Experience

Mike is a battle-tested trial lawyer who has won headline-grabbing cases and secured the largest jury verdict in Minnesota history—a $564 million verdict and total award of over $1.1 billion. 

He has been described publicly by colleagues as a “once in a generation trial lawyer” who “absolutely outworks everyone.” A former Robins Kaplan trial lawyer described Mike in the Star Tribune newspaper as “the best trial lawyer I have encountered in 42 years of practice…His ability to take complexity and reduce it to lay language for jurors is unmatched.” A major client described Mike as “a rock” who is “tenacious.” A court reporter who handled one of Mike’s trials years ago (that successfully settled before verdict) commented that Mike’s opening statement and cross-examinations were among the best she’s seen in 20 years of handling federal jury trials. 

Financial and Commercial Litigation

Mike has successfully handled multi-billion and multi-million-dollar cases on both sides of the “v.” On the plaintiff side, Mike recently tried and won a $1.1 billion award against BMO Harris Bank for BMO’s role in the Petters Ponzi scheme, one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history. Mike tried the case to a jury for a month and proved BMO aided and abetted breaches of fiduciary duty. During that case, Mike also proved that BMO intentionally destroyed millions of pages of evidence with the intent to keep that evidence out of the courtroom and two federal judges granted Mike’s client an adverse inference jury instruction where the jury was allowed to presume the destroyed evidence was harmful to BMO. BMO has reserved over a billion dollars to pay the judgment and was ordered to post a $1.158 billion bond as it tries to appeal the jury’s verdict. 

In another recent plaintiff case, Mike served as co-lead counsel for John. F. Kennedy, the Receiver for Education Corporation of America (ECA) where he helped secure a $28 million settlement without having to take a single deposition in the case. 

On the defensive side, Mike successfully handled a multi-billion-dollar defense case for a major bank against the People of the State of California where his client paid $0 to settle the case, while another major bank in a companion case (who used a large, international defense firm) had to pay eight figures to settle. As part of Mike’s strategy to win that case, Mike brought a third-party suit against nearly every major bank in the country who ultimately paid the state of California to settle the case.  

Mike isn’t afraid to take the biggest, most complex cases to a jury in order to hold bad actors accountable and to seek justice for his clients. His broad range of experience includes representing receivers, bankruptcy trustees, litigation trusts, banks, hedge funds, individuals, and companies of all sizes. 

He has sued (and defended) some of the biggest corporations in the world and he has sued nearly every major bank in the country, as well as officers and directors of companies. His breadth of knowledge and experience has allowed him to handle cases in a variety of diverse areas including:

• Commercial litigation
• Fraud
• Breach of fiduciary duty
• Ponzi schemes
• General business disputes
• Unfair competition
• Antitrust
• Intellectual Property disputes

Mike takes a hands-on approach to every case and runs his teams lean. He takes great pride in doing things differently than other lawyers typically do. He does so with creativity and a very strategic endgame in mind; whether it’s writing briefs, taking depositions, preparing witnesses, arguing motions, or talking with judges and juries. His refusal to become complacent with anything he does in life contributes to his success and shows in his results.