From today's opinion by Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz (D. Minn.) in Clobes v. NBCUniversal Media, LLC:
Clobes alleges that she was injured by a defamatory article published by NBC on September 24, 2019. Exactly two years after publication of the article—that is, on September 24, 2021—Clobes filed this lawsuit, but she did not serve the summons and complaint on NBC until December 23, 2021….
In this diversity action, "Minnesota's substantive law, including its statute of limitations, applies." Minnesota's substantive law includes Minnesota's rules about when a claim accrues and when a lawsuit is commenced, because those rules "are 'part and parcel of the statute of limitations.'" Under Minnesota law[,] … defamation claims (and claims, such as Clobes's, that arise from defamation) are subject to a two‐year statute of limitations …. [U]nder these rules it is clear that Clobes's lawsuit is barred. Clobes's cause of action accrued on September 24, 2019 (when NBC published the allegedly defamatory article), and she did not commence her lawsuit for purposes of Minnesota law until December 23, 2021 (when she served her summons and complaint), which was more than two years later.
Clobes argues, however, that her lawsuit is not barred because the two‐year limitations period was tolled by a session law passed by the Minnesota Legislature in response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. In April 2020, the Minnesota Legislature enacted a session law [Section 16] containing a series of COVID‐19 measures, including a provision affecting the running of statutes of limitations. Specifically, Section 16 provided:
