Several members of LGN’s Government Relations team spent Saturday night at Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s Founders Day Dinner. Hearing from Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer made for an amazing event.
LGN represents Minnesota tenants who rent single-family homes from Home Partners in Hennepin County District Court. Those tenants have been litigating consumer protection, housing, contract, and other claims against Home Partners and Pathlight Property Management since 2022. LGN recently achieved a critical milestone in the litigation, as the Court (the Honorable Christian M. Sande) certified the class of Home Partners tenants in Minnesota, allowing the claims to proceed on a classwide basis. The Court also appointed LGN and their co-counsel at Hellmuth & Johnson PLLC and Milberg Coleman Bryson Phillips Grossman, LLC, as class counsel. LGN looks forward to continuing to litigate the class’s claims as the case continues.
LGN’s Kristen Marttila and Joe Bourne will be featured speakers at the upcoming Mitchell Hamline and the MSBA Antitrust Law Section Antitrust Law Symposium on Monday October 23, 2023. The MSBA Antitrust Section is excited that this will be a star-studded event, including Minnesota Attorney General Ellison, Jonathan Kanter from the DOJ, Claire Kelloway from the Open Markets Institute, plus other antitrust luminaries. The Symposium’s discussion will center on trending topics in antitrust, antitrust in agriculture, potential careers in antitrust for law students, and more.
Participation can be in person or remote and the registration link is now live: https://www.mnbar.org/cle-events/tri-bar-event?EventID=6158. Registration closes on October 21. Please tune in!
On Monday, several LGN government relations team members were fortunate enough to spend the first official Minnesota state holiday of Indigenous Peoples’ Day with the Indian Health Board at a site blessing for the new Menaandawiwe Wellness Campus in Minneapolis. The Lockridge Grindal Nauen GR team has the privilege of representing the Indian Health Board at the Capitol, and were thrilled to be able to support their efforts to secure state capital support for this visionary project, which will expand available medical, dental, counseling, and recovery services. LGN team members joined Governor Walz, Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, US Senator Tina Smith, DHS Commissioner Jodi Harpstead, Senators Kunesh, Wiklund, and Mohamed, and Representative Sencer-Mura (and Representative Heather Keeler who was with us in spirit but honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day in her own community). Finally, we heartily thank Dr. Patrick Rock, IHB’s CEO and Medical Director, for the opportunity to support your leadership and vision.
LGN Partner Kristen Marttila was recently hosted at Harvard law School by the Plaintiff’s Law Association and the Harvard Law School Antitrust Association on the panel “Become an Antitrust Plaintiff’s Lawyer: Fight Corporate Abuse and Help Consumers and Small Businesses.” The panel was a joint project by those groups and the Committee to Support the Antitrust Laws (“COSAL”) to introduce students to careers in private antitrust enforcement. Ms. Marttila chairs COSAL’s amicus committee. Other panelists included Swathi Bojedla, Deborah Elman, Karin Garvey, and Jennifer Scullion.
LGN is a longtime member of COSAL, which was founded in 1986 to promote and support the enactment, preservation, and enforcement of a strong body of antitrust laws in the United States.
On Tuesday LGN Associate Eura Chang participated in a panel discussion at the Twin Cities Diversity in Practice (“TCDIP”) General Members Meeting. Eura and her co-panelists spoke about the importance of TCDIP’s 1L Clerkship program, which is open to all first year law students. LGN has participated in this program, in partnership with the Metropolitan Council, for several years and we are thrilled to have met and worked with many wonderful law students, including Eura who joined us as an associate after she graduated from the University of Minnesota School of Law in 2022. Congratulations, Eura!
Along with Free Speech For People, LGN represents a group of prominent Minnesota voters who have filed a petition to keep former president Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot in the state because of his role in the insurrection on January 6, 2021. The petition asks the Minnesota Supreme Court to direct Secretary of State Steve Simon to withhold Trump’s name from next year’s primary and general election ballots.
The petition invokes the insurrection disqualification clause in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This section prohibits officials who have sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution from holding public office if they have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the Constitution. No criminal conviction is required.
LGN attorneys Charlie Nauen, David Zoll, Rachel Kitze Collins, Kristen Marttila, and David Hahn are working on this matter.
LGN attorneys David Asp, Kristen Marttila, Derek Waller, Jennifer Jacobs, and Stephen Owen scored a victory for a class of Minnesota insureds yesterday when a federal court ruled that Farmers has been operating in violation of state law by limiting the health care providers with whom its insureds may use medical benefits provided through No Fault insurance policies. The district court barred Farmers from continuing the practice, and ordered that a number of issues, including those relating to the recovery of damages, would proceed to trial. Read more here.
LGN Senior Counsel Simeon Morbey will be joining the Federal Bar Association – MN Chapter’s Civil Discovery Practice Group as a panelist on September 27, 2023, for a presentation on ethical e-discovery and non-traditional data sources and emerging technology. Panelists will discuss e-discovery and ethics issues relating to cell phones, enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management systems, collaborative communication platforms, and artificial intelligence. Read more here: https://www.mnfedbar.org/event-details/ethical-e-discovery-on-non-traditional-data-sources-and-emerging-technology-1
LGN partner Kristen Marttila will participate as a dialogue leader for The Sedona Conference Working Group 1 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis on October 27, 2023. Kristen currently served as a member of Working Group 1’s brainstorming group on the sufficiency of Rule 26(a)(1) initial disclosures, and will present the brainstorming group’s report on their findings.
Rule 26(a)(1) initial disclosures can be extremely useful early in discovery if they are complete and correct. But what does Rule 26(g)’s “complete and correct” requirement mean in the context of initial disclosures? This panel will discuss the Initial Disclosures brainstorming group’s preliminary thoughts, and elicit membership feedback, on whether to form a drafting team for a Sedona Conference publication that addresses whether parties are currently living up to the original intent of the Rule and meeting their obligations to make a reasonable inquiry into the facts in preparing the disclosures; whether, as part of a party’s initial disclosures, they should be identifying custodians and custodial and noncustodial data sources containing potentially relevant ESI; and whether the timing for initial disclosures under Rule 26(a)(1)(C) is workable for the parties to provide sufficient disclosures.