MinnLawyer Blog

A non-attorney member is sought to represent the Eighth Judicial District on the Commission on Judicial Selection. The 49-member commission reviews applications and makes recommendations for vacancies on District Court, the Workers’ Compensation Court of Appeals, and at the governor’s request, appellate courts.  

A news release from Gov. Dayton’s office emphasized that the position requires a significant time commitment with no remuneration or reimbursement of expenses.

Applicants should offer a letter of interest and a resume for consideration to the Commission.  All applicants must currently reside within the Eighth Judicial District. Minnesota’s Eighth Judicial District includes the counties of Big Stone, Chippewa, Grant, Kandiyohi, LacQuiParle, Meeker, Pope, Renville, Stevens, Swift, Traverse, Wilkin and Yellow Medicine. All applications must be received by close of business on Wednesday, May 16, 2012.

Application materials should be sent to Tiffany Orth, Appointments Coordinator, Office of Governor Dayton, 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, Saint Paul, MN, 55155 or they can be emailed to tiffany.orth@state.mn.us.

For inquiries concerning the application process, please contact Tiffany Orth at tiffany.orth@state.mn.us or at (651) 201-3413.

Last week, the House of Representatives passed the controversial bill providing for a presumption of joint physical custody (HF322).  Minnesota Lawyer covered the bill, which is opposed by the MSBA Family Law Section, here.  The presumption could be overcome by showing the type of mistreatment that would trigger child protection proceedings, and lawyer-legislator Rep. Melissa Hortman (D-Brooklyn Center) successfully added an amendment to require courts to report those findings pursuant to the Maltreatment of Minors Act. Lawyer-legislator Rep. John Lesch (D-St. Paul) also added an amendment that allows parenting time to include “virtual parenting time” via phone or electronic means. The Senate companion, SF1402, which differs from the House bill, was referred back to the Senate Judiciary Committee from the Senate Finance Committee.  As Minnesota Lawyer reported, the fiscal notes for the bills estimate increased costs of up to $4 million a year in court expenses, an amount the bill’s supporters dispute. To date, no plan has been offered to cover these costs.

Weapons screening at the three suburban courthouses in Hennepin County will begin next week.

Last month, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners voted to install weapons screening equipment, similar to the kind at airports and the government buildings in downtown Minneapolis, at the courthouses in Brookdale in Brooklyn Center and Ridgedale in Minnetonka and a portable wanding station at Southdale in Edina. The security measures will start Monday, April 23rd.

More than 1,110 people use the three locations each day and 50,000 cases, including assaults, domestic charges, minor criminal offenses, DWIs, traffic and parking violations are filed annually.

To pay for the enhanced security measures, the board of commissioners approved spending approximately $234,000 for the remainder of the year. A long-term courthouse security study is underway in collaboration with the Hennepin County courts. That report is due in November.

The list of items that are prohibited in the suburban courthouses includes:

• Firearms

• Bladed instruments or cutting tools of any size or description;

• Electronic incapacitation devices like stun guns or Tasers;

• Personal protection sprays like chemical mace, pepper spray and any other protective chemical aerosol.

Any other item that appears to be designed or carried as a weapon capable of inflicting injury upon another person is prohibited, the county said.

The county already spends approximately $1.6 million a year to pay for weapons screening at the county Juvenile Justice Center, Public Safety Facility, Family Justice Center and the Hennepin County Government Center.

 Five candidates have been recommended by the Commission on Judicial Selection to fill three vacancies in Hennepin County.

The candidates are Martha Holton Dimick, Hilary Lindell Caligiuri, James Moore, Kathleen Sheehy, and Edward Wahl.

The vacancies arise because of the retirements of Judges Beryl Nord, Cara Lee Neville, and George McGunnigle.

Holton Dimick currently serves as the Deputy City Attorney of the Criminal Division of the City of Minneapolis and  also works as an adjunct professor at William Mitchell College of Law. Holton Dimick previously served as an Assistant County Attorney with Hennepin County in its Adult Prosecution Violent Crimes Division and was an associate attorney with Gray Plant Mooty.

Caligiuri is a Senior Assistant Hennepin County Attorney where she supervises the drug unit within the Community Prosecution Division. She previously worked as an Assistant Attorney General and then Deputy Attorney General for the State of Minnesota, overseeing the Criminal Trial Division and later the Government Services Section of the Attorney General’s Office. Ms.

Moore currently serves as the Litigation Manager of the Civil Division for the City of Minneapolis. He previously worked as an Assistant City Attorney for the Civil Divisions of both Minneapolis and Bloomington. Moore was a member of the Hamline University School of Law Mentor Program and is a liaison between the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Civic Education Committee and the Minnesota Internship Center.
 
Sheehy is an Administrative Law Judge at the Minnesota Office of Administrative Hearings where she conducts hearings and drafts reports in contested cases in all substantive areas. Prior to working at the Office of Administrative Hearings, she was an attorney at Dorsey & Whitney for 9 years, practicing within commercial, antitrust and employment litigation.

 Wahl is a partner with Faegre Baker Daniels in Minneapolis where he practices in financial and commercial litigation. Prior to this, he was a partner with Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly LLP.

Members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform want the city of St. Paul to disclose if it decided to drop its appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court on a housing case because of pressure from the Obama Administration.

The Pioneer Press is reporting that the city received two letters from Republican lawmakers asking why the city decided to remove its appeal in the case of Magner v. Gallagher a few weeks before oral arguments were scheduled. The letters allege that “certain federal officials and other individuals improperly influenced the city to withdraw a Supreme Court appeal the city believed it ‘likely would have won.’ ”

Specifically the two members say officials from the departments of Justice and Housing and Urban Development influenced the city’s decision to withdraw the case because the Obama Administration was wary of how the conservative Supreme Court would rule.

The case dates back to 2004 when a group of landlords sued the city for its aggressive housing code enforcements. City inspectors were accused of over enforcing housing codes in low income neighborhoods with minority tenants. This aggressive enforcement lead to increased costs to the landlords and many could no longer afford their properties, the suit argued. They sued using a disparate impact theory of discrimination arguing that the city’s code enforcement was not discriminatory toward minorities on its face, but the code lead to less affordable housing for minorities and was therefore discriminatory.

The city argued that many of the properties had rodents, no working doors or locks and no garbage removal and the housing inspectors were simply doing their jobs.

The suit was dismissed in federal court in 2008, but the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals found sufficient evidence for the landlords’ claims. The city appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and the petition was accepted. The arguments were scheduled for last February, but the city withdrew the petition and the case was sent back to federal court.

Mayor Chris Coleman and City Attorney Sara Grewing said that at the time of the decision to withdraw the petition, they were afraid of the collateral damage that could result if the city prevailed to future disparate impact claims in front of the Supreme Court. That decision could thwart future plaintiffs who were rightly discriminated against to make a similar argument.

The disparate impact claim is an important tool in proving discrimination cases with recent examples like the 2011 $335 million pact that settled a discrimination claim against Countrywide Mortgage for unfair lending practices to minorities.

If the justices sided with the city, there would be legal precedence that a disparate impact claim could not be applied under the federal Fair Housing Act, a fate that many advocates for low incoming housing feared.

Minneapolis attorney John Sheehy, 57, died Saturday after a brief illness, apparently a staph infection.  As one of his colleagues wrote me, “one of the great ones has passed.”

I have a photograph on my desk of Bruce Springsteen, which John took when Springsteen visited the Weisman Museum exhibit about him (curated by John’s sister Colleen).  John called me to tell me about a case. As often happened with him, the conversation took several twists and turns, and he said that he had met Springsteen.  Although I had never met John, I told him that if he ever wanted to see his name in Minnesota Lawyer again, he’d better let me know the next time he was hanging out with the Boss.  John’s reaction was to bring the photo to my office, and promise me a ride in his vintage  Cadillac.  I never got the ride but I had so many great conversations with John after that, a few at The Local over a pint. His riffs on American history were amazing.

In that case, John won a $35 million verdict for a a factory worker whose skull was crushed between a moving mechanical arm and a conveyor belt on a box-stacking machine.  In his closing argument, John said, “May your strength give us strength, may your faith give us faith, may your hope give us hope, may your love bring us love,” from Springsteen’s song, “Into the Fire.”

Minnesota Lawyer named John an Attorney of the Year in 2002 for that case, and at that time he said, ““I think that being a lawyer is a very good thing. That’s why I went into it. Lawyers have to be proud of what they do. It is a privilege to do it.”

He received the AOY again in 2003 after procuring verdicts of $3 million and $11.3 million in the same year.  At that time, he said, “I think that the main thing is recognizing that these are really devastating tragedies to these families.  It’s my strategy to understand how it affected them and who the person was in the family. You get into these cases involving death [or serious injury] and what you find is that … it affects a lot of people.”

Sheehy’s tragic death will affect a lot of people.  Minnesota Lawyer sends condolences to the Sheehy family and to John’s colleagues at Meshbesher and Spence.

Kohl

Tate

James K. Kohl and Kirsten M. Tate were appointed  on April 12 to the Office of Administrative Hearings as Workers’ Compensation Judges.

Kohl is a partner in the firm Hedback, Arendt, Kohl & Carlson, P.L.L.C. in St. Anthony, Minnesota. Tate practices with the Osterbauer Law firm, Minneapolis, primarily practicing in the area of workers’ compensation.

The OAH has seven Administrative Law Judges and 25 Workers’ Compensation Judges.

The faculty at the William Mitchell College of Law voted today to oppose the amendment question that will be posed this November to define marriage between one man and one woman.

The vote was 24-7 in favor. In a statement, the school said the amendment “could substantially impair the law school’s ability to recruit and retain the best qualified students, staff, and faculty.”

The resolution encourages all Minnesotans to vote against the amendment, but notes that people can and do differ on the subject. The resolution says that the proposed amendment would discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity and that it puts limitations on civil rights.

“With this amendment, our state government threatens the internal affairs of William Mitchell,” said Daniel Kleinberger, Law Professor at William Mitchell. “Approval of the amendment threatens the way we teach, it threatens how we recruit faculty, staff and students, and that’s why 24 of us voted that it was something we should speak to as a faculty. In addition, as law professors, we believe strongly this is the wrong way to use a constitution.”

The resolution also encourages faculties at the other three Minnesota law schools to take similar steps in opposing the amendment.

More than 700 legal professionals have joined Lawyers United for All Families, a group founded by former Vice President Walter F. Mondale and Retired Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court Kathleen A. Blatz, aimed at defeating the amendment. In addition to William Mitchell, the Minnesota and Hennepin County bar associations and the law firms of Nilan Johnson Lewis and Lockridge Grindal Nauen and others have joined the coalition.

Gov. Mark Dayton vetoed a bill that would limit the liability for successor companies in asbestos lawsuits.

Gov. Mark Dayton

The bill would shield companies that bought companies who manufactured asbestos from future lawsuits under the presumption that the company was an “innocent successor” and shouldn’t be held responsible for the people who got sick because of exposure to asbestos.

It passed the legislature but many in the DFL objected to the idea of providing immunity to companies from future lawsuits for both known and unknown liability. The Minnesota Association for Justice lobbied against the bill.

The bill would limit the company’s liability in future asbestos claims only “up to the fair market value of the total gross assets of the original corporation that carried the liability, as of the date the corporations merged or consolidated” and protect other companies that acquired firms that made asbestos before 1972, the date that the federal government identified asbestos as a health risk.

In his veto letter, Dayton said he did so because he was convinced it would set a dangerous precedent for future efforts to shield corporate defendants from liability and because of the continued medical concerns with exposure to asbestos.

“The Minnesota Legislature and our courts have long established rules of liability for corporate mergers, transfers and acquisitions,” he wrote. “[The bill] creates an exception to corporate successor liability that Minnesota and other courts have refused to adopt.

Dayton did however sign House File 1829, authorizing County Attorneys and Assistant County Attorneys to carry firearms while on duty, under the terms of a valid, state-issued, permit to carry. The bill passed the legislature a few weeks after a shooting in a Grand Marais courtroom injured the Cook County attorney.

Eastview High School students in Apple Valley will hear arguments Wednesday, April 11 on whether a defendant who said he didn’t know a pistol was in his briefcase may be convicted of possession of a pistol in public.   The Supreme Court will visit the school and after the arguments in State vs. Ndikum will have lunch with students and visit classrooms. The Eastview High School visit marks the 35^th in-school oral argument for the court.