Not everyone in Ramsey may be aware, but the Minnesota State lawlibrary website has a search feature. It will do a full-text search of all archived opinions. For instance, type your own name, "first last" with the quotation marks, and if there is an appellate case mentioning your name it would show up, or a list if there were several. I typed in "Eric Zaetsch" and got no returns, because there is no case there, published or unpublished, with my name in it. To double check I put my full name in, "Eric Herman Zaetsch," because if the case is in the full name, it may need that to show up retrieved. The lawyer I worked with in Seattle, John W. Demco, had the middle name "Wayne" and I might need to search with that name, or the middle initial, to get the right returns. Or just use a last name; such as "Zaetsch." Search functions require a bit of experimenting.
As an example, I typed in "Blom" and got several cases with a party named "Blom," the first being the unfortunate Donald Blom kidnap-murder case we probably all read of, another being about a conditional use zoning question, another dealing with worker compensation claims, and yet a fourth involving a dismissal of a legal malpractice claim.
You can type in names of friends or people you know, or people you know of, in Minnesota.
If you type in "Robert M.A. Johnson" you get several cases, because he is our county attorney.
The first one I found there was Robert M.A. Johnson v. 1999 Silver BMW Convertible. Of course our county attorney was not suing an automobile, he was suing to forfeit title to an automobile used in a felony police pursuit-escape attempt. Most people would not even know that if you run from the law and the law wins, at times that means you can forfeit ownership of the auto you were fleeing in. So obey the law.
