Michael James Davis

Construes a settlement (and any contract) as a whole to give effect to all of its terms and avoid rendering provisions meaningless. A party urging a reading of one clause that would nullify the rest of the agreement will lose — here, the insurer's reading of a single release paragraph could not override the agreement's repeated statements that the judgment survived against insurance proceeds.

“A reviewing court must construe a contract as a whole so as to harmonize all provisions, if possible, and to avoid a construction that would render one or more provisions meaningless. ... Adopting United National’s construction would render the majority of the provisions in this contract unnecessary and obsolete.”

Applies newly-decided Eighth Circuit precedent promptly and directly, even mid-briefing: in Paulausky he adopted the Eighth Circuit's just-released physical-presence rule for remote workers under the Minnesota Human Rights Act, dismissing the state-law claims for lack of standing because the plaintiff had never set foot in Minnesota.

“Kuklenski affirmed the District Court decision that a remote employee cannot satisfy the 'works in' requirement with only non-physical-presence contacts with the state and must have a physical presence in Minnesota to be covered by the protections of the MHRA.”