Wright v. Travelers Home and Marine Insurance Company, The

U.S. District Court, District of Minnesota November 7, 2024

Trial Court Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
DISTRICT OF MINNESOTA

Morgan Wright, File No. 23-cv-2646 (ECT/TNL)

Plaintiff,

v. OPINION AND ORDER

The Travelers Home and Marine Insurance
Company,

Defendant.
________________________________________________________________________
Frederic W. Knaak, Holstad & Knaak, PLC, St. Paul, MN, for Plaintiff Morgan Wright.
Leatha G. Wolter, M. Gregory Simpson, and Thomas J. Joyce, Meagher & Geer, PLLP,
Minneapolis, MN, for Defendant The Travelers Home and Marine Insurance Company.
________________________________________________________________________
In August 2021, a water pipe above Plaintiff Morgan Wright’s residence burst,
causing extensive damage to the residence and to Ms. Wright’s personal property. At the
time, the residence was insured under a policy issued by Defendant, The Travelers Home
and Marine Insurance Company. Ms. Wright filed a claim with Travelers.
In this case, Ms. Wright alleges that Travelers discriminated against her based on
her disabilities in its response to the claim. She asserts claims for unlawful business
discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act (or “MHRA”), Minn. Stat.
§ 363A.17, and under a Minneapolis ordinance, Minneapolis, Minn., Code of Ordinances
§ 139.40. Ms. Wright asserts no breach-of-contract claim.
Travelers seeks reconsideration of a bench ruling and order denying Travelers’
motion to dismiss Ms. Wright’s operative Amended Complaint. Travelers’ motion will be
denied because a reconsideration motion is not a proper vehicle to introduce a new legal
argument or authorities that could have been presented with the original motion.
Regardless, the authority Travelers cites does not show that the challenged order was

manifestly erroneous.
This is the case’s third round of motions, and a brief recap of the first two rounds
sets the table for the precise issue to be decided in this third round. In the first round, both
sides filed motions. Travelers moved to dismiss Ms. Wright’s then-operative original
Complaint under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), and Ms. Wright sought leave

to amend her original Complaint to add a bad faith claim under Minnesota’s Insurance
Standard of Conduct statute,

Minn. Stat. § 604.18.1

  I granted Travelers’ motion and denied 
Ms.  Wright’s.    See  Wright  v.  Travelers  Home  &  Marine  Ins.  Co.,  No.  23-cv-2646 
(ECT/TNL),

2024 WL 493879

, at *9 (D. Minn. Feb. 8, 2024).  The case was not dismissed 
outright, however.  Ms. Wright was given the opportunity to file an amended complaint, 

see

id.,

 and she did that, see ECF No. 36.  Familiarity with this first order is presumed here. 
    In  the  second  round,  Travelers  sought  dismissal  of  Ms.  Wright’s  Amended 
Complaint, again under Rule 12(b)(6).  To support this second motion, Travelers argued 
that Ms. Wright did not plausibly allege discriminatory animus, that her MHRA business-
discrimination claim was barred by the applicable one-year statute of limitations, and that 

her Minneapolis ordinance claim was barred by her failure to exhaust administrative 


1    More precisely, Ms. Wright sought reversal of Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung’s 
order denying Ms. Wright’s motion for leave to amend her original Complaint to add a bad 
faith claim.                                                              
remedies and a one-year limitations period.  I denied Travelers’ motion from the bench.  I 
concluded that Ms. Wright’s disability-discrimination allegations were sufficient: She 
alleged facts plausibly showing that Travelers knew of her disability and disparaged her 

because  of  her  disability,  causing  Ms.  Wright  to  suffer  emotional  distress.    I  also 
determined that Travelers’ limitations and administrative-exhaustion arguments implicated 
affirmative defenses that were not established by the Amended Complaint, making them 
inappropriate grounds for a Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal.  See Joyce v. Armstrong Teasdale, 
LLP,

635 F.3d 364, 367

 (8th Cir. 2011) (“As a general rule, the possible existence of a 

statute of limitations defense is not ordinarily a ground for Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal unless 
the complaint itself establishes the defense.” (quotation omitted)); see also Roiger v. 
Veterans Affs. Health Care Sys., No. 18-cv-00591 (ECT/TNL),

2019 WL 572655

, at *7 
(D. Minn. Feb. 12, 2019) (“The same holds true for the affirmative defense of exhaustion 
of administrative remedies: a complaint is subject to dismissal for failure to state a claim 

when ‘the allegations in the complaint suffice to establish that ground’—that is, when an 
affirmative defense is established on the ‘face’ of the complaint.” (quoting Jones v. Bock,

549 U.S. 199, 215

 (2007)).2                                               
    That brings us to where we are now.  After requesting and obtaining permission in 
compliance with D. Minn. LR 7.1(j), Travelers filed a motion to reconsider the denial of 

its  second  Rule  12(b)(6)  motion.    Travelers’  reconsideration  motion  is  grounded  on 


2    Travelers has cited no authority establishing or supporting the idea that Ms. Wright 
bore the burden to plead exhaustion of administrative remedies under the Minneapolis 
ordinance.                                                                
essentially one argument: Citing Krueger v. Zeman Construction Co.,

781 N.W.2d 858

 
(Minn. 2010), Travelers argues that a plaintiff must allege a contractual breach as an 
essential element of an MHRA business-discrimination claim.  Because Ms. Wright alleges 

no plausible contractual breach, Travelers argues, her MHRA claim must be dismissed.  
Travelers argues that Ms. Wright’s claim under the Minneapolis business-discrimination 
ordinance deserves the same result because the ordinance is textually identical to the 
MHRA.  This argument is not persuasive, and Travelers’ reconsideration motion will be 
denied.                                                                   

    The argument does not meet the rules governing reconsideration motions.  “Motions 
for reconsideration serve the limited purpose of ‘correct[ing] manifest errors of law or fact 
or . . . present[ing] newly discovered evidence.’”  Woodward v. Credit Serv. Int’l Corp., 
No. 23-cv-632 (KMM/ECW),

2024 WL 626904

, at *1 (D. Minn. Feb. 14, 2024) (quoting 
Hagerman v. Yukon Energy Corp.,

839 F.2d 407, 414

 (8th Cir. 1988)).  A reconsideration 

motion is “not the appropriate place to ‘tender new legal theories for the first time.’”  
Arnold v. ADT Sec. Servs., Inc.,

627 F.3d 716, 721

 (8th Cir. 2010) (quoting Hagerman,

839 F.2d at 414

).  Travelers’ lone reconsideration argument rests on new legal authority 
that could have been cited in Travelers’ second-round motion.  Beginning-to-end reviews 
of the briefs Travelers filed in support of its second Rule 12(b)(6) motion confirm that 

Travelers did not cite Krueger or any other authority supporting the conclusion that Ms. 
Wright’s claims failed specifically because she did not allege a contractual breach.  In other 
words, even if Travelers were right about Krueger, a reconsideration motion is not the place 
to raise the case or similar authorities for the first time.  The motion could be denied on 
just this basis.                                                          
    Regardless, the better take—certainly in this procedural context—is that Travelers’ 

understanding of Krueger is not correct.  In Krueger, the Minnesota Supreme Court 
answered whether Minn. Stat. § 363A.17(3) “grant[s] to individual employees of a party 
to a contract the right to bring an action personally for discrimination in the performance 
of the contract.”  Krueger,

781 N.W.2d at 863

. The court said no. It explained, in relevant
part:

We hold that Minn. Stat. § 363A.17(3) is unambiguous, and it
does not provide a cause of action for a person not a party to a
contract, the performance of which is affected by business
discrimination. A plain reading of section 363A.17(3) reveals
that the legislature prohibited sex discrimination in the making
or performance of a contract. Only a party to the contract can
make the contract or be held legally responsible to “perform”
pursuant to the contract. “Performance” is defined as “[t]he
successful completion of a contractual duty, usu[ally] resulting
in the performer’s release from any past or future liability.”
Black’s Law Dictionary 1252 (9th ed. 2009) (emphasis added).
“Performance” presupposes a contractual obligation to
perform; while a corporate party to a contract may use
employees to fulfill a contract, those employees have no rights
or obligations under the contract. Thus, the statute only
provides a cause of action to the person who is denied a
contract, or discriminated against in the performance of (or
terms or conditions [of]) the contract because of sex
discrimination.

Id. at 863–64 (footnote omitted; third bracket added). Applied here, Krueger’s central
holding seems beside the point; Ms. Wright was a party to the Travelers policy. Travelers
focuses on Krueger’s statement that “‘[p]erformance’ presupposes a contractual obligation
to perform.” Id. at 864. From this statement, Travelers infers that discrimination in a
contract’s “performance” also “presupposes the breach of a contractual obligation.” See
ECF No. 53 at 7. This inference is not justified. The Minnesota Supreme Court discussed
the meaning of “performance” to show the need for a contractual relationship—not a

contractual breach—as a prerequisite to suit under Minn. Stat. § 363A.17(3). If a
contractual breach were an element, then one would have expected the Minnesota Supreme
Court to identify a breach in Krueger. It didn’t. Consistent with that understanding of the
case, the dictionary the court relied on defined “performance” as the “successful completion
of a contractual duty.” Krueger,

781 N.W.2d at 864

 (quoting Black’s Law Dictionary 1252 

(9th ed. 2009) (emphasis added)).  Prohibited discrimination, in other words, can occur 
though the alleged discriminator has fulfilled its contractual obligations.  See

id.

 (“[A] plain 
reading of [§ 363A.17(3)] supports the conclusion that the legislature intended to provide 
contracting parties with the right to make and perform their contracts without being subject 
to illegal discrimination.”).  That is what Ms. Wright claims here.  The denial of Travelers’ 

second motion to dismiss was not manifestly erroneous.

ORDER

    Therefore, based on the foregoing, and on all the files, records, and proceedings 
herein, IT IS ORDERED THAT Defendant’s Motion to Reconsider [ECF No. 53] is 
DENIED.                                                                   


Dated:  November 7, 2024           s/ Eric C. Tostrud                     
                                  Eric C. Tostrud                        
                                  United States District Court