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• MUNICIPAL EXPERIENCE MUNICIPAL LITIGATION As the City is well aware, municipalities are often required to defend their actions and decisions in court. Our firm has extensive litigation experience in municipal matters. At the present time, the firm has over 100 active litigation files. Not only do we represent municipal clients in litigation not covered by insurance, but our experience in this area has been recognized by the Minnesota Counties Insurance Trust, the Minnesota Townships Insurance Trust, National Union Insurance Co, and Berkley Administrators, all of which assign cases to the firm for defense of both client and non -client municipalities. We are particularly proud of our efforts to establish and maintain the body of law pertaining to municipal immunities. In Menk v. Cottonwood County, 1999 WL 326133 (1999) we successfully argued that snowplowing decisions of a public works employee should be protected by immunity doctrine. In Ireland v. Carver County, 552 N.W.2d 269 (Minn. Ct. App. 1996), the Court of Appeals accepted our argument that decisions of the County Engineer involving sign placement were protected by the official immunity doctrine. In Blatz v. Scott County, 1998 WL 901744 (1998), our firm persuaded the court that the County could not be held responsible for errors in judgment involving emergency response • to a medical situation. In Habeck v. Ouverson, 669 N.W.2d 907 (Minn. Ct. App. 2003), we successfully argued that a county was protected by recreational -use immunity when an employee was giving wagon rides at the county fair. Other types of lawsuits handled in the past five years include cases involving civil rights, discrimination, labor disputes, personal injury, defamation, eminent domain, construction disputes, zoning disputes, ditch litigation and election contests. These cases were venued in both state and federal courts, and include considerable appellate work. DEVELOPMENT ISSUES 1. Land Use Regulation Developing areas wrestle with the transition from rural or semi -rural to urban communities. We have found that many of the more difficult day -to -day issues presented to municipalities relate to land use or development issues. It is not unusual for agendas to be dominated by land use items. Certainly land use issues can be high profile and politically challenging. Our attorneys bring practical life experience to their work in the land use area. Jay Squires served on the Andover Planning Commission for ten years as Chair, and was on the •