Perhaps the greatest surprise we encounter when working with lawyers from other jurisdictions and in-house counsel is when discussing the commencement of actions in Minnesota. When was the Complaint filed? When must our Answer be filed? Common questions and important under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the Rules of most state courts. Although Minnesota follows the federal rules closely in many respects, Minnesota does not follow the federal rules on commencement of an action. As we will discuss below, this difference can be extremely important to both plaintiffs and defendants when an action is commenced in Minnesota.
The Rule
An action is commenced under Rule 3 of the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure in one of three ways - by personal service, by mail, or by delivery to the sheriff in the county where the defendant resides. This last method is only effective if service is completed by either personal service or first publication within 60 days after the complaint is delivered to the sheriff. Some other specialized procedures apply to certain actions. For example actions are commenced against insurance companies not domiciled in Minnesota by service on the secretary of state, together with transmittal to the out-of-state address and filing an affidavit in the district court showing compliance with these statutory procedures.
What about filing? Simply, there is no requirement that the complaint be filed under Minnesota law. It is irrelevant to the question of commencement of an action, and, in fact, many actions are commenced and resolved without any court filing or intervention. This charming vestige of long ago is affectionately called the "hip pocket" service rule.
Service Options
The rule for commencement of an action creates several choices for service upon a party. As under the federal rules, the two most common methods of service are personal service and mail. Personal service may be made upon individuals, partnerships and corporations much like under the federal rules. Minnesota also has a method for service by mail with acknowledgement, although the form differs substantially from the form used pursuant to Rule 4 of the federal rules. As with the federal rules, service by mail is only effective if the acknowledgment is signed and returned by the defendant.
There is Minnesota authority for the proposition that service is effective if certified mail is used to deliver the summons and complaint to the defendant and the certified mail receipt acknowledgement is returned. For a host of reasons, certified mail is not the best method of accomplishing service of a complaint when the running of a statute of limitations is imminent.
Commencement Issues
The question of commencement, and the related questions of filing, most often arise in the context of the statute of limitations. Minnesota practitioners are well aware of Rule 3 and the requirement that a state court action be commenced before the expiration of the statute of limitations by serving the summons and complaint on the defendant. Some plaintiffs run off to the federal courthouse in diversity actions and file their action on the eve of the running of the statute of limitations. Filing, they reason, commences the action. While that is true under Rule 3 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, some plaintiffs believe that filing in federal court is sufficient to commence a federal court diversity action. Wrong. The United State Supreme Court in Walker v. Armstrong, 446 U.S. 740 (1980) held that rules such as Minnesota's Rule 3 governing commencement of actions are substantive laws of the state. Therefore, the Court reasoned, such rules apply in diversity actions under the Erie doctrine.
This point was driven home in Appletree Square I v. W.R. Grace & Co., 29 F.3d 1283 (8th Cir 1994). In that case, plaintiff filed an action in federal court believing that it had commenced its action timely under Federal Rule 3. In that case, the statute at issue was the revival statute for asbestos actions. Appletree Square argued that the pleading of federal claims as well as state law claims invoked Federal Rule 3 The district court and the circuit court disagreed, dismissing the action as time-barred. The Eighth Circuit concluded that the commencement question should be answered for each claim and that Minnesota Rule 3 applied to all state claims regardless of the existence of federal claims in the same suit.
Minnesota federal district courts and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals have applied this rule in other cases since Appletree Square. Whenever a state law claim is advanced in federal court, the state rule for commencement will apply. See Larsen v. Mayo Medical Center, 218 F.3d 863, 867 (8th Cir. 2000) ("state commencement rules apply because they are part and parcel of the statute of limitations."); MW AG, Inc. v. New Hampshire Ins. Co., 107 F.3d 644, 646 (8th Cir. 1997) ("Federal Courts follow state substantive law to determine when an action is commenced for statute of limitations purposes."); Anderson v. UNISYS Corp., 47 F.3d 302, 309 (8th Cir. 1995) (rationale of Walker applies to state claims even if pleaded with federal claims).
The message is fairly simple, but important to proper pleading. In Minnesota state courts and state claims in federal courts, commencement of an action is governed by state law. In Minnesota that means that your case is commenced by one of the three methods identified by the rule - and filing is not one of them.