This spring the Minnesota Supreme Court issued an opinion written by Justice Paul Thissen construing Minn. Stat. § 504B.231, specifically what the statute means by a landlord locking out a tenant “in bad faith”, Reimringer v. Anderson, — N.W.2d — (Minn. June 16, 2021). As discussed here in Word, its definition of “bad faith” as “dishonest or dubious” is the opposite of a bright-line rule. The court’s definition leaves both landlords and tenants in doubt as to what sorts of landlord behavior are in bad faith. Furthermore, following Justice Thissen’s own view of the best way to construe ambiguous statutes as set out in an article he wrote as well as in my view, “bad faith” should have been defined as a landlord using self help instead of the court system to oust a tenant. A straightforward solution is for the legislature to amend the statute accordingly.
My discussion is based partly on a complete written legislative history of the original law, Appendix LH 231, and on efforts to obtain oral history from some of the legislators and lobbyists involved when the law was enacted in 1984.
The essay is also available here in PDF. Unlike the Word version, the PDF version does not have links to the cited materials.
Justice Thissen’s article is available here.
Birnberg Minnesota Legislative Newsletter 