How a case actually runs
Service, filing, and the steps between a claim and a courtroom — including the ones that end a case quietly if missed.
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.