Hurt in Minnesota
Three things are true in the first week, and all three of them work against you: you are least able to research anything, the other side is already working, and some of the deadlines have already started running.
This page is the map. It does not try to tell you what to do — that depends on facts a website cannot know, which is a real limitation and not a formality. What it can do is show you which questions exist, in roughly the order they arrive, and point you at the page that answers each one from the source.
Nothing on this page is advice about your situation, and no article can be. If you want your own facts looked at, a Minnesota personal injury attorney can do that.
It just happened
The first days. What to do, what not to say, and which clocks have already started.
- The recorded statement: what an adjuster is doing when they ask for one
Two different companies ask for a recorded statement and the request means two different things. One duty is written into the No-Fault Act. The other is not written anywhere.
- Which clocks start the day you are hurt
Minnesota does not have one injury deadline. It has a general six-year limitation, several much shorter ones, at least three notice periods that expire long before any of them, and a rule about when a lawsuit counts as started that surprises people.
Who pays the bills
No-fault, health plans, liens, and the layers of coverage most people do not know they have.
- Minnesota no-fault (PIP): what it pays regardless of who caused the crash
Basic economic loss benefits are two separate buckets, not one. This is what each one covers, whose policy pays, when the payment is late, and what the insurer owes you when it is.
- Who gets repaid out of your recovery: health plans, hospitals, and subrogation
Several parties have a claim on the money before you see it, and each one operates under a different statute with different limits. Minnesota caps some of them. Federal law removes the cap from others entirely.
Making the claim
Fault, thresholds, damages, and what the adjuster on the other end is actually doing.
- Comparative fault: being partly at fault is not the end of a claim
Minnesota bars a claim only when the claimant's fault is greater than the fault of the person they are suing. That comparison is made defendant by defendant, and the arithmetic runs in an order most people get backwards.
- The tort threshold: when a Minnesota crash claim can include pain and suffering
Minnesota closes off damages for noneconomic detriment in most motor vehicle cases unless one of five statutory gates opens. Four of them have nothing to do with a dollar figure, and the dollar figure is not the sum of the medical bills.
When it goes wrong
Denials, lowball offers, disputed fault, and the deadlines that end a claim quietly.
- The release you are asked to sign, and what it gives up
A release is a contract, and the check is what you are paid for signing it. Minnesota law limits how far one may reach, refuses to let one defeat certain repayment rights, and requires a judge's approval before one binds a child.
Background
The statutes and doctrines the rest of the site refers back to.
Guides for this stage are in source verification and will appear here as each one clears. Nothing is published before its citations have been checked against the provision they come from.