What a new appellate decision gets right—and what it accidentally exposes about how trust in the judicial system erodes.
On February 2, 2026, the Minnesota Court of Appeals decided Zinda v. Heintzeman, a case where the appellant argued that District Court Judge Kristine DeMay showed bias because of “omitted” text behind ellipses.
The Court of Appeals rejected the bias claim—but not because the issue was silly. The court rejected it because the source of the ellipses mattered: the ellipses were already in the original post, and the appellant didn’t clarify that fact. Under those circumstances, the district court could reasonably assume something had been removed, and that assumption did not demonstrate bias.
That distinction—who put the ellipses there—is the legal backdrop. And it’s also why Zinda is a useful lens for revisiting what happened in Stevenson v. Stevenson (56-CV-20-2928), where Judge Kevin Miller’s June 16, 2023 summary judgment order contains repeated ellipses, omissions, and punctuation choices that (in our view) distort meaning in ways that go far beyond “ellipses in original.”
Zinda turns on a narrow fact: the ellipses were already there.
But what happens when that fact is missing—when ellipses are used as an editorial tool, not a faithful quotation?
And what happens when the omitted words aren’t harmless, but relevant, material, or contradictory to the court’s narrative?
What Zinda tells us about ellipses
In Zinda, the Court of Appeals essentially says:
- An ellipsis commonly signals that something has been omitted.
- If the record doesn’t make clear the ellipsis was part of the original quote, a court may infer the quoter removed text.
- Even if that inference is wrong, it doesn’t, by itself, prove bias.
So far, so good.
But Zinda also contains a detail that matters beyond the bias question. In the underlying district court order, the judge treated ellipses as a serious signal—not a trivial punctuation mark—observing that a party’s use of ellipses can imply words were intentionally omitted, and that deleting words from a quote can “significantly alter the original meaning,” “change the context or implication,” and even leave a claim “without factual support.”
That observation wasn’t the basis for reversal in Zinda, because the Court of Appeals concluded the district court’s inference was understandable given the common use of ellipses and the appellant’s failure to clarify that the ellipses were in the original post.
Still, the point stands: Minnesota courts recognize that selective omission is not harmless. It can change meaning—and change outcomes.
And Zinda underscores something bigger: ellipses are not “neutral punctuation.” They’re editorial power. They can remove context, soften an accusation, harden an accusation, or make a statement seem conditional when it wasn’t.
And that’s where our case diverges—sharply.
In Stevenson, the order acknowledges the risk—then uses ellipses anyway
In the June 16, 2023 order, the court acknowledges that many quoted messages already contain ellipses, and says it will use a different marker (stars) when the court itself needs to indicate omitted material.
That sounds like a safeguard.
But a safeguard only protects the record if it is used consistently—and if omissions are not used to reshape meaning where meaning matters most: legal standards, “key” quotations, and the context that determines what words “naturally and presumably” convey.
Example 1: When “…” erases the legal standard
In the June 16, 2023 order, the court quotes defamation-per-se law using an ellipsis:
Words that “would naturally and presumably be understood … under the circumstances in which they are used.”
That ellipsis matters. Because the full formulation includes an additional phrase:
“… understood, in the connection and under the circumstances in which they are used …”
“In the connection” is not decorative. It is the built-in instruction not to sever words from their setting—exactly what an ellipsis can do if it cuts away the connective tissue. It’s a reminder that meaning is tethered to context, not just isolated words. Removing it is not a typo-level change. It is a meaning-level change.
Example 2: When an ellipsis removes the Restatement’s “knowledge + proceeding” rule
In the IIED analysis, the order quotes the Restatement and uses ellipses in a way that trims the explanatory core—the part that explains how known susceptibility can transform conduct.
Order (summary-judgment quotation):
“The Restatement notes that the ‘extreme and outrageous character of [an actor’s] conduct may arise from the actor’s knowledge that the other is peculiarly susceptible to emotional distress, by reason of some physical or mental condition or peculiarity … when the actor proceeds in the face of such knowledge….’”
Restatement (Second) of Torts § 46, comment f (full text):
“The extreme and outrageous character of the conduct may arise from the actor’s knowledge that the other is peculiarly susceptible to emotional distress, by reason of some physical or mental condition or peculiarity. The conduct may become heartless, flagrant, and outrageous when the actor proceeds in the face of such knowledge, where it would not be so if he did not know.”
What’s removed isn’t rhetorical flourish. It’s the Restatement’s operative explanation: not merely that the actor knows the person is vulnerable, but that the actor proceeds anyway—and that combination can change the character of the conduct into something “heartless, flagrant, and outrageous.”
That matters here because the record includes specific notice. Craig reported a panic attack triggered by the first contact. Marie told Sean that if he had checked with her, he would have learned she was estranged from her father, suffered lifelong recurring nightmares, and that Sean’s contact could put her and her daughters at risk. The order itself acknowledges that Plaintiffs’ emails informed Sean that Marie was “especially sensitive” on the subject of her father.
And there is record evidence of proceeding after that notice. The order recounts that Sean later printed and mailed the emails to Marie’s father and then sent another letter. The Court of Appeals likewise summarized the allegation that despite knowing the first letter caused severe distress, Sean wrote to Marie’s father two more times.
This is where the omission becomes especially consequential. In the same analysis, the order concludes that Sean’s conduct was not “outrageous.” Yet the Restatement passage the order quotes is the very passage that explains how conduct can become outrageous when an actor proceeds in the face of known vulnerability. Trimming that explanation doesn’t just shorten the quotation—it narrows the reader’s view of the standard at the exact moment the court applies it.
And the summary-judgment hearing transcript shows the issue wasn’t hidden from the court:
THE COURT: Let me ask, you would agree though that after Sean became aware that Marie was aware that there was a letter sent to [Marie’s father]… that he sent correspondence after that.
MR. TENTINGER: That is correct.
THE COURT: Okay.
Taken together, this is the problem: the Restatement’s full comment doesn’t stop at “susceptibility.” It explains the turning point—conduct can become “heartless, flagrant, and outrageous” when a person proceeds in the face of known vulnerability. The record here squarely presented that sequence: notice, harm, and continued contact—and the hearing transcript confirms the court understood the point.
So from the public’s perspective, a fair question follows: why quote the Restatement while trimming the very language that most directly describes the “knowledge + proceeding” mechanism at issue? If that mechanism does not fit the facts, quoting the Restatement in full should only clarify that. If it does fit, removing the operative language changes what the reader is told the law actually says.
Example 3: When the court “discovers none” of what it already cited
Selective presentation isn’t limited to facts. It can reshape the legal landscape the reader thinks exists.
In my July 26, 2024 sworn declaration, I describe a moment where the court did more than disagree with our IIED theory — it portrayed the supporting law as nonexistent:
“Plaintiffs cite no case, in this or any other jurisdiction, where an emotional distress claim was sustained based on such a theory, and the Court discovers none.”
But Plaintiffs did cite Minnesota case law — including Cafferty v. Garcia’s of Scottsdale, which was cited multiple times in Plaintiffs’ memorandum.
And the contradiction sharpens: Judge Miller himself cited Cafferty months earlier, in a previous order, when outlining what Marie would have to do to prove her IIED claim.
So from the reader’s perspective, this becomes a fair and unavoidable question: How can an order tell the public the law doesn’t exist, when the case was cited by Plaintiffs — and even cited by the same judge earlier in the case?
Because if the authority is there, but the order tells the reader it isn’t, that isn’t a neutral omission. It doesn’t just affect a footnote. It affects how inevitable the outcome appears — and how confidently the public can assume the decision was reached by applying the law to the record, rather than by editing what the reader is allowed to see.
Example 4: When a quote about “substantial truth” omits “jury”
In the defamation analysis, the order quotes McKee v. Laurion for the “substance, gist, sting” concept of substantial truth—again using ellipses:
“If the statement is true in substance, minor inaccuracies … are immaterial … so long as the substance, the gist, the sting, of the … charge is justified.”
Here’s a key detail in that quotation. McKee doesn’t say “the … charge.” It says “the substance, the gist, the sting, of the libelous charge.” When “libelous” disappears behind an ellipsis, the reader is left with a blander, generic “charge,” rather than what the passage is actually describing—the alleged defamatory sting itself. It doesn’t change the doctrine, but it does soften the frame at the exact moment the court is explaining why the statement isn’t actionable.
And McKee’s surrounding paragraph includes another sentence the order does not include:
“As a general rule, the truth or falsity of a statement is a question for the jury.”
When a summary-judgment order leans heavily on truth concepts while omitting a “jury” sentence immediately adjacent to the quoted material, it doesn’t just shorten a citation—it risks reshaping what the citation communicates to the reader about who decides the point.
Example 5: When omitted words turn restraint into “subjunctive grammar,” and context into “metaphor”
In the order’s analysis of Renee’s “confinement” statement, the court quotes only part of the sentence and then treats it as “subjunctive” grammar—an interpretation that depends on what is left out.
Order (partial quotation):
“Even if you wanted to leave your confinement…”
Full sentence (complete quotation):
“Even if you wanted to leave your confinement, I doubt that Craig has allowed you the means to do so.”
The omitted clause is not incidental. It supplies the mechanism of restraint—the “means”—and it shifts the statement from conditional phrasing to an implied factual assertion about what Craig has allegedly done.
The same pattern appears in the order’s treatment of another statement as “metaphorical,” again while quoting only a fraction of the sentence.
Order (partial quotation):
“Go out her own front door without holding her daddy’s hand.”
Full sentence (complete quotation):
“… who can’t go out her own front door without holding her daddy’s hand, and who is incapable of even having a thought without daddy’s permission.”
Those additional clauses change the context and the implication. They move the language from a figurative image to an alleged dynamic of control and incapacity. If those words are removed, labeling what remains as “metaphor” becomes much easier—and potentially self-justifying.
And that’s why this matters. Whether a statement is metaphor, implication, or factual assertion is often the whole ballgame in defamation analysis. If context is removed first, the label can do the rest: the reader is handed the conclusion, and the evidence needed to evaluate it is edited out.
When the “meaning” is the point, clipping the words changes the test
And it’s worth saying plainly: these aren’t academic edits. The allegations at issue here weren’t minor slights—they were claims implying spousal abuse, and claims suggesting confinement or coercive control. Those allegations are false. I categorically deny them. (Just as Marie categorically denied them in her deposition testimony and declarations.)
And when the alleged “meaning” is abuse or confinement, precision should increase—not decrease.
Rhetorically, this is the part that should make any reader stop: why quote less than the full statement at the exact moment the court is deciding what the statement means? If the statement isn’t defamatory, completeness helps. If completeness changes the analysis, that tells you exactly why the missing words matter.
In defamation, meaning isn’t determined in a vacuum. It’s tested against how real people reasonably understood the words in context. That’s why it matters when the record contains direct evidence that readers did understand the statements to imply abuse—yet that evidence disappears from the court’s narrative.
In my sworn declaration, I describe how the order states Defendants’ statements “cannot be read” as implying criminal abuse, while ignoring record evidence that multiple people understood the communications to imply exactly that—including a text message stating the “most concerning” part of the letter was the statement implying Marie was being endangered or abused, and testimony that family members were actively discussing whether the statements suggested spousal abuse.
And this is where the irony becomes impossible to ignore: In a defamation case, the exact words are the evidence—so when the words are clipped, the evidence is clipped. Meaning is the issue. Context is the issue. So what does it mean when a court omits part of an allegedly defamatory statement—then tells readers the statement isn’t defamatory? If you change what the words say, or what they reasonably imply, you don’t just shorten a quote. You change the question the law is supposed to answer.
The statistical pattern: not just one odd ellipsis
In my sworn declaration, I described a distribution analysis of Judge Miller’s civil summary judgment orders filed from June 1, 2018 through December 31, 2023. I analyzed 35 orders.
Across those 35 orders, ellipses (counting “…”, “. . .”, and “* * *”) appeared in 7 of 35 orders—20% of the total.
But the distribution was not even. In the June 16, 2023 order, the order in our case, ellipses appeared five times more often than in any other summary judgment order—and almost twice as often as all other summary judgment orders combined:
Because ellipses can be used legitimately, I excluded legitimate uses and analyzed what remained. Using that approach, I found:
- 9 instances where text was replaced by an ellipsis and the omitted material was clearly relevant and significant
- 3 instances where relevant and material portions of quotations were missing without any ellipsis or marker
- 7 additional instances where relevant and material information was omitted with no indication, and where the omitted content contradicted the court’s statements or conclusions
In total: 19 instances in the June 16, 2023 order where relevant and material information was concealed by ellipses or omitted without denoting the omission.
Using the same criteria, I found zero instances of concealed relevant and material information in Judge Miller’s other 34 summary judgment orders:
For an ordinary reader, that distribution doesn’t register as a quirky punctuation habit. It reads like a pattern. Nineteen meaning-altering omissions in a single order—followed by none in the other thirty-four—doesn’t feel accidental; it feels selected. And once a citizen suspects that the “official story” was produced by trimming inconvenient context rather than confronting it, trust doesn’t merely weaken—it collapses into the question every court should fear: Was the law applied to the record, or was the record edited to fit the result?
Zinda turns on uncertainty about whether the ellipses were original; Stevenson turns on something more unsettling—omissions introduced in the court’s own telling of the record and the governing standards.
That’s why Zinda matters: it shows courts understand that ellipses can change meaning—and it’s why the pattern in Stevenson matters even more, because it doesn’t end at summary judgment.
Beyond summary judgment: the same editing pattern appears elsewhere
Zinda invites a simple distinction: did the judge add the ellipses, or were the ellipses already there? If punctuation is faithfully reproduced from the source, the “bias” inference weakens. But that’s also exactly why a harder question matters:
What if the omission isn’t in the original text — what if it’s introduced by the court? What if what’s removed is important, relevant, or even contradictory?
In our case, the concern isn’t limited to summary judgment. In a December 6, 2022 order addressing pretrial motions, the court described Plaintiffs’ discovery Request No. 8 — a request aimed at obtaining missing text messages identified by carrier call-detail records.
Here is how the order restated the request:
Order (restated version):
“produce all documents and [electronically stored information] comprising texts between [Defendants] between April 1, 2019 and November 19, 2020, which discuss any aspect of this case, Plaintiffs, [Marie’s daughter], Miranda, [Marie’s father], or Karen, including but not limited to, the … texts which the call detail records [obtained from the phone carriers indicate were sent between Defendants].” (Note: Justice-Denied has removed the name of Marie’s father and daughter from this quote to protect their privacy. The remaining bracketed text was inserted by the Court.)
Now compare that to what the request actually said:
Request No. 8 (full text):
“Please produce all documents and ESI comprising texts between you and Lisa, Renee, or Ashley between April 1, 2019 and November 19, 2020, which discuss any aspect of this case, Plaintiffs, [Marie’s daughter], Miranda, [Marie’s father], or Karen, including, but not limited to, the 239 texts which the call detail records from AT&T indicate you exchanged with Lisa, the 398 texts you exchanged with Renee, and the 921 texts you exchanged with Ashley. If any of these texts cannot currently be found on your phone, please provide them using a backup program, such as the two programs (SyncTech SMS Backup & Restore and GilApps SMS Backup & Print) you have used previously during discovery.” (Note: Justice-Denied has removed the name of Marie’s father and daughter from this quote to protect their privacy. The remaining bracketed text was inserted by the Court.)
This is what makes the pattern hard to dismiss. The order’s version keeps the general theme (“produce texts”) while removing the very specifics that made the request concrete and verifiable: who the texts were with, how many the carriers indicated existed, and the explicit instruction to use known backup programs if the texts were missing from the phone.
That matters because omissions like these don’t merely “shorten” a quotation. They can change what the record appears to show, and they can blur the factual foundation on which later conclusions are built. And once that door is open, readers are left with an unavoidable question: if courts treat “who added the ellipses” as decisive in Zinda, what should happen when the court itself does the editing?
The backup language is a clear example of that problem.
Why the backup language matters
The “backup program” line wasn’t a side note. It was the functional core of the original discovery request.
The dispute wasn’t whether texts existed in the abstract. It was whether missing texts—identified by call-detail records—could be produced when they were no longer on the phone. Request No. 8 did exactly what a practical discovery request should do: it identified the missing sets, quantified them, and then specified how to produce them if the phone no longer contained them—by using recovery tools the defendant had already used during discovery.
That’s why the timing of the omission matters. Plaintiffs had already informed the court—multiple times—about the existence and importance of Sean’s backups before the December 6, 2022 order that omitted the backup reference. And the court was notified repeatedly again afterward.
Notifications to the court regarding Sean’s backups (summary):
- September 23, 2021 — Plaintiffs’ reply memo (motion to compel)
- September 24, 2021 — motion to compel hearing
- October 31, 2022 — supplemental declaration
- December 5, 2022 — letter to the court regarding discovery issues
- December 6, 2022 — order restating Request No. 8 (backup language omitted)
- March 1, 2023 — Plaintiffs’ summary-judgment opposition memo
- March 1, 2023 — Craig Stevenson declaration
- March 22, 2023 — amended Craig Stevenson declaration
- September 11, 2023 — Plaintiffs’ sanctions opposition memo
- September 11, 2023 — Craig Stevenson sanctions declaration
So the question isn’t just whether the order shortened a discovery request. It’s whether the order removed the very instruction that made missing evidence recoverable—at a time when the court had already been alerted to why recoverability mattered.
The court’s own framing of the dispute makes the omission even more consequential. In the December 6, 2022 order, the court stated:
“The Court finds it difficult to conclude, at this juncture, that there is good cause to extend discovery. Virtually all of the additional discovery Plaintiffs seek relates exclusively to their civil conspiracy claims, and exclusively to the element of that claim that requires the existence of a conspiracy.”
But Request No. 8, as written, did not read like a narrow “conspiracy-only” request. It sought specific missing text-message sets between identified people during a defined time period, quantified the missing messages using carrier records, and then provided the practical mechanism for producing them if they were no longer on the phone—through backups.
And Plaintiffs had record-based reasons to take that mechanism seriously, including evidence that Sean printed complete text histories with at least one contact after a preservation notice, and evidence from the backup-program developer about how the tool stores all messages with all contacts in a single file.
If those backups were capable of preserving complete text histories, then omitting the recovery mechanism while simultaneously characterizing the requested discovery as “exclusively” about conspiracy changes how the reader understands both the request and the court’s reason for denying it.
That is not just editing language; it is editing relevance.
Why this isn’t about punctuation—it’s about power
Ellipses are not merely punctuation. They are a mechanism of control:
Control over what the reader sees.
Control over what context survives.
Control over what looks “obvious” after the edit.
Control over what becomes “unsupported” once the supporting words are removed.
And that is precisely why Zinda is so revealing.
In Zinda, the court says: if ellipses are original, don’t assume bad faith—and a mistaken inference is not bias.
But our concern in Stevenson is different:
Not whether ellipses exist. But how they are used in a judicial order to shape meaning—especially when the order is then treated as the authoritative narrative on appeal.
And from the public’s perspective, it raises a final, uncomfortable question: what would Judges Miller or DeMay—and the Zinda panel (Judges Bond, Connolly, and Larson)—have done if the Plaintiffs in Stevenson had hidden relevant, material, or contradictory words behind ellipses? It’s difficult to believe the response would have been as forgiving.
Not just Minnesota: misleading ellipses can cross into sanctionable misrepresentation
It’s fair to ask whether lawyers and judges are held to a different standard with ellipses—whether it’s “normal” in legal writing to replace meaningful text with “…”.
The answer, in mainstream legal-writing guidance, is no. The Georgetown Law Writing Center cautions that while ellipses can make quotations concise, writers must not omit material needed to preserve the original meaning—and overuse can signal manipulation of authority. (Georgetown Law)
More importantly, some courts have treated meaning-altering omissions as misconduct when advocates do it. In Precision Specialty Metals, Inc. v. United States, the Federal Circuit affirmed discipline where an attorney distorted what published opinions stated by cropping quotations and omitting significant portions. (Precision Specialty Metals (Fed. Cir. 2003)) That same principle is echoed closer to home in a Minnesota Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board article emphasizing the importance of accurate quotations and describing how selective omission can cross the line from advocacy into deceit. (The Importance of Accurate Quotations)
Other courts have been even more blunt. In Dube v. Eagle Global Logistics, the Fifth Circuit described briefs that had “grossly distorted” the record “through the use of ellipses.” (Dube (5th Cir. 2002)) And in Anderson Eye Care of W. Tenn. v. Auto-Owners Ins. Co., a federal court warned that using ellipses to omit “critical language” and change meaning amounts to misrepresentation—calling that kind of tactic “clearly improper.” (Anderson Eye Care (W.D. Tenn. 2023))
Courts have also criticized ellipses used to remove decisive statutory language—especially when the omission benefits the writer’s position. In United States v. Johnson, the Ninth Circuit said in plain terms that using ellipses to excise “relevant and decisive” text “is looked upon with great disfavor.” (U.S. v. Johnson (9th Cir. 1999))
This isn’t offered as binding Minnesota precedent. It’s offered for a simpler point: there is a widely recognized professional line here. When omissions change meaning, the issue is no longer “punctuation.” It’s accuracy—and whether the reader is being shown the record, or an edited substitute for it.
Courts have repeatedly told lawyers, in plain language, that “clever” ellipses and selective omission can be “clearly improper,” sanctionable, and deceptive because they change meaning. If that is the standard for parties and counsel, the public is entitled to ask: what should happen when a judge does the same thing in the court’s own narrative of the record and the law?
Not just ellipses: editorializing also edits perception
Ellipses aren’t the only way a judicial order can “edit” the reader’s perception. Word choice can do it too. In my sworn declaration, I describe how the summary-judgment order repeatedly editorializes about Plaintiffs with loaded phrasing (for example: “berating,” “angry,” “lengthy missive,” “accusatory”), and I report a distribution analysis finding ten such negative editorializing occurrences in this order—all directed at Plaintiffs—while finding none directed at Defendants and none of the same kind of remarks in Judge Miller’s other 34 summary-judgment orders from the period I analyzed:
The public-trust problem
Most people will never read the full record of their own case, let alone the record of other cases. They will read excerpts, summaries, and the parts a court chooses to quote—plus the “…” that signals something was removed, without telling them what, or why. And many will accept the outcome and move on—without ever knowing whether they lost on the merits, or on what was omitted.
When legitimacy depends on trust, it can’t also depend on people not noticing what’s been left out.
Because when meaning turns on what is missing, confidence turns on something worse than disagreement: the suspicion that the outcome was edited into inevitability.
That’s how public trust erodes—not in one dramatic act, but in a hundred small omissions that make the record harder to see, the reasoning harder to test, and the citizen’s instinct to believe the courts harder to justify.
And that leaves the public with a question that should never be necessary in a system built on trust: are courts applying the full facts to the full law—or only to a selected subset of each, trimmed until the outcome looks inevitable?
Because when the facts are narrowed and the governing standards are softened up front, the outcome can look less like judgment—and more like editing.
🔗 For more on judicial ethics and court reform in Minnesota, visit https://justice-denied.org.