Stevenson: September 15, 2022 Deposition Hearing (Doc. 278)

Accessible document transcript

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STATE OF MINNESOTA  DISTRICT COURT 
  
COUNTY OF OTTER TAIL SEVENTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT 
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Craig Stevenson, Marie Stevenson,  
 Plaintiffs, File No. 56-CV-20-2928 
vs. Transcript of Proceedings 
Sean Stevenson, Renee Stevenson, 
Lisa Stevenson-Allen, Ashley Anderson,  
   
 Defendants. 
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HEARING 
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The above -entitled matter came before the 
Honorable Kevin M. Miller, Judge of District Court, at the Otter 
Tail County Courthouse, via Zoom technology, Fergus Falls , 
Minnesota, on September 15, 2022.  
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APPEARANCES 
For the Plaintiffs:  Matthew Schaap 
   14985 Glazier Ave, Suite 525  
   Apple Valley, MN 55124 
 
For the Defendants: Ross Tentinger 
Ashley Anderson and  14665 Galaxie Ave, Suite 140 
Lisa Stevenson-Allen Apple Valley, MN 55124  
 
For Defendants:  Kirsten Hansen 
Renee Stevenson and France Place 
Sean Stevenson  3601 Minnesota Dr, Suite 450 
   Minneapolis, MN 55435 
Dana Eifert 
Official Court Reporter 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
9/24/2022 9:36 AM

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(Proceedings commenced.) 
   THE COURT:  Craig Stevenson et al. versus 
Sean Stevenson et al., 56-CV-20-2928.  I have Mr. Schaap 
here on behalf of the plaintiffs, and I have 
Mr. Tentinger and Ms. Hansen here on behalf of the 
defendants.   
  This came at the request of Mr. Schaap as a 
telephone conference but honestly, Zoom is so much easier 
than me trying to figure out how to do a conference call.  
So, I put it on in that fashion.  So, I have Mr. Schaap’s 
letter of September 9th and then I did receive 
Mr. Tentinger’s letter of yesterday. 
  Mr. Schaap, have you had the opportunity to review 
that letter? 
   MR. SCHAAP:  Yes, I have.  
   THE COURT:  All right.  So, you may proceed 
Mr. Schaap at this time addressing the concerns you have.  
And I don’t know if Mr. Tentinger’s letter, how that 
affects your argument, but you can let me know here 
today.   
   MR. SCHAAP:  Yes, and I think, you know, in 
many respects it does help.  I received a similar letter 
from Mr. Tentinger on Friday the 9th outlining specific 
passages of the deposition for Sean Stevenson that he 
believes are at issue, or that are going to be addressed 
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by him during this upcoming deposition.  And that 
deposition has been moved to a date in October because 
we’re still waiting for a forensic report of Lisa’s phone 
to show which messages she may have deleted and that can 
be recovered or that cannot be recovered.  
  So, I’m a little bit concerned in that I understand 
that these forensic reports are going to be fair games 
and the topics addressed during these passages that have 
been identified they’re going to be fair game.  I don’t 
want to put, like, time limits on this deposition is one 
of my concerns.  I want to just focus on the substance.   
  But I do think it’s very unusual to be in this 
situation.  You know his first deposition occurred in 
February.  I believe it came to light shortly after that 
that he had provided false testimony about what he had 
deleted, what he had intentionally deleted.  And I did 
not know about this in, in really fleshing out exactly 
what we were talking about until last Friday.  I heard 
like inklings of it in prior letters they were going to 
make him available for, you know, another deposition.  I 
wasn’t sure exactly why.  But we have had party 
depositions in this case that have occurred, for example, 
Lisa’s second deposition occurred while everyone other 
than me, seemingly, knew that Sean lied in his deposition 
about deleting text messages.  And we proceeded with 
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these depositions basically without that information.  
And it’s just very hard to understand why, you know, if 
they knew and worked behind the scenes, working on these 
forensic reports as early as April, why I didn’t know 
about this.  I -- I think we’re, we’re -- we probably 
have a framework for a deposition, a second deposition of 
Sean Stevenson in October that’s going to work.  I just, 
you know, there should be latitude provided to the 
plaintiffs.  I mean the plaintiffs have brought motions 
to compel asking for text messages.  The Court denied 
them making comments like, the defendants are acting in 
good faith and the plaintiffs are lacking in candor.  And 
now we know that messages that we were seeking were 
deleted after I sent a preservation letter to the 
defendants, so saying don’t delete anything.  There could 
be a sanction for spoliation.   
  You know, there’s gonna be motion practice in 
October before this Court over discovery issues, and I 
see, you know, the defendants are kind of ramping up 
saying well, you know now they’re making a -- they filed 
a motion yesterday on discovery issues.  I think, you 
know, the Court will hear those but I think the real 
question is, you know, on spoliation what kind of 
corrective instruction is there going to be to a jury 
here and, you know, but I think that’s beyond probably 
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the scope of this case but -- or this hearing today, but 
I do just mention that because this is not just about 
Sean’s deposition.  This is not just the scope of his 
deposition.  Or whether, you know, a PR Rule 3.3 
requires, you know, some kind of correction to the Court.  
I don’t think it requires a deposition.  Now the PR board 
might have, you know, given that direction to 
Mr. Tentinger but you know we’re here to litigate the 
case not to, you know, make sure that, you know, Rule 3.3 
is, you know, is complied with by Mr. Tentinger.  I mean 
that’s his prerogative.  He’s certainly obligated to 
comply with it.  Has a duty of candor to this Court.  And 
I think there may be some other things that need to 
happen before that duty is satisfied, but.  I’ll leave it 
at that. 
   THE COURT:  Let me ask you, Mr. Schapp, what 
type of -- when you say, needs to be some latitude in the 
deposition.  I’m, I’m just curious.  What -- like, you 
know, that’s a very general term, so I’m just trying to, 
like what topics, what, what areas do you think outside 
of, let’s just say, information that has been disclosed 
to you post that first deposition.  You know, I think 
there’s probably some openness too if you’ve discovered 
new information and such since that first deposition that 
that might be appropriate.  And clearly anything related 
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to the forensic findings here and the previous testimony.  
I mean those are questions that certainly seem to be 
appropriate.  But what else are you thinking potentially?  
I mean, that’s just my concern is just saying latitude is 
-- is really open for interpretation.   
   MR. SCHAAP:  Yeah, I think -- so, so, what we 
have here is a unique situation in that some of the 
passages that Mr. Tentinger has identified in 
Mr. Sean Stevenson’s first deposition, they would be 
things like if a lawyer asked a question and the lawyer 
says, do you have this text message that was sent on such 
and such date, around these events in the case, and the 
witness says, I don’t have the text.  And I say, did you 
delete it?  And he says, no.  Do you remember what it 
said?  And he says, no I don’t remember.  If that witness 
lied three times, do you have it?  Yes.  Or did you have 
it?  Did you delete it?  The answer might be yes, I 
deleted it.  And then do you know what it said?  He 
probably knew exactly what it said because that’s why he 
deleted it.  He looked at it and thought, this is a 
concern for our case.  I’m going to delete this evidence.  
If I then take from that exchange that he -- his answers 
going to be the same pretty much for any text message 
that I see a record of.   
  This case is unique in that we have tables of cross-
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referenced text messages from AT&T, Verizon, and T-
Mobile, so that we can see when the three defend -- three 
of -- all four of the defendants sent text messages to 
each other around dates in this case.  And we have 
basically a flurry of text messages, flurries of calls 
all around events in this case.  I need to be able to ask 
about, and I think, I don’t think this is necessarily 
going to be in controversy that I’ll be able to ask 
questions like, do you remember what this text message 
said?  The issue is that some of these reports, the 
forensic reports, are not perfect.  So, I don’t know -- 
it's very unusual in my view to have a forensic report 
done on your own client’s phone unless you are concerned 
about something like, you know, your client lied under 
oath and said that text messages weren’t available and 
now you’re trying to find them somewhere built into the 
structure of the phone not readily visible as a deleted 
text message but somewhere in the memory of the phone.   
  Those reports were produced.  Those reports were not 
successful in recovering most of the text messages that 
were deleted.  So, we can -- we find some of the deleted 
text messages but a lot of them were deleted and they’re 
just gone.  We don’t know what they say.  And I guess, 
I’m not going to know until I take Sean’s deposition or 
participate in this deposition whether Sean is now going 
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to admit or acknowledge that he remembers what some of 
those text messages said.  And we know from the forensic 
report that some of them are clearly relevant.  They 
mention my clients.  They mention other events relating 
to the claims in this case, and they were deleted.  So.   
  Latitude, I think we can probably, you know, the 
Court is aware of this.  I don’t want this to be a 
situation where we’re running back to the Court, you 
know, on the day of the deposition and saying well they 
cut it off or they have some kind of dispute about -- 
I’ll -- I’m not going to re-take Sean’s entire 
deposition.  I’m not suggesting that in any respect, but. 
   THE COURT:  Okay. 
   MR. SCHAAP:  These text messages and you know 
communications among the parties are a pretty big piece 
of the conspiracy portion of this case and the claims in 
this case.  So, it is a pretty important component that I 
think I need to be able to ask questions about.  And I 
don’t think they disagree. 
   THE COURT:  Okay.  All right.  I’m going to 
turn, Mr. Tentinger, like I noted I do have your letter 
of September 14th, so you may proceed at this time.   
   MR. TENTINGER:  I’d like to try to just clarify 
a couple things.  The only text messages that were 
deleted, the only one involved here was Sean Stevenson.  
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So, the averments that anyone else was involved isn’t, is 
incorrect.  And I also believe that plaintiffs were well 
aware of this all the way back in May as a reason why the 
original forensic examination of Sean’s phone was 
provided.  And it was also produced to the plaintiffs on 
May 4th and 6, or early May for whatever that is.   
  But regardless, my letter’s pretty clear I think in 
what I plan on allowing and what I’ve been told I need to 
do.  I’m just trying to -- make sure I comply with my 
obligation under the rules.   
  I’m a little bit confused still on what Mr. Schaap 
had to say about the latitude.  I don’t really know if 
there was an answer in there outside of the fact that 
clearly the forensic results, the report of any forensic 
examination is fair game.  Whether my client would happen 
to remember what those messages were, you know, at the 
time or whether he remembers them now, fair game.  You 
know, if he happens to remember why certain ones were 
deleted, fair game.  But as far as the latitude he 
described, I guess, there’s no perimeters on that.   
  We’ve taken, you know, he had Sean Stevenson 
deposition for seven hours now.  He’s had every defendant 
has sat for, I believe seven hours for the examination, 
with the perhaps Ashley Anderson who might have been six 
and a half hours, asking questions from his prior 
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divorce.  Asking Ashley, you know, about her 
relationship.  Asking Lisa Stevenson if she’s ever posed 
nude.  You know, I don’t want to go back into this and 
have him sit there for five hours and I can’t stop it.  
When we’re going into, you know, what Sean did back in 
May 5th, of 2006.  You know, that will be so far beyond 
this forensic examination.   
  That being said, I plan on giving, you know, a wide 
breadth around any questions, you know, that could 
potentially be related.  But if counsel’s seeking -- I 
guess, that’s what this motion is about, is seeking 
clarification on what he can and cannot get into, I would 
ask that we get a little bit more specific beyond, you 
know, just what he’s said so far today.  At least 
articulate or attempt to articulate what type of stuff he 
wants to get into that would be beyond the forensic 
examination.   
   THE COURT:  All right.  And Mr. Schaap do you 
have any response to that? 
   MR. SCHAAP:  You know, the -- it -- a couple of 
things.  You know, this reference to Lisa posing nude, 
that was not a -- we can, we can brief that whole topic 
as to the impeachment and why that -- that was an issue 
in her deposition based on pictures that were found on 
her computer by Craig when Craig was doing a favor for 
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her when her computer was broken down.  But the issue is 
-- and her not remember that fact happening -- but the 
issue is really this is an unusual situation.  The 
plaintiffs are entitled to explore and review text 
messages that were deleted that are no longer available.  
They aren’t available through the forensic report.  
They’re not available anywhere.  They’ve just been 
deleted, and now we know they’re deleted.  And we also 
don’t know what Sean is going to testify to.   
  So, to the extent, there are -- this is not just a 
broad meandering deposition about every topic under the 
sun.  That it’s focusing on email -- or text messages, 
communications among the defendants, and to the extent 
there was, I, I, we keep getting back to this, you know, 
common interest doctrine but, you know, the fact that I 
deposed Lisa Stevenson-Allen under circumstances where 
she knew Sean had deleted text messages that were 
exchanged with her and she never disclosed that, and she 
wouldn’t -- they wouldn’t even allow her to be asked 
about those things because of this supposed common 
interest doctrine, you know, where they’re communicating 
about things that happened, in this case, is problematic.  
And I think, think the fact that this was withheld, this 
was not a -- these things have not been disclosed 
properly to us.  They’ve been withheld in ways that are 
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clearly strategic.  They didn’t want us to know about the 
extent of Sean’s -- Sean’s problems in testifying 
accurately during his first deposition until after other 
party depositions were completed.  So, now we know about 
it after we’ve already taken depositions and can’t use 
that information in those party depositions.   
  But I guess ultimately, I don’t really know what the 
parameters are until I know what questions Mr. Tentinger 
is going to ask his client.  But I know that we have 
probably at least three hours of questioning regarding 
the forensic reports.  We’re still waiting for one more 
forensic report.  So, Lisa’s phone -- and we don’t have 
Ashley’s -- Ashley’s phone even to the forensic examiner 
yet and I’ve asked them recently for that permission.  
But Lisa’s phone is still at our expert’s facility, I 
believe, and the report should be produced very soon.  
But that is going to lead to some additional questions, 
presumably, if there’s evidence that Lisa deleted text 
messages after this litigation commenced.   
   THE COURT:  All right.  Mr. Tentinger. 
   MR. TENTINGER:  Well, first off there’s no, 
nothing at all that says that there are messages that 
were deleted that are no longer available as far as I’m 
aware and I don’t think that’s going to be testified to 
as far as I’m aware right now.  So, I don’t see how 
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plaintiff’s counsel could make that statement.   
  Also, this was not withheld by any sense of the 
word.  This was notified back in April that there was 
going to be this second deposition.  That we had to put 
him back on the record.  It was only recently when I had 
the opportunity to actually go through the original 
deposition and pinpoint the specific lines of testimony, 
but that’s because I’ve been sorting through five 
different forensic examinations, forty sets of discovery, 
and constant motions.  And we just have had the ability 
to do so.  But the idea that this was going to happen is 
not new.  It’s been out there for some time.   
  As far as, you know, what they want to get into, 
what he described right now seemed perfectly legitimate 
to me.  I would have no qualms with that.  I believe I’m 
obligated to do so.  I have no issue with that.  But then 
again, we get back into three hours of examination on a 
forensic report.  The forensic report -- there’s a very 
limited amount of material here as far as I’m aware, and 
you know obviously my client could testify to something 
different than what I expect him to but based on what I 
know -- and even his knowledge of the forensic 
examination and what would have been done is going to be 
all of zero.  So, the idea that we’re going to have hours 
and hours of questioning is a concern, if they can’t 
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articulate with any specificity or even broad -- broader 
categories of what they want to get into.   
  Now, if it’s clearly related to what we’ve discussed 
so far and articulated so far, I have absolutely no 
issue.  My concern again, and I will disagree with 
counsel’s qualifications to his question of Lisa 
Stevenson, I think it was one of the most abhorrent 
things I’ve ever seen in a deposition before.  I don’t 
want to get into another situation where my client’s 
going to sit there and be harassed for what I would 
consider hours now, on topics that would be well beyond 
what, I believe I’m obligated to put Sean back on the 
record to address.  That is my only concern right now.   
   THE COURT:  All right.  And Mr. Schaap, 
anything further?  And I guess I haven’t -- Ms. Hansen, I 
don’t know if you have anything on this or not at this 
point? 
   MS. HANSEN:  No, Your Honor, I’m -- I’ve got 
nothing. 
   THE COURT:  All right.  And I figured you 
hadn’t filed a letter, so I didn’t mean to ignore you 
but.   
   MS. HANSEN:  No.  I just join Mr. Tentinger, I 
guess, for the record for you.  
   THE COURT:  All right.  Mr. Schaap, anything 
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further? 
   MR. SCHAAP:  Well, I don’t know how it could be 
represented to the Court that there aren’t missing text 
messages.  There are 345 missing texts between Sean and 
Ashley, 126 missing texts between Sean and Lisa, 8 
missing texts between Sean and Renee, all of which have 
been deleted from Sean’s phone.  So, I don’t -- and they 
are missing.  They are not -- some of them have been 
recovered.  They had a little -- they were able to find 
them in the memory somewhere in the phone but there are a 
bunch of them that are missing.  So, -- 
   THE COURT:  All right.  Let me ask, -- 
   MR. SCHAAP:  -- and I have -- 
   THE COURT:  -- Mr. Schaap, were you able to ask 
about any of the -- and I’ll just your term, I’m not, 
this doesn’t mean any finding but -- you termed them as 
missing text, did you have the opportunity to inquire of 
Sean Stevenson during that deposition about texts that 
you didn’t have that were contained within the records 
that you had? 
   MR. SCHAAP:  Yes.  And that’s part of what this 
new deposition is going to be about and that’s why when 
you have so many text messages, we can see when they were 
sent and received.  He says he doesn’t have them, and he 
doesn’t remember them, and now we have some evidence that 
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there were some that were deleted.  So, for example, you 
know, I asked him, did you receive our cease and desist 
letter, you know, and it contains a preservation 
paragraph in it.  And this is one of the sections that 
counsel has identified, he says, yes.  And you received 
the letter, yes.   
  This letter, the last paragraph right before the 
closing, and my signature indicates that you’re obligated 
to preserve all relevant physical and electronic 
evidence, and it kind of goes on from there, do you see 
that?  Yes.   
  And did you preserve all evidence that you were 
required to, to do?  I did my best too.  
  Is there any evidence that you know was deleted, 
that you now regret deleting because you wanted to 
produce it in this case?  And he said, I -- no.  
  Call detail records from AT&T show that you 
exchanged 239 texts with Lisa between April 1 and 
November 19, 2020, when this case started.  Are any of 
these texts still available on your phone?  And he says, 
I believe some of them are.  I asked did you delete some 
of them?  And he said, no.   
  So, we have a clear reason to be very interested in 
knowing how many of those text messages he knowingly 
deleted.  There’s just a lot of questions and just the 
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volume of text messages here requires there to be some, 
again, some latitude.  I have about 175 questions already 
and I know that you know, based on the forensic reports 
and how many texts and communications there were, that’s 
going to take a bit of time to get through.  
   MR. TENTINGER:  Your Honor, can I respond to 
that real briefly? 
   THE COURT:  You may. 
   MR. TENTINGER:  All right.  I, again, I’ll say 
that whatever -- what Mr. Schaap described right now 
seemed perfectly reasonable and legitimate.  I believe 
I’m obligated to put Sean back on the record to address 
those things.  I will say that I believe he 
misrepresented the total number of text messages that 
were deleted.  But that’s not before the Court right now, 
so I’m not going to want to go down that path. 
  The last thing I said if he’s got -- if Mr. Schaap 
already has 175 questions and everything if we could, 
could we perhaps have Mr. Schaap submit his outline to 
the Court, and the Court can take it under review.  You 
know, to put it -- 
   THE COURT:  I don’t know, you know, I, I, I get 
what you’re saying.  I just don’t know that I want to -- 
   MR. TENTINGER:  Yeah. 
   THE COURT:  -- micromanage Mr. Schaap’s 
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approach.  I don’t know that that’s quite where my job 
lies, and I don’t know that -- I don’t know that I’m that 
interested in going through Mr. Schaap’s work quite like 
that.  I think he’s -- I, you know, kind of where I’m at 
counsel is, you know, I think Mr. Schaap -- I think 
Mr. Tentinger, you’re acknowledging Mr. Schaap has some 
latitude here.  I have concerns.  You know, what I don’t 
want is this being a deposition that kind of turns into a 
second seven hour or you know less what Mr. Tentinger’s 
time takes out of this deposition to simply belabor 
points or those types of things.  But Mr. Schaap clearly 
has some questions to ask.  I think they’re appropriate.  
You know, we’ve got to just kind of keep in mind the 
duration.  You know this is the defendant’s deposition.  
It'll be their resources that are kind of being spent 
here that, there has to be some tie to the questions 
regarding the forensic examination and such.  I don’t 
want it delving into things that could have been asked at 
the first deposition that maybe counsel thought of later 
and it would be a great question now.  That’s not kind of 
what it’s for.  But I think Mr. Schaap has kind of 
acknowledged, you know, unless the questions lead or the 
answers lead to something that arises, I think he’s got 
to have some latitude.  You know 175 questions seem like 
a lot but I don’t have -- obviously I’m sitting here with 
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two letters from you guys and you guys probably have 
thousands and thousands of pages of things, so it might 
not be out of the realm, but I think, you know, I feel 
like you guys do have a general understanding of what’s 
kind of going to be allowed, what’s kind of expected.  
You know, I just want to caution that if there’s abuses, 
you know, obviously the Court will review that.   
  But I do think there’s got to be some latitude on 
that.  And I don’t have -- I don’t even have the forensic 
reports to know like what would be appropriate or not.  
So, getting Mr. Schaap’s outline or something like that 
wouldn’t assist me in that cause I would have no idea.  
So, I’m not inclined to take that and try to hack any of 
his questions or anything like that.  But.  I do think 
there needs to be reasonableness to the extent of what 
essentially is cross examination here, which is -- this 
is, this is unique Mr. Schaap.  I agree.  I haven’t seen 
this happen really either.   
  So, I just think everybody kind of has an 
understanding of where we should be.  I know 
Mr. Tentinger and Mr. Schaap are going to have some 
difference there but I think everybody knows what’s going 
to be allowed here.  So, I think Mr. Schaap’s got to be 
given latitude but I don’t want it delving into subjects 
outside of the forensic evaluation and the text messages, 
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like I said, unless the questions somehow lead you there 
and that’s, I know that’s a great definition that nobody 
probably can -- we could ever necessarily agree with what 
that terminology means, but.  I think we have an idea of 
what it -- what I would expect from that.  But I think, I 
think we’ve got to allow those questions to take place 
and we’ll go from there.   
  I don’t know if that gives enough guidance, 
Mr. Schaap from you or to you in answering your question 
from your letter or not. 
   MR. SCHAAP:  Yes, and I don’t think -- I, I 
just wanted to get a sense of the Court’s, you know, make 
sure the Court was aware.  Make sure the attorneys all 
kind of understood what the Court wanted or expected, and 
I think I do.  So.   
   THE COURT:  Okay.  Mr. Tentinger? 
   MR. TENTINGER:  I think the way you summed it 
up there at the end there is about as good as it possibly 
could be done, so.  And I’m perfectly comfortable going 
into this deposition with these parameters in mind and 
we’ll go from there. 
   THE COURT:  All right.  And Ms. Hansen, 
anything further from you? 
   MS. HANSEN:  No.  I’m in agreement with 
Mr. Tentinger. 
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   THE COURT:  All right.  That will conclude 
everything here today then.  Thank you everyone and I 
guess we’ll see you back, I think, sometime in October, I 
think I saw on my calendar.  So, we’ll see you then. 
  Thank you, everyone. 
   MR. TENTINGER:  Thank you.  
   MS. HANSEN:  Thank you, Your Honor.  
(Proceedings concluded.) 
 
 
 
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STATE OF MINNESOTA  IN THE DISTRICT COURT 
  
COUNTY OF OTTER TAIL SEVENTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
Craig Stevenson, Marie Stevenson,  
 Plaintiffs, File No. 56-CV-20-2928 
vs. REPORTER’S CERTIFICATE 
Sean Stevenson, Renee Stevenson, 
Lisa Stevenson-Allen, Ashley Anderson 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
I, Dana Eifert, hereby certify that I am an official court 
reporter in the Seventh Judicial Dis trict of the State of 
Minnesota; that as such reporter I digitally recorded the 
proceedings in the above -entitled actio n; that I thereafter 
transcribed to typewriting the foregoing transcript from the 
digital recordings taken in Otter Tail  County, Minnesota on 
September 15, 2022; and that the foregoing transcript consisting 
of 21 pages, constitutes a full, true, and accurate transcription 
of said proceeding.  
Dated:  September 22, 2022 
 
/s/ Dana Eifert 
Dana Eifert 
Official Court Reporter 
c/o Otter Tail County Courthouse 
121 West Junius Avenue 
Fergus Falls, MN 56537 
Telephone:  218-560-7068 
 
 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
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