Human Rights’ financial audit ‘generally satisfactory’
OLA: Controls were “generally adequate” to ensure that the Minnesota Department of Human Rights safeguarded state resources, complied with significant finance-related legal requirements and resolved prior audit findings.
MCRO Phase II might wow you
When the state’s Judicial Branch unveils its updated online court records system sometime around the end of the year, users looking for legal documents will get an eyeful.
Prisoner’s negligence suit can proceed, court rules
The Court of Appeals said that the case should proceed for a finder of fact to say whether the guards displayed deliberate indifference to Welters’ physical condition.
Session/Law Agenda
Judiciary chair Q&A: “When you have prosecutors that don’t prosecute entire classes of crime, it puts the public in ultimate danger. It encourages an emboldens criminals.”
Session/Law Sound-off
This week’s Sounding Board includes Pete Orput, Rob Doar, Ron Latz, Nick Zerwas and Mike Freiberg. Their topics: Public safety politics; stumping justices; time out!
Court of Appeals tackles ‘pre-textual’ traffic stop
The Court of Appeals took on the thorny subject of pretextual traffic stops and racial profiling during oral arguments Wednesday in State vs. Roy Lemond McPipe. But in doing so, the court ran into a problem almost immediately.
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Previous Stories
Parent’s lawyer can’t be excluded from testimony
A court may fashion an informal way to take a child’s testimony in a termination of parental rights case and may excuse a parent from attending, the Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled. But the court may not exclude the parent’s attorney when the testimony is given.
Labor union sues Judicial Branch
A labor union is suing the Minnesota Judicial Branch over a new statewide order that will require court reporters to prepare in forma pauperis transcripts during normal work hours. To court reporters, that is a major shift in policy that effectively scales back their incomes.
Data Practices Act no shield in discrimination case
Roseville’s school district can’t use state law to avoid releasing information to plaintiffs in twin federal lawsuits that claim a teacher assaulted and discriminated against Black students while school officials did nothing, a magistrate judge rules.
Ruling: COVID-19 no excuse for not paying rent
In what is apparently the first COVID-19-related eviction case to come out of the state Court of Appeals, the court Monday ruled that an emergency executive order was was no reason for a gym not to pay rent.
Session/Law Agenda
Rep. Carlos Mariani, DFL-St. Paul, is unwilling to go backward. “I have no intention to go back to the law that we replaced,” the powerful chair of the House Public Safety committee said.
Session/Law Sound-off
This week’s Sounding Board includes Ember Reichgott Junge, Fritz Knaak, Dave Ornstein, Amy Koch and Scott Dibble. Their topics: Deleted messages; brain drain; half in doubt
Supreme Court overturns wrongful death ruling
A divided Supreme Court Wednesday revived a case of a resort worker who died after falling down what her estate claims were fatally flawed stairs, reversing a summary judgment for the resort and its owner.
Data Practices Commission restarts
In its first meeting in two years as a reconstituted, fully funded and independent legislative panel, the Legislative Commission on Data Practices dipped into some legally heady topics Tuesday touching on privacy, consumer and constitutional rights.
Schiltz to litigants: Enough is enough
Occasionally, it’s time to gather your things and go home. That’s not a popular litigation stance, but neither is waiting for a judge to tell you that the time has come. That happened in federal court, when RLI Insurance Co. v. Stan Koch & Sons Trucking, Inc., was dismissed.
Session/Law Agenda
Featured this week: The DFL caucus last week elected Sen. Melisa López Franzen, DFL-Edina, to her party’s top Senate leadership post. In a brief Q&A interview, she shares her thoughts on what her ascension means.
