This case involved parents and children challenging the Minnesota Department of Health's collection, storage, and use of newborn blood samples for mandatory screening of genetic disorders without written informed consent. Plaintiffs claimed violations of the genetic privacy act as well as constitutional privacy and property rights, along with related tort claims such as intrusion upon seclusion and battery. The district court granted summary judgment to the state, and the court of appeals affirmed because the newborn screening statute authorized the department's actions, plaintiffs alleged no conduct outside that statute, and the claims depended on showing unlawful conduct that was not present.
The case involved St. Croix Sensory Inc., a sensory laboratory that hires individuals as 'sensory assessors' to evaluate odors for its testing services, challenging a determination by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development that these assessors were employees rather than independent contractors for purposes of unemployment taxes. The unemployment law judge had affirmed the department's finding that the company substantially controlled the assessors' work, but the court reversed on certiorari review. Applying a de novo standard to the undisputed facts, the court examined the totality of circumstances under traditional factors including the right to control the means and manner of performance, the right to discharge, provision of tools and premises, and mode of payment. It concluded that the assessors were independent contractors because they retained significant control over their work, selected their own sessions via an online system, were paid per session without hourly oversight, exercised independent judgment in evaluations, and the company faced liability upon early termination of sessions, outweighing countervailing factors like use of the company's facility and equipment.
In Nexus v. Swift, a nonprofit operating juvenile treatment facilities sued a local resident for defamation based on her public statements and online posts opposing the group's planned new facility, including claims that an employee had killed a youth in its care. Swift moved to dismiss under Minnesota's anti-SLAPP statute, which shields speech aimed at influencing government action unless it amounts to a tort or constitutional violation. The district court denied the motion, ruling that the statute violated the plaintiff's rights to due process and a jury trial by requiring a pre-trial, pre-discovery determination of defamation by clear and convincing evidence. The appellate court held that the anti-SLAPP statute is constitutional and does not infringe those rights, reversed the denial, and remanded for the district court to first assess whether the claims relate to protected public participation and then evaluate the defamation evidence under the proper standard for judgment on the pleadings or summary judgment.
The case involved a general contractor who, after hiring a subcontractor for framing work on several projects, submitted fraudulent pay requests to lenders directing payments to his own separate entity instead of the subcontractor, resulting in the subcontractor not being paid. The subcontractor brought a civil action under Minn. Stat. § 514.02, subd. 1a, alleging theft of payment proceeds for improvements to real estate. The district court found liability after a bench trial and entered judgment for the subcontractor. On appeal, the court affirmed, ruling that the civil claim does not require a prior criminal conviction under the statute, applies even if the contractor owns the land, the funds received qualify as payments, and the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard applies to the civil action.
In these consolidated cases, defendants Knoch and Watson were each charged with fifth-degree possession of methamphetamine after police seized substances from their residences during searches. They jointly moved to dismiss the charges for lack of probable cause, arguing that positive results from field tests using the NIK Test U were insufficient without confirmatory laboratory testing. The district court denied the motion and certified the question to the Court of Appeals. The appellate court held that, depending on the facts of a case, evidence of a positive field test alone can establish probable cause for a controlled substance possession charge without a confirmatory test. The court reasoned that the sodium nitroprusside field test is a generally accepted scientific method for presumptive identification, with no indication of false positives in these circumstances and no legal requirement for a bright-line confirmatory testing rule.
In State v. Super, the defendant was convicted of second-degree intentional murder after a bench trial for shooting and killing a man during an altercation stemming from a romantic dispute. He appealed, claiming the district court violated his right to present a defense by refusing to grant use immunity to a key witness (who had invoked her Fifth Amendment rights) or to continue the trial pending her appeal, and that circumstantial evidence was insufficient to prove intent rather than an accidental discharge. The court held that the state committed no prosecutorial misconduct in declining immunity and that the witness's expected testimony would not have materially differed from her prior police statement, which was admitted at trial. It further found the evidence sufficient, as the circumstances proved—including the gun's strong trigger pull and safety features making accidental discharge unlikely—supported the inference of intentional firing from close range and were inconsistent with any rational hypothesis of accident. The conviction was affirmed.
