 540.08 makes an unapproved settlement of a minor's claim invalid, and Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 145 does the rest. That includes a rule that reaches claims with no lawsuit on file, and a fund the child can't touch at 18 without a second order.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 169.09, subd. 5a makes a permissive driver the owner's agent 'in case of accident.' No cap, no theft exception, no presumption of consent. And the leading cases all cite a statute number that doesn't exist anymore.
Read →Minnesota's spousal consortium claim comes from Thill v. Modern Erecting Co. (1969), not from a statute, and it came with conditions attached, including a joinder rule that kills the claim if the injured spouse's case goes to trial without it.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 466.05 requires written notice to a municipality's governing body within 180 days of discovering the injury. Section 466.04 caps damages, § 466.03 lists the immunities, and § 466.06 holds the one lever most claimants never pull.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 169.685, subd. 4 makes proof of seat belt and child restraint use or nonuse inadmissible in any litigation involving personal injury or property damage from the use or operation of a motor vehicle. The bar runs both ways, with one exception.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 62A.095 bars a health plan's subrogation clause unless it applies only after full recovery and is reduced by a pro rata share of fees and costs. Self-funded ERISA plans argue the limit doesn't reach them.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 65B.525 pushes no-fault benefit claims of $10,000 or less into binding arbitration under the Minnesota No-Fault Arbitration Rules. The arbitrator gets the last word on the facts. On the law, a court looks again from scratch.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 65B.51, subd. 3 bars noneconomic damages in a Minnesota motor vehicle case unless a threshold is met — and the $4,000 computation pulls diagnostic x-rays and rehabilitative treatment out of the total before it's measured.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 548.251 and § 604.01 answer two different questions, and § 548.251, subd. 3(c) fixes the order between them. Collateral sources come off before the fault reduction. Settlement credits come off after. Same dollars, different result.
Read →Minn. Stat. §§ 604A.20–604A.27 strip a landowner's duty of care toward recreational users — but only for an owner 'who gives written or oral permission ... without charge.' And § 604A.27 keeps that permission from ripening into an easement.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 573.02 hands the claim to a court-appointed trustee, not to the spouse or the children. Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 144 supplies the machinery — and a 2023 amendment quietly enlarged what that trustee may recover.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 347.22 makes a dog's owner liable for 'the full amount of the injury sustained' with no negligence, no prior bite, and no scienter. All that's left to fight about is provocation and whether the person was lawfully present.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 340A.801 gives a claim against a vendor who caused an intoxication by an illegal sale. Minn. Stat. § 340A.802 makes it depend on written notice served within 240 days of the date counsel is retained, and bars the action without it.
Read →Minn. Stat. ch. 65B pays $40,000 in basic economic loss benefits no matter who was at fault. Then § 65B.51, subd. 3 bars any recovery for noneconomic detriment unless a $4,000 net medical figure — or one of four injury categories — is met.
Read →Minnesota abolished the invitee/licensee distinction in 1972. But Minn. Stat. § 466.03, subd. 4 immunizes municipalities for snow and ice on most public sidewalks, § 466.03, subd. 6e immunizes parks, and § 466.05 gives a claimant 180 days to present notice.
Read →Minnesota requires every auto policy to carry uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage under Minn. Stat. § 65B.49, subd. 3a. Section 65B.49, subd. 4a sets the payout against what the at-fault driver actually paid, and subd. 10 now puts a four-year clock on UIM.
Read →Minn. Stat. § 604.18 gives a first-party insured taxable costs: half the proceeds above the insurer's pre-trial offer, capped at $250,000, plus fees capped at $100,000. But you only get there after a motion to amend, only from the judge, and never after arbitration or appraisal.
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