Twin Cities employment lawyer and blogger T.J. Conley analyzes the decision and its import against Medtronic and in favor of St. Jude Medical.  Conley concludes that Ramsey County Judge M. Michael Monahan got it right, though the case broke no new legal ground.  A commenter to TJ’s blog chimed in, “Who was the mystery lawyer who advised McCullough and told him the noncompete was not enforceable?”  From Conley’s discussion of Monahan’s decision, it is clear that Medtronic went to some lengths to try to immunize itself and its new employee, Joe McCullough, from such an action by St. Jude and presumably Medtronic had carefully weighed the risks/benefits.

Regular Minnesota Litigator readers are familiar with several cases over the past couple of years in which, during the current mortgage foreclosure tsunami, some home-owners have challenged foreclosures against them for lack of a signature of a spouse on the mortgage without which the security interest may be invalid.  (Their challenges have had mixed success.)

What happens when one is confronted by a “putative spouse,” that is, someone who, under Minnesota law, thinks she’s married, but she’s not?  Can she invoke the non-signing spouse rule to void the mortgage and halt the foreclosure?

Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE :  This week the Minnesota Supreme Court denied the petition for review of the Murrin v. Mosher appellate court decision, a case orginally discussed below on Minnesota Litigator back in March, 2010.]

Minnesota Litigator aspires to provide a one-stop source for news and developments in Minnesota state and federal courts, whether about particular cases, noteworthy events for bench & bar, or current issues likely to have an effect on the practice of law in Minnesota.  Minnesota Litigator is not intended as a “lawyer gossip” website.

Some developments present a quandary because the subject matter hovers between a meaningful legal development and just a “juicy story.”  (Take this case, linked here, for another example.)

An unpublished decision of the Minnesota Court of Appeals this week floats in this zone of questionable usefulness but the scale tips in favor of a mention:  the appeal of attorney John O. Murrin, III and his wife, DeVonna K. Murrin, from the district court’s sanctions and orders holding them in contempt. Read the rest of this entry »

Minnesota Litigator recently covered the U.S. District Court (D. Minn., Frank, J.) denial of law firm defendant’s motion to dismiss in a case of alleged professional malpractice, highlighting the Court’s strong disapproval of the moving party’s tone (Minnesote Litigator also covered the earlier dismissal of plaintiffs’ case with leave to amend) in the case of Rockwood Retaining Walls, Inc. et al. against the law firm of Patterson Thuente Skaar & Christenson, P.A.

Now, invoking a 1949 U.S. Supreme Court case, the law firm’s law firm (Kay Nord Hunt of Lommen Abdo Cole King & Stageberg, P.A.) is characterizing the denial of the motion to dismiss as  a “final decision” and seeking to take the case up on appeal right away.   Read the rest of this entry »

On television, as the courtroom drama reaches its climax, the doors in the back of the courtroom bang open and, lo and behold, the key witness, long thought dead or nonexistent, radically alters the trial’s dynamics and outcome.

In the real world, such scenarios are anathema.  The proverbial “trial by ambush” is to be avoided at all costs and the rules of civil procedure are devised to preclude this impediment to the orderly administration of justice.  So the federal rules of civil procedure provide that, very early on in litigation, parties are to disclose who is likely to have discoverable information and what information, specifically, are they likely to have (“Rule 26(a)(1) initial disclosures”).  If they don’t disclose the evidence (without an excellent excuse like, for example, it did not exist earlier), the evidence may be excluded from trial.

Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE:  For oenophiles,  here is the 77-page findings of fact/conclusions of law about bubbly by U.S. District Court Judge Joan Ericksen (D. Minn.) ]

As regular readers of Minnesota Litigator know, the “battle of the bubbly,” a lawsuit between high-end French Louis Roederer “Cristal” champagne and low-end Spanish J. Garcia Carrion “Cristalino” sparkling wine-like drink, has been fought out over the past four years in the U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota where Cristalino has not fared very well.

At one point (but not at the start), J. Garcia Carrion was represented by DLA Piper but some time before last August, Carrion and DLA Piper parted company.   Last August, DLA Piper sued J. Garcia Carrion.  Curiously, after litigating for three years and going to trial this winter in downtown Minneapolis earlier this year, J. Garcia Carrion now takes the position that the Court lacks personal jurisdiction over it… Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE: ML Readers will recall this case in which Gander Mountain took issue with a credit card vendor that allegedly refuses to pay an agreed-upon card-holder "bounty" for customers who are unprofitable for the card company (i.e., they pay off their card balances, incurring no penalties and paying no interest).  Now World Financial Network National Bank has come back swinging with a counterclaim based on Gander Mountain's failure to file their complaint under seal when it included confidential information that was picked up by the Star Tribune...]

Gander Mountain, purveyor of hunting, fishing, and outdoor gear, is in a spat with the bank with whom it entered into an agreement for store-branded credit cards.  Gander Mountain has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court (D. Minn. (Montgomery, J.)) alleging that the bank would prefer not to issue cards to Gander Mountain customers with excellent credit (that is, a “FICO score” over 800 (scale is from 300-850)).

The bank, World Financial, is alleged to have said that “it was not achieving a satisfactory economic benefit through the contractual arrangement because it was not earning profit on those accountholders who have an 800 or greater FICO credit score.”  Gander Mountain sues for breach of contract and for injunctive relief.

It is a convention of many contractual agreements to begin with a title, a very brief sentence identifying the contracting parties and the date, followed by “recitals,” followed by “the agreement.”  ”Recitals” often are numbered and start with “Whereas,” as in, “Whereas the Party A has a broken car, Whereas Party B is a mechanic…”

In a case decided this week by the Minnesota Court of Appeals (Bjorkman, Schumaker, Larkin, in an opinion by Bjorkman), the Court of Appeals reversed the Hennepin County District Court (John Q. McShane, J.), holding that “Recitals are not a part of the contract and are not legally binding.”  Therefore, even though the recitals muddled up the obligations and terms of an underlying loan agreement in the CMIC case, the guarantor’s agreement was crystal clear, unambiguous, and enforceable.

Another win for one of the most prominent, if not THE most prominent Twin Cities appellate specialist, Kay Nord Hunt of the Lommen Abdo firm.

KSTP has lost its bid for access to absentee ballots at the Minnesota Court of Appeals, on an election day as it happens…

For many years, Rule 23 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure used to require that class certification motions be brought “as soon as practicable after the commencement of the action.”   It seems that no one ever knew what this meant.  And, in addition, many lawyers and judges thought that it was bad policy (whatever it meant), so the rule was changed in 2003.  This mandate was deleted.

On the other hand, Eight Circuit class action lawyers are now on notice that there is still some risk if one delays before bringing such a motion, as Iowa counsel Jean Pendleton and Joan Fletcher learned this week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Read the rest of this entry »

[UPDATE:  In this lawsuit, defendant settled, but failed to pay up (and failed to pay its attorneys).  Questions to be decided:  how to compel the defendant to make good on the settlement agreement?  Are Minnesota litigators stuck defending a client who appears unable to pay?  This week, U.S. Mag. Judge Arthur J. Boylan (D. Minn.) devised a plan to get defendants to settle up and to get the lawyers off the hook.]

There is a broad societal consensus, if maybe not a deep understanding or appreciation of legal costs and investments, that lawyers are “too expensive.”  (“Too expensive,” in comparison to what?  Medical care? Don’t think so.)

However, one point seems fairly evident and non-controversial:  if lawyers are compelled to work for free for certain clients, the law of supply and demand dictates that this sacrifice of time and income increases the cost of legal services to paying clients.

Lawyers compelled to work for free for certain clients???  Read the rest of this entry »

Plaintiff Julie Delgado-O’Neil brought an action stemming from adverse employment decisions in regard to her by the Minneapolis City Attorney.  Back in January, Minnesota Litigator covered the dismissal of Plaintiff’s claim under 42 U.S.C. § 1983.  This week, U.S. District Court Judge Michael J. Davis (C.J.) (D. Minn.), in a 44-page opinion, did away with the rest of Plaintiff’s case.  The recitation of plaintiffs employment history in the Court’s order and opinion (and the discussion of plaintiff’s challenge to the City’s expert (who provided a statistical analysis and validation study of the City’s oral examination)) suggest this was not a close case.