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Minn. Stat. § 645.17

PRESUMPTIONS IN ASCERTAINING LEGISLATIVE INTENT.

Applied in 466 court decisions — leading case Amaral v. Saint Cloud Hospital (1999)

Most recently applied in Drake Snell v. Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, in his official capacity, ... (May 2024)

1941 c 492 s 17

How often courts cite this section

197919902000201020202024230
citing decisions per year

Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.

In ascertaining the intention of the legislature the courts may be guided by the following presumptions:

(1) the legislature does not intend a result that is absurd, impossible of execution, or unreasonable;

(2) the legislature intends the entire statute to be effective and certain;

(3) the legislature does not intend to violate the Constitution of the United States or of this state;

(4) when a court of last resort has construed the language of a law, the legislature in subsequent laws on the same subject matter intends the same construction to be placed upon such language; and

(5) the legislature intends to favor the public interest as against any private interest.

Official source: Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Reproduced from public-domain Minnesota statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.