FELA & Railroad Injury Attorney in St Paul, Minnesota

Appellate Practice Cases

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Here at the firm we do not only trial practice but if a case is appealed by the railroad as sometimes happens then we have to do what’s called appellate practice. I have one of the best appellate practice lawyers working with me who used to work for the court of appeals here in Minnesota, his name’s Chris Bowman. But I’ve actually done some appellate practice myself. I prefer to have someone else work on it also but I was asked twice to assist various organizations in railroad cases in appellate practice. I’ve done some of my own appeals int eh past and argued in both the Minnesota Supreme Court, the US Court of Appeals and for the eighth circuit, the ninth circuit. And I’ve had two cases, actually, three cases that I’ve had to have briefs written for the US Supreme Court. One was one of my cases I tried many years ago and I did the briefing on that.

And then, more recently in a case called Norfolk & Western Railway vs. Freeman Ayers the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen asked me to write a brief or our firm to write a brief for them in the Supreme Court on that case. It wasn’t our case but we wanted to make sure the Supreme Court did it right. And I can show you, this is a copy of the brief that we wrote and if you look on it, this is called an amicus brief, you’ll see my name on there. I was the admitted lawyer that filed the brief and our firm did this free of charge for the union.

And we also did one more recently in the case of CSX Transportation vs. Robert McBride. And this was a case where ARLA, the lawyer’s organization that represents railroad lawyers asked me to again, write an amicus brief for them, and myself and people in our firm put that together. And both of those cases the Supreme Court ruled our way. And so, they’re big victories for railroad workers. So that’s the ultimate in appellate practice.

But if you win a trial the odds are they will at least appeal back to the trial court and we’re well versed to do it. We’ve got every brief we’ve ever done. As a matter of fact, I’m the author of four books on railroad law, four different additions of the railroad law, kind of the Bible, which I can show you. But we keep up with the law, we really do, and we have to and lawyers should keep up with it. And that’s another reason with our firms 90 years of experience, my 40 years plus, and all the experience in the firm I can’t think of a firm that’s better equipped to represent people either in their case for trial or on appeal.

St. Paul, MN personal injury lawyer John D. Magnuson talks about his firm’s illustrious work in appellate practice cases.

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