News About Our Featured Minnesota Personal Injury Attorneys and Their Cases

“It's nice to get to know clients better and it's easier to do that here,” he said. “You can develop a closer bond if they can just stop by and chat. I think it helps them more to be able to do that.”

Kosieradzki's style of lawyering fits his personality and his roots, too, he said. Raised in Iowa, he describes himself as a “small town boy.” Not only did he want to work near his home, but he said Lakeville was ready for its own personal injury office.

“I recognized that the whole area south of the river is booming.” However, as an attorney with Sieben, Grose, VonHoltum & Carey, Kosieradzki has resources available to him to conduct large investigations into personal injury, wrongful death and product liability cases that he would be unable to do on his own.

For example, in 1996, Kosieradzki won an $8 million settlement for a teenager who had been injured in a sledding accident due to the unsafe design of the sled.

The case took more than five years to settle and went all the way to the Supreme Court, raising circumstances that Kosieradzki said would be more difficult to deal with in a smaller firm.

“I've had cases from moderate injury to catastrophic to death,” he said. “Sometimes I'd get out of the [clients'] houses and I'd cry like a baby.”

Kosieradzki said that while settlements are important for his clients' wellbeing, promotion of public safety issues through his cases is what drives his work.

“As a father of four children, nothing rips your heart up more than seeing children get hurt,” he said. “I'd much rather use this to educate the public.”

“Attorneys have the opportunity to learn about issues and create public awareness. If we can prevent a problem from happening again, then I've done my job. Really, one time is too many,” said Kosieradzki.

Kosieradzki said he is confident in his success. He has been named a Super Lawyer every year since 1998.

The title is given to the top 1 percent of licensed Minnesota lawyers through a nomination and survey process judged by other lawyers.

“I think it's an honor to be selected by my peers,” he said. “Every year you have to continue to show some degree of excellence, and the people voting know who's who.”

When asked to speculate about his award, Kosieradzki said he has a few ideas. “Number one, I've had a lot of results, both in and out of the courtroom,” he said. Not only does he point out his wins of the settlement cases, but also his way of relating to his clients, no matter who they are.

“I have the ability to portray things in a down-to-earth fashion. I can talk to people like I'm a regular guy,” said Kosieradzki.

And both his work and home, Lakeville, remind him of his hometown a little south. “Maybe it's my upbringing in a small town in Iowa.”

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His son, Thomas J. Carey, graduated from law school in 1927, practiced in Ely, Minn., and eventually succeeded his father as municipal judge in Virginia.

James' grandson – Shannon's father, John Carey – is a founding partner of Sieben, Grose, Von Holtum & Carey.

And Thomas H. Carey – John's twin – retired in 2000 as a Hennepin County district judge

Such multi-generational legal lineages aren't common in Minnesota, according to a spokeswoman at the Minnesota Bar Association and John Simonett, a former associate justice of the state's Supreme Court.

“There must be some that have come to a third generation, but a fourth? Dear lord, I'd say it's quite unusual,” Simonett said.

The newest member of the Carey legal dynasty earned her law degree last spring and is an associate at Sieben, Grose, Von Holtum & Carey.

“My father didn't encourage me or discourage me from going into the law, but he was the first person I told,” Keil said.

“I knew what my dad did. He left his work at his office; he didn't bring it home. But I always knew when he was gone for a few days that he was at trial somewhere.”

The Sieben firm threw a party Thursday in downtown Minneapolis for new lawyers, and within the party there was a special welcome for Shannon Carey Keil.

To help establish her credentials, the family brought in a century-old portrait of Judge James Patrick Carey.

“She's going to be one hell of a lawyer,” said Jim Carey, 47, the patriarch's namesake, Keil's cousin and a lawyer at the same firm.

“She's great with people, highly motivated, and she's smarter than I am – or her dad, or my father.”

His father, Tom Carey, a retired judge, affirmed that opinion.“Shannon is smarter than her dad and me put together,” he said, laughing

Iron Range

Tom Carey remembers walking the streets of Iron Range towns with his uncle and namesake, Judge Thomas Carey. “He had a route he covered, but in election years he doubled his distance. He would always walk slowly, with his hands clasped behind his back, and he knew everybody we met.

“He always brought us kids rolls of 100 pennies when he came to visit. In the early ‘40s, that was a treasure.”

Law was the center of the family environment, Tom Carey said.

“My father, who was not a lawyer, always talked about the law and Grandpa,” he said. “I have seen so often men and women of my age discouraging their children from going into their profession. ‘It isn't what it used to be' they say, or ‘It's too hard now.'

“But it's been just the opposite within my family. You couldn't choose a finer profession than the law. You couldn't head in a better direction than the courtroom. You couldn't be anything better than a judge.”

That his niece is the first woman in the family to practice law is not remarkable, he said.

Mary Jean Coyne, the late Minnesota Supreme Court justice, “was one of my mentors and the finest legal mind I ever met, bar none,” Judge Carey said. “But she was the only woman lawyer I knew. Now, at least 50 percent of law school graduates are women. That's a wonderful evolution.”

Keil, 31, first seriously thought about the law when she was 14 or 15, “but I decided against it,” she said. In college, she studied business, planning to go into human services.

“I wanted to help people,” she said. “I wanted to be the voice of the individual within the corporation.”

She is eager now to try that in courtrooms, she said, and to extend a family legacy.

“I knew what my dad did. He left his work at his office; he didn't bring it home. But I always knew when he was gone for a few days that he was at trial somewhere.”

“The family history isn't what made my decision,” she said. “But I am a little in awe of how far back it goes.”

So is her cousin, who has been in the family business for more than 20 years.

“There's been a lot of independent and strong-willed people in our family,” Jim Carey said. “Our fathers have great reputations in the legal community. Hopefully, we won't screw it up.”

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