180 days, but from a genuinely distinctive starting point
Under Minn. Stat. § 466.05, anyone claiming damages from a municipality must present a notice of claim to the municipality's governing body within 180 days after the alleged loss or injury is discovered. This is a genuinely distinctive starting point — many comparable notice statutes in other states run from the date of the underlying occurrence itself, not from when the injury was actually discovered.
What the notice must contain
The notice must state the time, place, and circumstances of the loss or injury, the names of any municipal employees known to be involved, and the amount of compensation or other relief demanded. Leaving out the compensation amount doesn't invalidate the notice outright, but the claimant must then furnish that information within 15 days of a demand from the municipality.
Informal notice can be enough
The statute explicitly allows for substantial compliance: actual notice of sufficient facts to reasonably put the municipality or its insurer on notice of a possible claim is construed to satisfy the requirement, even if it doesn't take the form of a perfectly formal written claim.
A genuinely accommodating wrongful death rule
For wrongful death claims specifically, notice may be presented by the personal representative, surviving spouse, or next of kin. And in a detail that genuinely reduces the burden on grieving families, if the deceased person had already given notice that would have been sufficient had they lived, a wrongful death action may be brought without any additional notice at all.
A history worth knowing: an earlier version was struck down
This same statute once also imposed a separate, shorter statute of limitations specifically for municipal tort claims. The Minnesota Supreme Court struck that provision down as unconstitutional in a case called Kossak, leaving the notice requirement discussed here as the operative rule, alongside the general statute of limitations that would otherwise apply to the underlying claim.