Minnesota Business Disputes on Appeal in 2026: What 50 Decisions Show

Five Findings for Minnesota Business Owners in 2027

1. Construction disputes were the largest group. Of the 50 decisions, 13 turned mainly on a construction contract or a mechanic’s lien, and 16 involved one. No other subject was the main issue in more than 7. For 2027, I suggest that owners and contractors put the scope of work, the documents that make up the contract, and the completion terms in writing before work starts, because several of these decisions turned on exactly those points.

2. Timing and procedure decided 14 of the 50 appeals. In those 14, the outcome turned mainly on a deadline, an argument raised too late, a court-procedure rule such as a sanction or default, whether a party could bring the claim, or which court could hear the case. I suggest calendaring the deadline to sue as soon as a dispute appears, and raising every defense early, because the courts held parties to these rules even after years of litigation.

3. The words of the contract controlled. In 7 decisions, the appellate court decided the appeal by reading the language of the contract, and the trial court’s result stood in 6 of them. A buyer of a bakery’s “tangible assets” did not get the seller’s pandemic tax credits, which were not tangible assets and arose before closing, and a contractor could not rely on a report the contract did not make part of the deal. I suggest reading the definitions and the list of included documents before signing, because those are the sentences the courts read first.

4. Owner disputes and non-competes were rare on appeal. Only 5 decisions involved a dispute among the owners of a business, 4 involved a non-compete or trade-secret claim, and 4 involved a fiduciary-duty claim. These counts show only the disputes that reached an appellate decision in 2026; they do not show how many such disputes arose or settled.

5. Business appeals were changed more often than other civil appeals. In the Court of Appeals, 20 of the 45 business decisions (44%) reversed or changed the trial court’s decision in whole or in part, compared with 41 of the 192 other civil decisions (21%) in the same period. Most of the difference came from partial changes: full reversals ran at about the same rate in both groups. That describes what happened in 2026. It is not a prediction about any particular appeal, because each outcome turned on its own facts and record.

Which Issues Reached the Appellate Courts

Contract claims appeared in 33 of the 50 decisions, usually alongside another issue, such as a construction lien, a commercial lease, or a fraud claim. Fraud, interference, and other business-tort claims appeared in 16.

How the Appeals Came Out

The table compares the 45 Court of Appeals business decisions with the 192 other civil decisions from the same court in the same period. “Remanded” means the case was sent back to the trial court for more proceedings.

The Supreme Court decided the other 5 business disputes. Of the 50 decisions, 40 were Court of Appeals opinions labeled “nonprecedential” on their first line.

Decisions Worth Knowing

Each decision below is linked to its full text on HallApproved.com.

A contractor could not rely on a soil report the contract did not include. In Ames Construction Inc. v. City of Moorhead, No. A25-0754 (Minn. App. Mar. 30, 2026) (nonprecedential), a contractor claimed about $15.3 million in added costs after soil failures and argued that the city’s geotechnical report was part of the contract. The Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment for the city because the contract listed its “Contract Documents,” and the report appeared only as an attachment.

Firing the general contractor started the two-year clock. In American Family Insurance Co. v. NB Electric, Inc., No. A24-0377 (Minn. July 22, 2026), the Supreme Court held that “a property owner’s termination of the construction contract with the general contractor constitutes ’termination … of the construction or the improvement to real property’” under the two-year limitations statute for defective-construction claims, Minn. Stat. § 541.051. The claim against the original contractors was too late, even though a new contractor finished the project later.

Suing on the last day risked losing the chance to refile. In CVC Investments LLP v. State Farm Fire & Casualty Co., No. A24-1915 (Minn. Aug. 5, 2026), the owners of three apartment buildings filed their storm-damage claims four days before the policy’s two-year deadline to sue, demanded appraisal, and sued on the last day. The Supreme Court held the complaint showed no actual dispute yet, because the insurer had not yet been required to respond, and reinstated the dismissal. The court wrote that “By waiting until the final day of the two-year limitations period to commence this action, CVC assumed the risk that a dismissal without prejudice would leave it unable to refile its claims before the limitations period expired.”

An argument raised months after trial came too late. In Warren v. ACOVA, Inc., No. A24-0450 (Minn. Aug. 5, 2026), a family member who owned her shares in the family company through trusts sought relief from the other owners under the shareholder-remedies statute, Minn. Stat. § 302A.751. Six months after closing arguments in a 16-day trial, the other side argued for the first time that she was not a “shareholder.” The Supreme Court held that the argument did not concern her standing to sue and that the other side forfeited it by raising it so late, after treating her as a shareholder throughout the case. The court did not decide whether an owner who holds shares only through a trust can bring a claim under that statute.

A business buyer inherited the employees’ non-competes. In Continua Interiors of Minnesota, LLC v. Hess, No. A25-1472 (Minn. App. Apr. 6, 2026) (nonprecedential), a company bought another company’s assets in 2023, and the employees came with the business. About two years later, the buyer fired one of them and five others quit, and all six went to work for a competitor. The Court of Appeals affirmed temporary injunctions against them, agreeing that the buyer “had the right to enforce the noncompete provision during the term of the individual appellants’ employment with Continua and for 12 months thereafter.” The ruling came early in the case, on the record then before the court, and the opinion notes that the sale happened before a 2023 Minnesota statute limiting noncompete agreements took effect.

Hiring a competitor’s employees brought the hiring company into a Minnesota court. In Medtronic, Inc. v. Lahn, No. A25-1009 (Minn. App. Mar. 2, 2026) (nonprecedential), a California company hired two Colorado sales representatives whose employment agreements required them to stay with Medtronic until July 2025 and required disputes to be decided in Minnesota. Because the company had reviewed those agreements before hiring them and shared their lawyers, the Court of Appeals held it was bound by the agreements’ Minnesota forum clauses.

The purchase agreement decided who kept the tax credits. In Maple Grove NBC, LLC v. Cake Gals Inc., No. A25-0804 (Minn. App. Mar. 9, 2026) (nonprecedential), the buyer of a bakery’s assets used the seller’s tax identification number to claim pandemic-era Employee Retention Credits, and the IRS sent the seller checks totaling $276,000. Because the purchase agreement sold “certain tangible assets,” the Court of Appeals held the credits belonged to the seller, and it affirmed an award of attorney fees against the buyer under the agreement’s fee clause.

A remodeling company that ignored pretrial deadlines lost by default. In Fitchett v. Dolezal Creative Design Build Inc., No. A25-1569 (Minn. App. June 22, 2026) (nonprecedential), a remodeling company’s lawyers withdrew, it had earlier failed to meet its discovery obligations, and it then missed the pretrial filing deadline and the pretrial hearing. As a sanction, the district court entered a default judgment of about $456,314 against the company and its owner, noting among other things that a corporation cannot be represented at trial by a non-lawyer. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Method

• Source. The opinion text comes from the HallApproved.com archive of Minnesota appellate opinions: 929 Court of Appeals opinions and 58 Supreme Court opinions released from January 5 through October 12, 2026, precedential and nonprecedential. Every weekly Court of Appeals release date in that period is present.
• First screen. A script removed the opinions whose district court case code settles the question: criminal, family, juvenile, probate, civil-commitment, housing-court eviction, and driver’s-license cases. It also removed 31 Court of Appeals opinions that had no case code and named no business in the caption, such as agency and harassment-order appeals. That left 342 opinions, including all 58 Supreme Court opinions.
• Business-dispute test. The 342 were classified with AI assistance under a written rule, reading each opinion’s caption and opening pages. A decision counts as a business dispute when it is about a business relationship or a business’s commercial dealings: disputes between businesses, among a company’s owners, between a business and a former employee over a non-compete or ownership terms, a contractor’s dispute over its work, or a business’s commercial contract with a government body. Personal-injury cases, residential landlord-tenant cases, homeowner insurance claims, individual employment-discrimination claims, and government licensing and regulation cases do not count. The rule was refined once, to treat licensing cases consistently, before the check below. This step marked 51 opinions as business disputes.
• Check. A second, independent read of every “yes” decision and a random 25% sample of the “no” decisions agreed with the first read on 120 of 123 decisions; the 3 disagreements were resolved by reading the opinion.
• Issues and outcomes. Each of the 51 opinions was then read in full to record every issue it involved, the main issue, what decided the appeal, and the outcome from the court’s own disposition line. One turned out to decide only a personal defamation claim, leaving 50. A decision is counted once even when it decided consolidated appeals. The eight decisions described above were also read in full individually and checked against every sentence this page says about them.

Limits of This Data

• The data covers decisions released through October 12, 2026, a little over nine months of the year. It does not include later releases.
• The counts in late September and October 2026 are lower than in earlier months. I could not check each weekly release against the courts’ own lists, because the State Law Library’s opinion archive does not accept automated access, so a small number of opinions may be missing.
• Appellate decisions show only the disputes a party appealed and the court decided in 2026. They do not show how many business disputes were filed, settled, or decided in district court.
• With 50 decisions, small differences between issues can be chance. The percentages above use only groups of 10 or more.
• Deciding whether a case is a business dispute takes judgment at the edges. The classification rule is stated above, and the business decisions are listed in the download below so a reader can check each one.

Download the Data

The list of all 50 business decisions, with each decision’s issues, outcome, a one-sentence summary of what decided it, and a link to the full opinion, is available as a spreadsheet file: minnesota-business-appeals-2026.csv. You may use the data with a link to this page.