When most people purchase property, they assume something simple: they can get to it.
That assumption sat at the center of a long-running Minnesota property dispute now involving multiple court cases, a contested rural road, and a key legal question about title insurance coverage.
Burns & Hansen attorneys Kiley Adams and Kirk Tisher have been in the middle of that fight, representing the family in both state and federal court. Their recent federal court win—requiring a title insurance company to cover legal fees—adds an important layer to an already complex property access dispute.
“You assume that you have access to the place that you’re going,” Kirk said. “You assume that you can drive there. Your school bus can come get your kids.”
But for one Minnesota family, that basic assumption turned into years of litigation over whether the road to their home legally exists—and who should bear the cost of fighting that battle.
Below, Kiley and Kirk break down the case, their legal strategy, and what it means for property owners and attorneys alike.
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- Kiley I. Eichelberger
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- Kirk A. Tisher
Q&A: Burns & Hansen on Title Insurance, Road Status, and Property Access
Q: For readers unfamiliar with the case, what has the Crisman family been dealing with?
Kirk: Anybody who’s purchased a property assumes they can get to it. That was the basic starting point here. Our clients bought the property and later found out there was a problem with the road. There were people saying, essentially, “You can’t actually use this road. There’s no road that physically goes to your house that has public access.”
That started with earlier litigation over maintenance, but it then became the current state court case about whether they can even legally access their property on Hornet Street, which is the road they use now.
Kiley: The general dispute is about the road, and both state and federal cases are about that road in different ways. The state court action is a dispute over who is going to pay for the maintenance and repair of the road. The federal court action is about who is going to pay for the representation in the road dispute.
What makes the case so compelling is that it’s a real meeting of the legal and the practical. There are multiple cases, multiple theories of relief, and a lot of legal issues. But at the end of the day, the practical impact is real for the clients and something everyone can understand. Can these people drive up and down the road? Is it being plowed? Can the bus drive down the road to pick up their kids? Can they get mail delivered? Where is their mailbox?
Q: What was Burns & Hansen brought in to do?
Kiley: The case originated at our firm from an appeal. It had been handled by different district court counsel, and it had an initial trial. We took the case on appeal, and it has now lived with us since then. There is now a new state court action as well as the federal court action, which was originally started by another counsel. It has had multiple iterations, but Kirk and I are involved in that part as well.
Kirk: The problem we were asked to solve was this: our clients were facing a situation where they were either losing access to their property or having to spend a lot of money in attorney’s fees to litigate that issue through trial, even though they believed they had an insurance policy that should help them out. These are ordinary people running a small business farm. We were trying to help them avail themselves of the contractual rights they have and get the help the insurer promised to give them.
Q: What is the core legal issue in this Minnesota road dispute?
Kiley: If you were to pick one through line through all of the cases, it would be this: what is the legal status and identity of this road? That is the issue we have continued to try to answer satisfactorily. Is it a town road? Is it a county road? Is it a public road? Is it a highway? Is it even a road?
People use words like street, avenue, boulevard, and road in ordinary conversation, but the law has very real terms with legal consequences. Under the Minnesota statutory scheme, the relevant zoning rules, and the township’s own bylaws, we’ve been trying to determine the identity of the road, because from that should flow everything else.
Once you can identify what the road is, you should be able to answer who should maintain it, who should be able to use it, whether it should be used by the public or by private citizens, where the road exists, and how long it has existed there.
Q: Why has something as simple as a “road” become so complicated?
Kiley: It has raised interesting questions about the status of roads in Minnesota overall. A lot of the answers we end up coming up with lead to bigger questions. Does that mean there are thousands of roads in Minnesota that have fallen through the legal cracks? Is that really the solution?
For people who are property law nerds like Kirk and me, that’s interesting. But for our clients, what matters is this road specifically and how we can most effectively, from both a cost and time perspective, identify its status and move forward.
Kirk: There are bigger implications, but this is really about somebody who just wants to drive to their property. They don’t want to pay their lawyers a ton of money to litigate that, and they think they have coverage. We’re trying to help them solve the problem, and solve it in the most cost-effective way.
Q: How did the title insurance dispute become a federal case?
Kirk: Whenever you close on a property, you buy title insurance. Everybody does it. And you would think this is the sort of thing title insurance should cover, because access is one of the items covered in title insurance.
So the clients tendered the matter to their title insurer. They essentially said, “Could you help us out?” and they were told no. The insurer changed its rationales over time, but basically they were saying, “We don’t think there’s a good argument that you don’t have access, so we’re not going to provide coverage.”
That meant we had to take the insurer to court to try to make the insurer actually defend this family and, if necessary, pay for damages if they don’t have access. That’s what the federal case was about.
Q: What persuaded the judge to rule that the insurer had to cover legal fees?
Kirk: What the law says is that an insurer has to defend its insured if there is a claim against them that arguably implicates coverage. It does not have to be a claim that is definitely covered. It has to be one that arguably implicates coverage. That standard is very favorable to the insured.
The judge understood that. He recognized that the question was not whether every issue in the case had already been finally decided, but whether the claim arguably fell within the policy.
Kiley: Our briefing really tried to highlight that standard. There was a lot of back-and-forth case law and a lot of interesting property issues between the attorneys. But we kept going back to the foundational principle: the question before the judge was whether this falls arguably within the scope of coverage.
We wanted to make sure we were framing the issue in a way that made it approachable for the judge. At that stage, the court was not being asked to solve every issue in the entire dispute. It was being asked a narrower legal question. Reading the order, I think the court was persuaded by that.
Q: What does this win mean for the family?
Kiley: Practically speaking, the clients have put a lot of time, effort, and energy into fighting this. So, this was a huge win and a huge morale boost. It gave us traction. It gave us some high ground to operate from and hopefully move things forward.
There is also a real sense of being heard by the court system and being seen by the court system. Not just getting a legal answer, but having the court recognize how they interacted with the legal system and with their insurance company.
Kirk: Sometimes we lose perspective on how complicated these situations are for the people living through them. Here, the judge understood the family’s problem and came to the right conclusion.
Q: What does this case say about how Burns & Hansen works?
Kirk: Sometimes another lawyer is handling the underlying case, tenders the issue to an insurer, gets told no, and does not want to take on a separate insurance coverage fight. That is the type of matter we can step in and handle.
We want to be the firm that comes up when somebody says, “I have this coverage dispute. I have this insurance issue. I’m busy litigating the underlying case.” We can take on that piece, and we like to work with co-counsel.
Kiley: That is a huge part of our appellate practice. We regularly get referrals from other attorneys who want us to help on appeal. And internally, this case shows that we can handle multiple connected matters at once.
We can assign attorneys to different lanes, but because we’re all at the same firm, we can walk down the hall, talk to each other, and make sure our overall strategy makes sense.
A Case About More Than a Road
At its core, this Minnesota property dispute raises complex legal questions about road status, title insurance coverage, and municipal responsibility. But as Kiley and Kirk emphasize, it ultimately comes down to something much simpler: whether a family can reliably access their home.
For Burns & Hansen, the case reflects a broader approach—one that combines technical legal strategy with a clear focus on real-world impact. From appellate work to insurance coverage disputes, the firm’s role often begins where other matters become too complex or too fragmented to handle alone.
And in this case, that meant helping a family navigate not just what the law says about a road—but what it means for their daily lives.