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D. Minn.Procedural orderFiled June 21, 2019

Nelson v. Repossessors, Inc.

Judge
Wilhelmina Wright
Docket
0:17-cv-03727
Court
U.S. District Court · District of Minnesota
Pages
2
Civil ProcedureMotion to Dismiss
In one sentence

In Nelson v. Repossessors, Judge Wright granted defendants’ motion and dismissed Nelson’s complaint without prejudice because he failed to prosecute.

Who this affects

Kurk Matthew Nelson’s complaint was dismissed without prejudice. Repossessors, Inc., Chase Towing & Transport, Inc., and Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc. obtained dismissal of that complaint.

What happened

Nelson v. Repossessors, Inc. involved a motion by the defendants to dismiss Kurk Matthew Nelson’s complaint because he had stopped pursuing the case.

Nelson had not communicated with the court, the parties, or their lawyers for nearly a year. His lawyer had been unable to reach him since July 2018, and a magistrate judge allowed the lawyer to withdraw in January 2019.

Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright granted the defendants’ motion and dismissed Nelson’s complaint without prejudice for failure to prosecute.

The detailed version

For law students, journalists, and other readers who want the full reasoning

Case
Nelson v. Repossessors, Inc. · No. 0:17-cv-03727
Judge
Wilhelmina Wright
Date
June 21, 2019

Background

Repossessors, Inc., Chase Towing & Transport, Inc., and Consumer Portfolio Services, Inc. jointly moved under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) to dismiss Kurk Matthew Nelson’s complaint with prejudice for failure to prosecute. The opinion also identifies a counterclaim and third-party claims, but the ruling addressed the dismissal of Nelson’s complaint.

Nelson had not communicated with the court or any party or lawyer in nearly a year. His lawyer had been unable to communicate with him since July 2018 despite multiple attempts. On January 3, 2019, Magistrate Judge Steven E. Rau granted the lawyer’s request to withdraw from representing Nelson without a replacement lawyer.

Ruling

The court concluded that Nelson had abandoned the action. Judge Wilhelmina M. Wright granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss and dismissed Nelson’s complaint without prejudice for failure to prosecute. Although the defendants requested dismissal with prejudice, the order states that the complaint was dismissed without prejudice.

The authoritative version

Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.

Open opinion PDF →
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