Opinions Archive

Minnesota’s common law prohibition against champerty is abolished. Reversed and remanded.

1. Alleged conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive to state a claim for sexual harassment under the Minnesota Human Rights Act if a reasonable person, considering the totality of the circumstances, would find the alleged behavior objectively abusive or offensive. 2. The text of an employee handbook does not alter the elements of a statutory claim arising under the Minnesota Human Rights Act. 3. Considered in the light most favorable to the employee, the evidence offered by the employee is sufficient to withstand summary judgment on her claim for sexual harassment under the Minnesota Human Rights Act. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

1. The State presented sufficient evidence to support the jury’s verdicts. 2. The district court did not commit reversible error in admitting the statements appellant made during police interviews because appellant implicitly waived his Miranda rights and did not unambiguously or unequivocally invoke his right to remain silent. 3. The district court violated Minn. Stat. § 609.04 (2018), when the court entered convictions on the offenses of first-degree domestic abuse murder and second-degree intentional murder. Affirmed in part, reversed in part, and remanded.

A "public health nuisance" under Minn. Stat. § 145.075 (2018) is any activity or failure to act that adversely affects the public health. An activity or failure to act affects the public health if it affects a considerable number of persons, even if the effects are geographically dispersed.

Appellant challenges his conviction of third-degree possession of a controlled substance, arguing that the district court erred by denying his motion to suppress evidence obtained during a warrantless search of his person. Because reasonable suspicion of criminal activity justified the search, we affirm.

An attorney whom one party in litigation has identified to serve as an expert witness to testify against the attorney's former client should be disqualified from serving as an expert witness if it was objectively reasonable for the former client to believe that a confidential relationship existed between it and the attorney and if the client disclosed to the attorney confidential information that either regards the same subject matter or is directly related to the subject matter about which the attorney proposes to testify. Reversed and remanded.

Appellants challenge the district court’s denial of their motion for judgment as a matter of law for two reasons: (1) because respondent failed to establish an element of his breach-of-contract claim; and (2) because respondent materially breached his contract with appellants, justifying appellants’ nonperformance. We affirm the district court because the arguments misconstrue both the language of the contract and the verdict form used in the trial below, and because appellants have not submitted a sufficient record for us to reverse the district court.

The rule announced in Missouri v. McNeely, 569 U.S. 141, 133 S. Ct. 1552 (2013)—that the dissipation of alcohol in the bloodstream is not a per se exigency justifying the warrantless search of a suspected impaired driver—applies retroactively when a petitioner challenges a final conviction for test refusal under the rule announced by the Supreme Court in Birchfield v. North Dakota, 136 S. Ct. 2160 (2016). Reversed.

A jury found Gary Lee Burnett guilty of first- and second-degree criminal sexual conduct, and the district court sentenced him to 156 months in prison. Burnett unsuccessfully moved the district court to correct his allegedly illegal sentence. We affirm because Burnett failed to establish that his sentence was unauthorized by law.

A St. Louis County jury found Wiltavius Roberte Hinton guilty of a controlled-substance crime and child endangerment based on evidence that drugs were found in his home during the execution of a search warrant. We conclude that the search-warrant application was supported by probable cause. Therefore, we affirm.