Tom Conlin and Stacy Deery Stennes, Conlin Law Firm

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There are no silos in either the North Dakota or Minnesota offices of Conlin Law Firm. The whole office works on all cases. “Anyone who answers the phone can tell you anything about your case,” partner Stacy Deery Stennes said. (Except for Tom Conlin’s dog, who is occasionally there.)

Their personal injury, medical malpractice and product liability practice covers the spectrum of what can go wrong in people’s lives, she added. But what they both like about it, in addition to helping injured people and their families, is that there is always something new to learn.

“Every case is a new mystery,” Tom Conlin said. Sometimes the mystery is how something negligent could possibly have happened, but sometimes it’s a piece of medical or mechanical knowledge that demonstrates how things are supposed to be done, Deery Stennes said.

They have a busy trial practice, here and in North Dakota. But recently, “We’ve spent a fair amount of time error correcting in (North Dakota) appeals court,” Conlin said. Notably, in Kutcka v. Gateway Building Systems, a man working for a subcontractor was killed when a crane extension collapsed and the worker’s compensation would cover at most 20% of the value of the case, Conlin said. The North Dakota trial court said that a 2019 statute prevented a third-party claim against the contractor, but the Supreme Court reversed and remanded. “We were very, very happy to see North Dakota get it right,” Conlin said.

The firm successfully appealed an Iowa case in federal court against a municipal electric company worth $2.6 million for a man who was shocked and fell to concrete. “That was a tough case because the facility had been inspected recently. We had to prove to the jury that the inspectors should have noticed [a problem],” Stennes said. There were no witnesses, and the plaintiff had no memory of the accident. A unanimous panel reversed.