Minn. Stat. § 504B.331 governs service of process in an Eviction Action and permits three service methods. One is nail and mail. When nail and mail is used, after the Summons and Complaint is mailed, the process server must post it “in a conspicuous place on the property”. On rare occasions when the tenant lives in a multi-unit building, a lazy or sly process will post the Summons and Complaint on the main door of the building instead of the tenant’s own door. Is this permitted by section 504B.331? Doing so seems absurd but the current language of section 504B.331 is a tad unclear.
As shown in this essay (in Word and in PDF), the statute’s legislative history shows that the Summons and Complaint must be posted on the tenant’s own unit, not on the main building door. Posting only on the main building door is not just absurd but violates Minn. Stat. § 504B.331. The Word version of the essay includes hyperlinks to cited statutes, cases, and other legal materials.
Update 2/25/2025: In 2024, the Minnesota legislature amended section 504B.331 and recodified it as Minn. Stat. § 504B.332. 2024 Minn. Laws ch. 118 s. 27 . The new law included a number of changes to the nail-and-mail procedure. One of these changes made explicit that under nail-and-mail service “the summons and complaint must be posted on the door of the defendant’s individual unit”. I.e., the conclusion of this blog post was explicitly codified by the 2024 legislature.
Birnberg Minnesota Legislative Newsletter 