Author: prbirnberg

Under Minn. Stat. § 504B.321, the complaint in an Eviction Action must “describe[] the premises of which possession is claimed”. There is only one Minnesota appellate case — Lewis v. Steele, decided by the Territorial court — stating what the description must entail. As discussed in this essay (in PDF and Word versions), the description must be definitive on the face of the complaint. Two Hennepin County trial court decisions are in accord, enforcing this rule as well as a Housing-Court rule requiring a correct street address.

This essay reviews the legislative history of Minn. Stat. § 504B.321 and its predecessor statutes. It discusses the history and functioning of the Territorial courts, and whether Territorial court decisions are binding precedent on Minnesota State courts. I conclude that such decisions are not binding but that the legislative history of Minn. Stat. § 504B.321, a Wisconsin case like Lewis v. Steele, and the rules of statutory construction together make Lewis v. Steele good law.

The Word version of the essay has links to cited materials, including some interesting (at least to me) materials about the Minnesota Territory and its courts.

I thank Lee Bennin for helpful hints about how to decide if Territorial cases are binding precedent.

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.

In March 2020 I posted an essay entitled Renters Insurance Helps a Residential Tenant When He Accidentally Burns His Apartment but Not When He Accidentally Floods His Apartment. Full Coverage Should Be Mandated by Statute. The Minnesota House considered such a bill this past session. The bill was passed by the Commerce committee and advanced to the House floor but without a companion Senate bill it died there.

The insurance-industry lobbyist made a common argument in committee – that the bill would have the unintended consequence of raising premiums and forcing tenants to give up renters insurance. Part of his assertion was predicated on the idea that Melrose Gates, LLC v. Chor Moua, 875 N.W.2d 814 (Minn. 2016) combined with requiring water-damage coverage would decrease landlords’ insurance premiums and raise tenants’ premiums.

I decided to test the assertions in two ways: [1] I obtained quotes for a typical renter’s policy from the companies with water coverage and those without. [2] I reviewed insurance-company filings with the Minnesota Department of Commerce post Moua.

Although the difference was not statistically significant, the average premium for policies with water coverage was actually slightly lower than for those without coverage. And the filings with the Commerce Department indicated a very slight effect of adding water coverage; adding water coverage increased renter’s insurance premiums between zero and 42¢ per month.

In short, as discussed fully in this essay in Word and in PDF, the claim that requiring water-damage coverage would harm rather than help tenants appears unfounded.

Two appendices and a graph referenced in the essay are available here: Appendix 1, Appendix 2, and Graph 1 (and by links in the Word version).

Recently while I was volunteering at HOME Line, I joined with one of its attorneys, Samuel Spaid, to do a study of the type of incidents that led to the enactment of Minnesota’s Tenant’s Right to Privacy law, Minn. Stat. § 504B.211, and what light those incidents cast on the meaning of “substantially violates” in the remedies clause of section 504B.211.

Our resulting article, HOME Line Records Support Court of Appeals’ Ruling That Minn. Stat. § 504B.211 Penalizes Both Severe and Minor Entries Made Without Notice, is available here .

Below is a summary of the article (this is the summary which HOME Line posted on its website at this link):

Privacy violations are one of the most common reasons residential tenants call HOME Line for legal advice. In Minnesota, residential landlords may only enter the tenant’s unit if they have a reasonable business purpose and have provided the tenant with reasonable notice in advance (except for certain emergencies). If a landlord violates this right to privacy, a tenant may sue the landlord for several types of relief.  

Recently, the Court of Appeals in Ryan Rentals LLC v. Ta found that the landlord violated a tenant’s right to privacy by entering the tenant’s apartment for a non-emergency purpose without any prior notice. Because the landlord violated the tenant’s privacy, the District Court terminated the tenant’s lease (at the tenant’s request), returned the tenant’s security deposit, fined the landlord, and awarded the tenant her attorney fees, and the Court of Appeals affirmed this outcome on appeal. 

In order to reach this outcome, the Court of Appeals decided, correctly in HOME Line’s opinion, that the landlord’s actions substantially violated the law. More importantly, the court ruled that “substantially violates” means essentially violates instead of seriously violates. In other words, it ruled that “substantially violates” may include both minor and severe incursions without notice.

The Court’s analysis of section 504B.211 was rather brief. We decided to review the statute’s legislative history in order to see if that history supported or contradicted the Ryan Rental Court’s conclusion. A key part of the legislative history was the original purpose behind the law, especially what sort of concerns tenants had regarding landlords’ entries into their homes. In fact, HOME Line’s testimony in favor of the bill that became section 504B.211 referred in general terms to the many tenants who called HOME Line’s tenant hotline reporting about and asking for legal advice regarding  privacy violations. 

Therefore, we reviewed the files of all of our privacy calls from that time period (from 1992, when HOME Line started, until the law was enacted in May 1995). Of these calls, 77% involved minor (non-serious) incursions and about a third of those involved landlords who only entered once without notice. This supports the idea that section 504B.211 was aimed both at serious and at minor violations, in accord with the holding of the Ryan Rentals LLC court. 

We also reviewed more recent privacy calls to determine how effective the law has been. We conclude that the law has resulted in a modest reduction in landlords’ disturbing tenants’ privacy.

The full report is available here: HOME Line Records Support Court of Appeals’ Ruling That Minn. Stat. § 504B.211 Penalizes Both Severe and Minor Entries Made Without Notice. The report should help parties litigating privacy cases plus the judges hearing the cases to understand the reach of section 504B.211.

Given the review’s finding that Minnesota’s residential tenant privacy statute has had a modest impact in reducing intrusions into the homes of renters, HOME Line reiterates the need for state legislators to modernize this law. An excellent start would be to adopt the privacy provisions of bills currently introduced at the State Legislature: HF 399/SF 773. The changes in these bills would clarify what a “reasonable” advance notice is, and update the civil penalty to a more reasonable amount (a brief summary of the bills is here).

Minn. Stat. § 504B.211, Minnesota’s Tenant’s Right to Privacy statute that requires landlords to give residential tenants notice of a non-emergency entry, has an unusual remedies clause. It requires the tenant to sue via an Emergency Tenant Remedies Action, a Rent Escrow lawsuit, or a Tenant Remedies Action. These laws were designed to help tenants whose landlords were not making needed repairs – i.e. problems that can be fixed – and so are ill-fitted for an illegal entry, a problem that cannot be fixed since the harm is done once the entry has occurred. This essay, available in PDF and in Word, shows how the exact language of section 504B.211 allows the tenant to file the needed lawsuit by following ten specific procedural requirements in the Emergency Tenant Remedies Action, Rent Escrow and Tenant Remedies Action statutes.

Part of the essay discusses a detailed legislative history of this law. It is available here.

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.

Minn. Stat. § 504B.161 requires residential landlords to maintain the tenant’s home up to local codes and in reasonable repair. While the statute does not allow the landlord to ultimately avoid these duties, subdivision 2 of the statute allows the landlord and tenant to agree that the tenant will perform specified duties in return for adequate consideration – sort of subcontracting these repairs back to the tenant in return for comparable compensation.

Some residential landlords have tried to use subdivision 2 to shift repair of appliances and even of sewer lines to the tenant. These landlords insert a clause in the lease requiring the tenant to purchase CenterPoint Energy’s Service Plus, a plan that allows the homeowner or renter to get “free” appliance repair – in return for the monthly Service Plus fee CenterPoint will repair broken appliances without further cost. One of the main examples is Steven Meldahl, a major landlord in north Minneapolis.

Meldahl is currently the defendant in a lawsuit filed by the Minnesota Attorney General. The lawsuit alleges that a variety of maneuvers by Meldahl, including his Service-Plus clause, are violations of the Minnesota’s Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act (“MPCFA”). This essay examines a slightly different question – whether Meldahl’s Service Plus clause is ultimately enforceable (as opposed to whether it violates the MPCFA by fooling tenants).

I conclude that is very unlikely that Meldahl’s clauses are enforceable. However it is possible for a careful, law-respectful landlord to incorporate an enforceable Service Plus clause in her lease.

The essay is available in PDF and in Word. The Word version includes links to cited materials. Some of the materials, including the original 1971 legislative history of Minn. Stat. § 504B.161, are also available here.

The three 6/5/21 updates are: [1] A few grammatical mistakes have been corrected. [2] I reviewed the last two items at the Gale Library and revised the compilation legislative history of 1971 Minn. Laws ch. 219 very slightly. Nothing new of material interest was found. See footnote 19 in the updated essay. [3] In response to a comment from a perceptive reader, I’ve revised the liberal-canon discussion. See pp. 8-9 of the updated essay.

Recently some Minnesota residential landlords have started using an alternative to security deposits – security-deposit bonds. Instead of paying a refundable security deposit, say $1000, the tenant buys a $1000 bond from a company like SureDeposit for a non-refundable premium of $175. If he owes money at the end of the tenancy, the landlord gets reimbursed up to $1000 by the bonding company but the tenant then owes the bonding company for the money it has paid the landlord.

On the upside the tenant’s up front payment is lower. On the downside, he is not insured – he still owes the debt to the bonding company. Furthermore, the bonding companies and landlords take the position that he has no rights under Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, the statute that protects residential tenants who pay security deposits.

This essay discusses in detail [i] how the bonds work compared to renters’ insurance; [ii] legal battles in other states over whether security-deposit laws regulate the bonds; and [iii] the legislative history of Minn. Stat. § 504B.178 and whether it regulates the bonds.

My conclusion about Minnesota is that probably section 504B.178 does not regulate the bonds but it is an open question. The field is ripe for new legislation protecting tenants.

The essay is available in Word and in PDF. The Word version includes hyperlinks to cited materials, including nine appendices. The appendices include materials from Ohio and Maryland litigation, legislative-history from 1973 when Minn. Stat. § 504B.178 was first enacted, and the Model Residential Landlord-Tenant Code, the model for the original Minn. Stat. § 504B.178. The appendices are also gathered here (a large 54,419 KB file).

On March 29, 2021 I gave a CLE seminar entitled “Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Minnesota Residential Security Deposits.” No doubt the title exaggerated the seminar’s value. However, the seminar did provide a considerable number of useful legal citations and (I think) some helpful detailed discussion of security-deposit law and of Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, the state’s security-deposit statute.

The essay was edited on 3/23/2022. The discussion of “other funds due to the landlord pursuant to an agreement” was expanded.

This blog post presents that same material in essay form. It includes some extra material, including some additional citations to statutes & case law plus expanded discussions of tax issues, the “fiduciary” clause in Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, subd. 2, and Minn. Stat. § 504B.178, subd. 4. It is available here in Word and here in PDF. The Word version includes hyperlinks to all the cited statutes, cases, regulations, and IRS materials. Some of the cited materials are also available in these Appendices.

The same CLE is now available (as a recording) as an On-Demand CLE via this webpage of the Hennepin County Bar Association, https://www.mnbar.org/ProductCatalog/Product?ID=4649. It has been approved for 1.0 hour of standard CLE credit by the Minnesota State Board of Continuing Legal Education and is assigned the Event Code 347211.

Minn. Stat. § 504B.211, the Tenant’s Right to Privacy statute that governs landlord notice prior to entering the tenant’s home, is out of sync with comparable statutes in other states. This essay, in PDF and in Word, includes a survey of the privacy statutes in all 50 states + the District of Columbia. Relevant provisions of each statute are shown in Chart 1. A summary of how the states deal with five issues – [a] limiting the tenant to a specific kind of law suit (only Minnesota prohibits suits in small claims court); [b] the cap on damages (Minnesota’s “up to .. $100” is at the low end); [c] specificity in the amount of notice (e.g. “24 hours”) & [d] the time of entry (e.g. “9 am to 5 pm”) where section 504B.211 is not specific; and [e] whether notice must be written – is provided in Chart 2. I suggest improvements to section 504B.211.

On 12/2/2021 I revised the essay slightly by adding a new paragraph about filing a section-504B.211 case in the last few days of the tenancy. This paragraph is marked with a red asterisk and is on page 3 of the essay.