Guides

Two different companies ask for a recorded statement and the request means two different things. One duty is written into the No-Fault Act. The other is not written anywhere.

Minnesota does not have one injury deadline. It has a general six-year limitation, several much shorter ones, at least three notice periods that expire long before any of them, and a rule about when a lawsuit counts as started that surprises people.

Minnesota waived governmental immunity and then wrote the exceptions back in by statute. A claim against a public body has to survive a list of enumerated immunities, a damages cap, and a notice period that closes in 180 days.

A pedestrian or a cyclist struck by a car in Minnesota usually has no-fault benefits, and the reason is a definition rather than a policy. What a bicycle is, what a motorcycle is, and what happens when there is no policy anywhere are each answered in a different section of the No-Fault Act.

Minnesota's dangerous dog law is a separate system from the statute that pays damages. It has its own definition of owner, its own definition of provocation, a 14-day clock, and a destruction provision that does not require a prior declaration.

Basic economic loss benefits are two separate buckets, not one. This is what each one covers, whose policy pays, when the payment is late, and what the insurer owes you when it is.

Several parties have a claim on the money before you see it, and each one operates under a different statute with different limits. Minnesota caps some of them. Federal law removes the cap from others entirely.

A motorcycle is not a motor vehicle under Minnesota's No-Fault Act, and almost everything else follows from that. The legislature was so certain riders would misunderstand it that it wrote the warning into the statute and specified the type size.

Minnesota bars a claim only when the claimant's fault is greater than the fault of the person they are suing. That comparison is made defendant by defendant, and the arithmetic runs in an order most people get backwards.

Minnesota closes off damages for noneconomic detriment in most motor vehicle cases unless one of five statutory gates opens. Four of them have nothing to do with a dollar figure, and the dollar figure is not the sum of the medical bills.

Minn. Stat. § 347.22 makes a dog's owner liable without any showing of negligence, and the dog's history does not matter. Almost every contested Minnesota dog case turns instead on two phrases written into the statute itself.

Minnesota stopped sorting entrants into licensees and invitees in 1972 and replaced the categories with one duty of reasonable care. Two things narrow that duty, and both of them are more qualified than they sound.

Minnesota's traffic code says in terms that breaking it is not negligence per se. That one sentence changes what a citation, a crosswalk, and a bicycle's road position are worth in an injury claim — and the rules themselves say less than most people think.

Minnesota gives a municipality an immunity for snow and ice, and most descriptions of it quote a version the legislature replaced in 1986. What survives is narrower than the reputation, and it turns on a single word: affirmatively.

Minnesota has a health care bill of rights, an assisted living bill of rights, and a Vulnerable Adults Act. Between them they create exactly four express civil damages remedies, and a claim for neglect by a facility is not one of them.

A release is a contract, and the check is what you are paid for signing it. Minnesota law limits how far one may reach, refuses to let one defeat certain repayment rights, and requires a judge's approval before one binds a child.

Minnesota requires every auto policy to carry both coverages, and a claimant's own insurer becomes the one on the other side. The measure of a UIM claim was rewritten by the legislature in 1989, and the leading case predates the rewrite.

Minnesota's death statute vests the action in a trustee the court appoints, and the Minnesota Supreme Court has called an action started without one a legal nullity. The measure of damages was also rewritten in 2023, and most descriptions of it are out of date.

Minnesota does not let a parent settle a child's injury claim. A rule of practice requires a written petition and a written order before any part of the proceeds is paid to anyone, and it applies to a claim that was never filed as much as to a case that went to verdict.

Minnesota has no single damages statute. The categories are assembled from the No-Fault Act's definitions, the punitive damages statute and its procedural gate, the interest statute, the death statute, and a body of case law about derivative claims.

Minnesota made several liability the general rule in 2003 and kept four exceptions. The Minnesota Supreme Court has since held that the rule applies even to a tortfeasor nobody sued, and that the statute's reallocation provision does not reach a severally liable defendant.