Ryan O. Vettleson

Storms Dworak LLC

Ryan O. Vettleson is a trial attorney with two decades of experience litigating civil cases in areas including civil rights, personal injury, commercial litigation, product liability, and employment law. He has tried numerous cases to verdict both independently and as part of trial teams in state and federal courts.

Vettleson graduated with honors and high distinction from the University of Minnesota Morris and earned his law degree cum laude from the University of Minnesota Law School in 2001. He clerked for Judge Thomas Kalitowski at the Minnesota Court of Appeals before entering private practice. He worked as a partner at a mid-sized litigation firm in Minneapolis before joining a boutique law firm. He has also taught legal writing as an instructor at the University of Minnesota Law School.

His practice has focused significantly on police misconduct and jail deliberate indifference matters. In 2023, Vettleson recovered $1.15 million in a wrongful death suit stemming from a detainee’s suicide hours after arriving at the Hennepin County Jail from the psychiatry ward at HCMC. He represented a woman injured in a no-knock warrant who suffered severe burns from a flash-bang grenade, resulting in a $1 million settlement. He secured a $450,000 settlement for a woman on crutches who was pushed down by an officer and suffered multiple wrist fractures. He obtained trial judgments exceeding $290,000 for a woman struck in the face by an officer downtown Minneapolis and over $270,000 for a young man hit in the head with a police flashlight.

In 2025, Vettleson secured a $1.5 million settlement from Dakota County and a confidential settlement from its medical contractor in a jail-neglect case involving a vulnerable adult with autism, bipolar disorder, and Type 1 diabetes who suffered catastrophic injuries from medical neglect and deliberate indifference during three days in custody.

Vettleson has substantial experience in automobile crash and wrongful death cases. In 2021, he settled a wrongful death suit for $1.5 million involving a head-on crash. He helped recover $3 million for a couple after the wife was severely injured by a commercial truck. In 2023, he recovered $750,000 in a wrongful death case involving a drunk driver.