The most expensive thing in this article is one sentence in Minn. R. Civ. P. 36.01. It turns a calendaring miss into a case-ending admission with no motion, no hearing, and no order:
Each matter of which an admission is requested shall be separately set forth. The matter is admitted unless within 30 days after service of the request, or within such shorter or longer time as the court may allow, the party to whom the request is directed serves upon the party requesting the admission a written answer or objection addressed to the matter, signed by the party or by the party’s attorney; but, unless the court shortens the time, a defendant shall not be required to serve answers or objections before the expiration of 45 days after service of the summons and complaint upon that defendant.
“The matter is admitted.” Not “may be deemed admitted on motion.” The admission happens by operation of the rule when the clock runs out, and Rule 36.02 then makes it “conclusively established unless the court on motion permits withdrawal or amendment of the admission.” A defendant who lets forty-two requests go unanswered has, in a real sense, already lost. And the burden of undoing it sits on the party that defaulted, not on the party that served the requests.
How do I withdraw or amend an admission?
You move, and you meet the two-part standard in Rule 36.02:
Subject to Rule 16 governing amendment of a pretrial order, the court may permit withdrawal or amendment when the presentation of the merits of the action will be subserved thereby and the party who obtained the admission fails to satisfy the court that withdrawal or amendment will prejudice that party in maintaining the action or defense on the merits.
The text tells you two things. This is a motion. There’s no self-help. Serving late answers doesn’t undo an admission that’s already happened. It may be evidence supporting the motion, but the admission stands until the court says otherwise. And the burden is split: the moving party has to show that the merits will be subserved, and the party who obtained the admission has to affirmatively satisfy the court on prejudice. “Prejudice” in the rule’s own terms is prejudice “in maintaining the action or defense on the merits” — not the ordinary letdown of losing a windfall.
Rule 36.02 also limits how far the admission reaches: any admission “is for the purpose of the pending action only and is not an admission by that party for any other purpose nor may it be used against that party in any other proceeding.”
If the response itself is bad, the requesting party has a remedy too. Under Rule 36.01, the requesting party “may move to determine the sufficiency of the answers or objections,” and if the court finds an answer noncompliant it “may order either that the matter is admitted or that an amended answer be served,” or put off final disposition to a pretrial conference or a set time before trial. Rule 37.01(d) governs expenses on that motion.
One more door the rule closes: you can’t object to a request for admission just because it goes to a contested issue. “A party who considers that a matter of which an admission has been requested presents a genuine issue for trial may not, on that ground alone, object to the request.” Deny it, or explain why you can’t admit or deny. And know that Rule 37.03(b) lets the requesting party recover the cost of proving what you refused to admit.
How many interrogatories may I serve in Minnesota?
Fifty. That’s not a typo carried over from some other state. Minn. R. Civ. P. 33.01(a):
No party may serve more than a total of 50 interrogatories upon any other party unless permitted to do so by the court upon motion, notice and a showing of good cause. In computing the total number of interrogatories each subdivision of separate questions shall be counted as an interrogatory.
The Advisory Committee Comment to the 1996 amendment explains that Minnesota deliberately didn’t adopt the federal 25-interrogatory limit adopted in 1993, because Minnesota had already imposed a numerical cap in 1975 and set it at 50. So if you’re coming from federal practice, you’ve got more room than you think. Serve 25 on the assumption that’s the ceiling and you’ve left something on the table.
The counting rule bites both ways. “[E]ach subdivision of separate questions shall be counted as an interrogatory,” and Rule 33.01(d) restates the limit as “not exceeding 50 in number including all discrete subparts.” A twelve-part contention interrogatory is twelve. Count before you serve, and count the other side’s set before you assume you have to answer every bit of it.
Rule 34 and Rule 36 work differently. Neither has a numerical limit in its own text. The ceiling comes from Rule 26.02(b)(1), which empowers the court to “establish or alter the limits on the number of depositions and interrogatories” and to “limit the length of depositions under Rule 30 and the number of requests under Rule 36,” on motion or on its own initiative after reasonable notice, and from Rule 26.02(b)(3), which requires the court to limit discovery that’s unreasonably cumulative or duplicative, or whose burden falls outside the proportionality standard in Rule 26.02(b). Nobody polices a 900-request document demand with a counting rule. Proportionality and a protective order under Rule 26.03 do that job.
When are written discovery responses due?
Thirty days across all three devices, with a 45-day floor for a newly served defendant on interrogatories and requests for admission.
- Interrogatories. Answers or objections within 30 days after service, “except that a defendant may serve answers or objections within 45 days after service of summons and complaint upon that defendant.” The court may enlarge or shorten the time on motion, notice, and good cause. Rule 33.01(b).
- Document requests. “The party upon whom the request is served must serve a written response within 30 days after the party is served (or deemed served pursuant to Rule 26.04(b)). The court may allow a shorter or longer time.” Rule 34.02(c)(1). The parenthetical matters: an early Rule 34 request delivered under Rule 26.04(b) is “considered to have been served when the parties have conferred and prepared a discovery plan as required by Rule 26.06(c),” so the 30 days runs from the conference, not from delivery.
- Requests for admission. 30 days after service of the request, with the same 45-days-after-the-summons floor for a defendant unless the court shortens it. Rule 36.01.
Watch what the deadlines run from. Everything here runs from service, and Rule 6.01(e) adds to the period: 3 days when the request was served by United States Mail, and 1 additional day when service was made by any other means and accomplished after 5:00 p.m. local Minnesota time on the day of service. Rule 6.01(a)(1) supplies the counting method: exclude the trigger day, count every day including weekends and holidays, and roll a last day that lands on a Saturday, Sunday, or legal holiday to the next day that isn’t one. Don’t compute a written-discovery deadline off a filing date. Discovery isn’t filed in Minnesota at all. Rule 5.04(b) excludes disclosures, expert reports, depositions, interrogatories, document requests, requests for admission, and the answers and responses to them from the filing requirement absent court order or rule, and Rule 5.04(c)(3) lets the administrator reject a discovery request or response tendered without the court’s express permission.
Before you serve anything, check whether discovery is open. Rule 26.04(a) bars parties from seeking discovery from any source before they’ve conferred and prepared a discovery plan under Rule 26.06(c), except in a proceeding exempt from initial disclosure under Rule 26.01(a)(2) or when allowed by stipulation or court order. Rule 26 and the discovery moratorium walks through that sequence in detail.
What does a proper objection look like?
Specific, grounded, and, for document requests, paired with a statement of whether anything is actually being held back.
Interrogatories. “Objections shall state with particularity the grounds for the objection and may be served either as a part of the document containing the answers or separately.” Rule 33.01(c). The rule spells out two consequences: the propounding party may move under Rule 37.01 as to any objection or failure to answer, and “[a]nswers to interrogatories to which objection has been made shall be deferred until the objections are determined.” The 1996 Committee Comment explains that Minnesota deliberately dropped an older rule that made the propounding party move within 15 days or waive. There’s now no deadline for challenging the objection, which means a boilerplate objection can sit there for months if nobody moves.
Document requests. Rule 34.02(c)(2) requires the response to state, item by item or category by category, either that inspection will be permitted as requested or “state with specificity the grounds for objecting to the request, including the reasons.” A responding party may choose to produce copies instead of permitting inspection, and then “[t]he production must then be completed no later than the time for inspection specified in the request or another reasonable time specified in the response.”
Then there’s the 2018 amendment, which changed practice more than anything else in Rule 34. Rule 34.02(c)(3):
An objection must state whether any responsive materials are being withheld on the basis of that objection. If objection is made to part of an item or category, that part shall be specified and inspection permitted of the remaining parts.
That sentence is how you tell an objection that’s theater from an objection that’s hiding documents. The Advisory Committee Comment to the 2018 amendments describes the federal version as having “curtailed one aspect of game-playing” and says the state court adopted it “to accomplish the same purpose.” The comment also makes clear that the rule “does not require a detailed log of all documents withheld,” but the objecting party has to make clear that documents are being withheld. Privilege claims are a separate matter, governed by Rule 26.02(f)(1), which requires an express claim and a description good enough to let other parties assess whether the privilege applies.
Requests for admission. “If objection is made, the reasons therefor shall be stated.” A denial “shall fairly meet the substance of the requested admission,” and a party qualifying or partly denying must “specify so much of it as is true and qualify or deny the remainder.” Lack of information is available only if “the party states that a reasonable inquiry has been made and that the information known or readily obtainable by the party is insufficient to enable the party to admit or deny.” Rule 36.01.
What form must interrogatory answers take?
This is where out-of-state counsel most often serves something that’s noncompliant on its face. Rule 33.01(d) imposes three form requirements, and a response that ignores any one of them is defective on its face.
Start with verification. Answers “shall be stated fully in writing and shall be signed under oath or penalty of perjury by the party served or, if the party served is the state, a corporation, a partnership, or an association, by any officer or managing agent, who shall furnish such information as is available.”
Next, the perjury declaration, if you go that route instead of a notary. The rule prescribes it:
All answers signed under penalty of perjury must have the signature affixed immediately below a declaration using substantially the following language: “I declare under penalty of perjury that everything I have stated in this document is true and correct.” In addition to the signature, the date of signing and the county and state where the document was signed shall be noted on the document.
That tracks Minn. Stat. § 358.116, which supplies the same declaration language and the same date-county-state requirement, and which provides that a person who signs knowing the document is false in any material respect “is guilty of perjury under section 609.48, even if the date, county, and state of signing are omitted from the document.” Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 15 carries the parallel definition for affidavits generally. The county and state aren’t decoration. The Committee explains they’re there “to provide information necessary to establish the fact and venue of possible perjury.”
And the one that’s easiest to miss: “A party shall restate the interrogatory being answered immediately preceding the answer to that interrogatory.” Rule 33.01(d). A response that just lists “ANSWER TO NO. 7” without the question above it doesn’t comply.
Objections and answers to interrogatories signed by counsel are also subject to Rule 26.07, under which the signature certifies, after reasonable inquiry, that the paper is warranted by existing law, not interposed for an improper purpose, and “not unreasonable or unduly burdensome or expensive, given the needs of the case.”
Can I answer an interrogatory by pointing at documents?
Yes, but only when the burden really is the same on both sides. Rule 33.03 lets a party specify business records (expressly including electronically stored information) from which the answer may be derived, and only where “the burden of deriving or ascertaining the answer is substantially the same for the party serving the interrogatory as for the party served.” The specification has to be detailed: “A specification shall be in sufficient detail as to permit the interrogating party to locate and to identify, as readily as can the party served, the records from which the answer may be ascertained.” Pointing at forty thousand pages of production by Bates range isn’t a specification.
How must documents actually be produced?
Rule 34.02(c)(5) sets three default rules, and all of them yield to stipulation or court order:
- Documents must be produced “as they are kept in the usual course of business at the time of the request,” and the producing party “may organize them to correspond to the categories in the request.”
- If the request does not specify a form for ESI, the responding party must produce “in a form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a reasonably usable form.”
- “A party need not produce the same electronically stored information in more than one form.”
The requesting party gets the first say on form. Rule 34.02(b)(3) allows the request to specify the form or forms for ESI, and Rule 34.02(c)(4) allows the response to object to a requested form. But if no form was specified, the responding party must state the form or forms it intends to use. A request that says nothing about form has given the point away.
Rule 34.02(b) also requires the request itself to “set forth with reasonable particularity each item or category of items to be inspected” and to “specify a reasonable time, place, and manner for the inspection and performing the related acts.”
Two limits on scope to keep in mind. Every Rule 34 request is bounded by Rule 26.02 by the express terms of Rule 34.01. And ESI from sources the responding party identifies as not reasonably accessible because of undue burden or cost is governed by the two-tier procedure in Rule 26.02(b)(2).
What about documents held by someone who is not a party?
Rule 34 doesn’t reach them. Rule 34.03(a) says so and sends you elsewhere: “As provided in Rule 45, a nonparty may be compelled to produce documents and electronically stored information and to permit an inspection.” Rule 34.03(b) keeps open the option of an independent action against a non-party for production. The notice obligations and the objection timeline on the Rule 45 route are materially different from anything in Rule 34, and getting them wrong is where new attorneys create real exposure. See subpoenas under Rule 45.
When the responses don’t come
Which provision applies depends on whether you got a bad response or no response at all. Inadequate answers and objections are handled by a motion to compel under Rule 37.01, where “an evasive or incomplete disclosure, answer, or response is to be treated as a failure to disclose, answer, or respond.” A total failure to serve answers to interrogatories or a written response to a Rule 34 request falls under Rule 37.04, which authorizes the sanctions in Rule 37.02(b)(1), (2), and (3) directly, and which adds that the failure “may not be excused on the ground that the discovery sought is objectionable unless the party failing to act has applied for a protective order as provided by Rule 26.03.” Compelling discovery under Rule 37 walks through the meet-and-confer certification and the fee-shifting defaults, and our client-facing article on discovery sanctions and spoliation covers the evidence-loss side.
Last thing. Whatever the rules say about timing, your scheduling order and the assigned judge’s standing orders and practice pointers govern your case, and they frequently impose requirements the rules don’t. They’re published on the district’s page at mncourts.gov. Read them before you serve your first set.
Madgett Law, LLC associates with lawyers on Minnesota matters. If you’ve got a written-discovery problem in a Minnesota case, send us a message.
Sources: Minn. R. Civ. P. 33.01(a)–(d), 33.02, 33.03 and the Advisory Committee Comments to the 1996 and 2015 amendments to Rule 33; Minn. R. Civ. P. 34.01, 34.02(a), 34.02(b)(1)–(3), 34.02(c)(1)–(5), 34.03(a)–(b) and the Advisory Committee Comment to the 2018 amendments to Rule 34; Minn. R. Civ. P. 36.01, 36.02; Minn. R. Civ. P. 26.02(b) and (b)(1)–(3), 26.02(f)(1), 26.03, 26.04(a), 26.04(b)(2), 26.07(a); Minn. R. Civ. P. 5.04(b), 5.04(c)(3); Minn. R. Civ. P. 6.01(a)(1), 6.01(e); Minn. R. Civ. P. 37.01(b)–(d), 37.03(b), 37.04; Minn. Gen. R. Prac. 15; Minn. Stat. § 358.116. Rule text: the Minnesota Revisor of Statutes’ publication of the Minnesota Rules of Civil Procedure and General Rules of Practice; statute: revisor.mn.gov; August 10, 2026. This article is general legal information about Minnesota procedure, not legal advice; it creates no attorney–client relationship and promises no outcome.