Start here
Hurt in Minnesota
Lutsen — The Poplar River meets Lake Superior (cropped to remove people). Photo: Dave Madgett Photograph: Red footbridge over the Poplar River where it meets Lake Superior.
Three things are true in the first week, and all three of them work against you: you are least able to research anything, the other side is already working, and some of the deadlines have already started running.
This page is the map. It does not try to tell you what to do — that depends on facts a website cannot know, which is a real limitation and not a formality. What it can do is show you which questions exist, in roughly the order they arrive, and point you at the page that answers each one from the source.
Nothing on this page is advice about your situation, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota personal injury attorney can do that.
You probably have two claims, not one
This is the thing most people get wrong, and it is not their fault: nothing about the way injury claims are advertised suggests there are two of them. After a motor vehicle injury in Minnesota there are usually two separate claims, against two different insurers, decided under different rules, on clocks that run independently of each other. One of them does not care who was at fault. The other one asks that question first.
Track one
Your own insurer
The first-party claim. It does not ask who was at fault.
- Notice to your own insurerA policy may require it early.
- Benefits as loss accruesPaid as expense is incurred, not in a lump.
- Which coverage pays firstThe layers have an order.
- Its own limitation periodNot the same clock as the claim below.
Track two
The other side's insurer
The liability claim. It asks who was at fault, and it asks first.
- Who was at fault, and how muchShares are compared, not pooled.
- The threshold gateA gate stands in front of some damages.
- Demand, and the adjusterWhat the call is actually for.
- Suit, on the general clockThe deadline most people get wrong.
Both run at the same time, on separate clocks. Finishing one does not finish the other, and a deadline missed on one does not move the other.
The practical consequence is the one worth carrying: settling with one insurer does not resolve the other, and a deadline you satisfy on one track does nothing for the other. The guides below take each piece in turn.
One thing neither track tells you on its own is what actually reaches you at the end. The figure in a settlement is a gross figure, and several parties have a claim on it first —the arithmetic is here, with numbers you supply rather than numbers this site guesses.
It just happened
The first days. What to do, what not to say, and which clocks have already started.
- The recorded statement: what an adjuster is doing when they ask for one
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.
- Which clocks start the day you are hurt
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.
- Claims against a city, county, or the state: the immunities come first, and the clock is short
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.
- Hit while walking or on a bicycle: the coverage question starts with a definition
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.
- After a dog attack: the dangerous dog statutes, and what actually happens to the dog
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.
Who pays the bills
No-fault, health plans, liens, and the layers of coverage most people do not know they have.
- Minnesota no-fault (PIP): what it pays regardless of who caused the crash
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.
- Who gets repaid out of your recovery: health plans, hospitals, and subrogation
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.
- Motorcycles and the No-Fault Act: the coverage a rider is presumed not to have
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.
Making the claim
Fault, thresholds, damages, and what the adjuster on the other end is actually doing.
- Comparative fault: being partly at fault is not the end of a claim
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.
- The tort threshold: when a Minnesota crash claim can include pain and suffering
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.
- Minnesota's dog bite statute: the two phrases that decide the case
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.
- What a Minnesota property owner owes someone who comes onto the land
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.
- What a traffic ticket proves: the rules of the road for people who are not in a car
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.
- Snow, ice, and a fall: whose duty it is, and the amendment that narrowed the city's immunity
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.
- Nursing homes and vulnerable adults: what the statutes give a resident, and what they do not
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.
When it goes wrong
Denials, lowball offers, disputed fault, and the deadlines that end a claim quietly.
- The release you are asked to sign, and what it gives up
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.
- Underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage, and the notice that comes before the settlement
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.
- Wrongful death in Minnesota: the family does not hold the claim, a court-appointed trustee does
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.
- A child's injury claim: who holds it, who signs for it, and why a judge has to approve the settlement
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.
Background
The statutes and doctrines the rest of the site refers back to.
- What Minnesota law lets an injured person recover: the categories of damages
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.
- When more than one party is at fault: several liability, reallocation, and the settling defendant
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.