Stevenson: May 22, 2026 Redesignation and Contempt Hearing (Doc. 617)

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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MOTION 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 May 22, 2026.  
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APPEARANCES 
For the Plaintiffs:  Cassandra Wolfgram 
   14985 Glazier Ave, Suite 525  
   Apple Valley, MN 55124 
 
For the Defendants: Ross Tentinger 
   Joseph Tourand 
Ashley Anderson and  14665 Galaxie Ave, Suite 140 
Renee Stevenson and Apple Valley, MN 55124 
Sean Stevenson   
  
Lisa Stevenson-Allen is pro se.  
  
Dana Eifert 
Official Court Reporter 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
6/29/2026 8:20 AM

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(Proceedings commenced.) 
   THE COURT:  All right.  Good morning, everyone. 
  At this time, the Court will call the matter set for 
9:30, which is titled Craig Stevenson, Marie Stevenson 
versus Sean Stevenson et al, file 56-CV-20-2928.  I have 
Ms. Wolfgram here on behalf of the plaintiffs, who are 
present.  I have Mr. Tentinger, and I’m not going to -- 
is it Mr. Tourand? 
   MR. TOURAND:  That, that’s correct, Your Honor.  
Tourand. 
   THE COURT:  All right.  Here on behalf of the 
remaining defendants.   
  The Court is here on the motions that have been 
filed.  I’ve reviewed the motions and affidavit, but not 
any of the documents that were listed.  I wasn’t going to 
go through all of those at this time.  However, I’ll 
first turn to Mr. Tentinger, and then I’ll go back to 
Ms. Wolfgram, and you can both respond and address your 
own motion.  Then I’ll be going back to Defendants for 
responses.  So Mr. Tentinger, you may proceed. 
   MR. TENTINGER:  Wonderful.  Thank you, 
Your Honor.   
  Defendants have brought this motion for a few 
reasons.  First, given the website showcasing this 
litigation that we’ve identified in the filings, 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
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Defendants want to be able to respond to friends and 
family members truth-- truthfully, without fear of 
violating the protective order, who may come across that 
website or learn about this lawsuit through that website. 
  Two, Defendants want to be able to preserve and use 
the fact record in this case if plaintiffs ever bring 
these issues back to court.  As we touched on in the 
filings as well, that has already happened once when 
Plaintiffs -- or excuse me, Plaintiff Marie Stevenson 
brought an HRO against Sean Stevenson in Dakota County.  
Notably, some of her medical records that were marked 
confidential in this case were used in that HRO 
proceeding.  And then, based on the protective order, 
Sean isn’t able to necessarily use some of the records in 
this case for that defense.  So that’s the other concern. 
  Third, they want to be able to avoid, essentially, 
being blamed for any alleged disclosure that was not from 
them but was instead disclosed or published on 
Plaintiff’s website.  They are very concerned that this 
is going to end up in just additional litigation, given 
the tone of that website and the tone of everything else 
that’s happened so far.   
  At the outset, this Court has subject matter 
jurisdiction to hear this motion.  The arguments 
otherwise are unpersuasive.  None of the cases cited by 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
6/29/2026 8:20 AM

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Plaintiffs on this topic address protective orders or the 
ongoing nature of them, even post-judgment.  The rules of 
appellate procedure and caselaw, we believe, show that 
jurisdiction remains with this Court.  
  Next, burden.  Plaintiffs dispute that they have the 
burden here to show good cause.  Not only does the 
protective order instruct that when a designation is 
challenged, as we are here, it states, the party 
asserting that material as confidential shall have the 
burden of proving that the information falls within the 
scope of 26.03.  The caselaw, when considering a blanket 
protective order as here, overwhelmingly supports a 
position that the party asserting confidentiality also 
has the burden.  In this case, there has never been a 
good cause hearing as to the confidentiality of any 
document.  Instead, Plaintiffs have freely and without 
showing good cause designated significant portions of the 
record as confidential.  It is now their burden to 
establish good cause for that designation to remain.  
  And as we identified in our filings, Defendants 
believe that that position or excuse me, Defendants 
believe that Plaintiffs have not met that burden.  
General veer mixed to privacy and confidentiality do not 
satisfy a good cause burden.  And without that showing, 
Minnesota Courts looked to the balancing test and factors 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
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identified in Humphrey.  That was a Court of Appeals 
decision in 2000.  And it provides a list of a variety of 
factors that the Court can consider whether to amend a 
protective order or to remove designations.   
  I’ll largely rest on our written materials for that, 
but I just want to address whether there’s a need for 
ongoing continued confidentiality.  To that factor, 
Defendants say, no, there’s not.  Plaintiffs have created 
an entire public website dedicated to this lawsuit.  That 
website discusses the parties.  It discusses counsel.  It 
discusses this Court.  This Court’s rulings.  And it 
portrays Plaintiffs’ versions of the facts.  Plaintiffs 
have placed this case in the public forum.  They have 
shined a spotlight on it, and they invited the public to 
view this case through their lens.  But at the same time, 
Plaintiffs are asking this Court to keep large portions 
of the underlying record confidential.  That creates an 
unfair and unworkable situation for Defendants.  
Plaintiffs can speak freely about this case.  They can 
characterize the evidence as they please, and they can 
have -- and -- they can, and they have published their 
narrative.  But Defendants remain constrained by the 
blanket protective order and its confidentiality 
designations.  One for which no sh-- no good cause has 
been made yet.  They’re using the protective order as a 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
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weapon to prevent the truth from coming out, which it was 
not intended to do.  It was intended to facilitate 
discovery.  It was not intended to let one side publicly 
litigate its version or events while preventing access to 
the record necessary to show the full story.  And 
Defendants are feeling the results of this in their 
lives. 
  Sean, for example, has children.  He wants to be 
able to explain to them what this lawsuit is about, what 
it was about.  And he should be able to do so with full 
transparency.  Especially, now, if his children Google 
his name, they may stumble upon Plaintiff’s website.  
Someone at their school might show Sean’s kids that 
website.  He wants to be able to explain to him the full 
breadth of what occurred and not be constrained by the 
protective order.  The continued broad sweep and blanket 
confidentiality is not warranted.   
  The Defendants are not asking the Court for 
redesignation to harass Plaintiffs, as suggested by 
Plaintiffs.  They’re asking this Court to apply the 
protective order as written, allowing Defendants to 
challenge the designations.  They’re asking this Court to 
consider all of the relevant factors, and given that, 
remove the confidentiality where it is warranted on the 
documents requested.   
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
6/29/2026 8:20 AM

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  The final thing I have to note, Your Honor, is I 
realize in -- we divided this -- these documents up into 
three tables, table 1, 2, and 3.  Table 1 being 
dispositive motions filings.  Table 2 being records that 
were filed with the Court for other motions, not 
dispositive.  And then general discovery which this Court 
has not seen prior.  Defendants are not asking for the 
IME reports that were filed with summary judgment to be 
public filings, but they are asking for the 
confidentiality designation to be removed from those IME 
reports, both Plaintiffs and Defendants.  They want to be 
able to preserve that evidence and not have to destroy 
it, or they have destroyed it, but they want to be able 
to have access to that in the future should these claims 
ever come to light.  Those IME reports themselves, while 
part of the summary judgment record, they’re not asking 
for those to be public filings.   
  And with that, Your Honor, we have nothing further 
at this time, absent a rebuttal.   
   THE COURT:  All right.  Ms. Wolfgram. 
   MS. WOLFGRAM:  Thank you -- (clears throat) -- 
Thank you, Your Honor.  And I’m just going to tell you at 
the outset, my allergies have been acting up, so I 
apologize if I am a little cracky today.   
  Your Honor, I want to start by addressing the 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
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procedural history as to what’s going on.  As you are 
aware, there was an underlaying (sic) litigation.  In 
that litigation, there was this protective order.  And it 
was amended in January 2022.  That protective order 
applies to all of the parties.  Now, discovery was in, 
almost exclusively, 2022, with a few documents served in 
February of 2023, pursuant to the Court’s orders.  But 
the time for non-dispositive motions expired in October 
of 2022.  This Court entered judgment in June of 2023.  
And during that time, Defendants did not bring any motion 
challenging the confidentiality of documents.  They had 
the right to do so.  They did not do so.  In the 
meantime, this case went on appeal.  They didn’t appeal 
the protective order.  Final judgment was entered by the 
appellate courts.  Now, the case was terminated.  The 
case was terminated on February 26 of 2026.  That is when 
appellate judgment was entered.   
  Now, we have raised this too, in our filings, that 
the case was terminated.  We have provided the caselaw on 
this.  It has not been disputed or denied by Defendants.  
This is important because that date is -- started the 
clock for when Defendants needed to comply with their 
obligations to delete and destroy documents.  It started 
on February 26th of 2026.  They did not do that.  They 
did not comply.  And instead, three weeks later, -- 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
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actually, it was about two weeks later, they send a 
letter demanding that documents be redesignated.  
Thousands of pages of confidential documents.  Hundreds 
of pages of medical records.  And Plaintiffs in response 
said, "No.  The case is terminated.  What is your basis?  
Tell us.”  They refused.  They demanded again that we 
redesignate documents.  They provided no reasoning.  They 
provided no factual reasoning.  They provided no legal 
reasoning.  And then, we provided an extensive seventeen-
page correspondence responding to those thousands of 
pages of documents.  Thousands of discovery documents, 
plus tens of court filings, and then almost one hundred 
home videos.  And we again asked for their legal and 
factual basis for their motion.  Defendants, once again, 
said, “No.  We won’t do that.”  That is now April.  We 
demanded that they provide -- identify that they have 
deleted and destroyed the confidential documents and 
provide certification that they did that.  They refused.  
They said they were not bound to delete and destroy 
documents.  That they -- their words were, “they have no 
enforceable obligation,” and that is in the actual 
memorandum that Defendants filed.  And that is what led 
to Defendant’s motion.  
  And I want to, just briefly, go back to this before 
I even get into the contempt issue, because now today, 
56-CV-20-2928 Filed in District Court
State of Minnesota
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Defendants are telling this Court that they need 
confidentiality removed from federally and state-
protected medical records because of a website.  And 
we’ve asked Defendants three separate times why they were 
making this request.  They never identified a website.  
They refused to provide any information.  To be clear, 
this -- this website was not even identified or raised 
until one week ago in their reply.  And as this Court 
knows, that is an improper use of a reply because replies 
are limited to the facts and the legal arguments in the 
opposition.  Instead, Defendants make up new facts in 
their reply for the purpose of preventing Plaintiffs to 
be able to respond to it.  We would have brought a motion 
to strike that, and we also note that their documents are 
forty-two pages instead of the limit of thirty-five.  We 
didn’t bring a motion because this Court doesn’t have 
subject matter jurisdiction over the motion to 
redesignate.   
  Now, in their filings, they also told this Court 
that they are concerned there’s going to be additional 
litigation over alleged disclosures.  At this time, and 
I’ll get into this in more detail, Your Honor, but 
Defendants did not comply.  And this is not a 
hypothetical.  This is based off of Defendants' own 
filings.  Your Honor, they provided a certification 
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contending that they had deleted and destroyed 
confidential documents while removing the actual list of 
documents, so we don’t know what they actually alleged to 
have deleted and destroyed.  They took off the paragraph 
that they had complied with their obligations of 
confidentiality, and removed the paragraph that they knew 
their obligations continued.  Both of which are in the 
protective order.  That was on May 6th.  Well after their 
time to comply.  And the problem that arises is 
Defendants filed additional confidential documents with 
this Court last week, after the time for them to comply 
had passed.  Actually, the filings they filed on May 1 
were after the time to comply.  But the filings they 
filed last week included additional confidential 
documents they did not seek to have redesignated.  There 
is no way they could have taken all reasonable measures 
to delete and destroy documents, the confidential 
documents, specifically, these ones are medical records, 
and then file those medical records with this Court.   
  Now, Your Honor, I’m going to go on to the actual 
arguments in here.  The subject matter jurisdiction.  
There is no subject matter jurisdiction.  And I want to 
be clear; Defendants have actually falsely implied a 
holding that does not exist to this Court.  In their 
reply memo, they accurately cite to Minnesota Statute 
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480A.06, saying, the Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to 
consider “appeals from all final decisions of the 
district courts.”  And this is on page two.  The next 
sentence they have is, “Therefore, absent an appeal of 
the protective order, this Court maintains jurisdiction 
to decide questions pertaining to its orders.”  And they 
cite to Herubin, and I apologize if I’m mispronouncing 
that name, versus Finn, 603 N.W.2d 133, page 137, Minn. 
App 1999.  That citation does not exist.  The case 
exists, but that holding does not exist.  It’s not 
implied.  It’s not dicta.  It cannot be even reasonably 
inferred.  In fact, what is said on that page is a single 
paragraph on subject matter jurisdiction, stating the 
general rule: Subject matter jurisdiction involves a 
court’s authority to decide a class of actions and 
authority to decide the questions before it.  And without 
subject matter jurisdiction, the court must dismiss.  It 
has nothing about whether an order has been appealed.  It 
has nothing about without an appeal, the court has 
subject matter jurisdiction.  The reason it doesn’t have 
that is because it does not exist, Your Honor.  It is 
contrary to the legal binding precedential law of this 
state.  And those cases were provided to this Court, that 
is, Mingen v. Mingen, 679 N.W.2d 724, Minn. 2004.  It’s 
Marzitelli v. City of Little Canada, 582 N.W.2d 904, 
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Minn. 1998.  Those cases state that when the time for 
appeal expires, a pre-trial order is final.  And the 
Court has no subject matter jurisdiction to modify it.   
  Now, to get around the fact that there is no subject 
matter jurisdiction, Defendants have now made this theory 
that they are not seeking modification, they’re seeking 
enforcement.  To begin with, that is not what they told 
the Court originally.  Their actual memorandum, the 
initial memorandum, said they moved to amend the 
protective order.  Their order asks the Court to amend 
the protective order, and they’re saying -- they said in 
their memorandum, this is at pages seven and eight, 
Defendant’s memorandum of law and support of the motion 
to amend the blanket protective order.  They sought 
amendment throughout.  It is only when they realize there 
wasn’t subject matter jurisdiction they try to change 
their story.  But it still doesn’t work.  And that’s 
because of State by Humphrey v. Philip Morris, that case 
provides exactly why.  And in that case, -- and that case 
is procedurally different because of the fact that there 
was an original protective order which was not final.  
The court expressly said that they would issue a final 
order after the case was finished, which could be 
amended.  So on appeal, the Court of Appeals addressed 
that they were not addressing the original order.  They 
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were addressing the final order after the case was 
completed.  And the court said, the focus here is not on 
the original protective orders, but on the order that 
modified the protective orders after the (indiscernible) 
judgment was entered, allowing public access.  Rule 26.03 
does not explicitly address the standard for modification 
of a protective order.  And that’s important because what 
the court did, the district court, in that case, said 
that we -- you can designate documents as confidential, 
and at the end of the case, you can come back to me, and 
I will review to determine whether they should be public.  
And so, in Humphrey, the Court of Appeals was reviewing 
whether that final order, redesignating those documents, 
modifying the original protective order, was appropriate.  
And the Court of Appeals called it a modification of the 
protective order.  Not enforcement modification.   
  There are no legal -- other legal authorities in the 
state of Minnesota addressing the subject matter 
jurisdiction or the modification because of the fact 
there is no subject matter jurisdiction.  The only cases 
where this has come up has been in Humphrey, where it was 
an original one that was not a final one, and then in 
other cases where it was the AG’s Office in a CID, and 
they were procedurally different.   
  Now, with that, there is no subject matter 
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jurisdiction.  The case was terminated.  The order was 
final in August of 2023.  The Court doesn’t have subject 
matter jurisdiction to amend an order at this point.  We 
are unaware why Defendants have been proceeding with this 
motion without any good cause.   
  But let’s go back to what they’re actually asking 
for today.  They’re asking for relief from an order.  
Now, again, there’s no subject matter jurisdiction, so 
the only way to get that is through Rule 60.  They have 
not -- contend that any of the requirements in Rule 60 
have been met.  They don’t say that there’s a mistake, 
fraud, newly discovered evidence.  There’s no reason for 
-- to just a relief on the order.  They don’t allege 
they’re entitled to relief from Rule 60.  They don’t 
allege it because they can’t get it.   
  Now, even if they could, though, we have this giant 
problem of forfeiture.  And I want to spend a little bit 
of time on this because Defendants did not provide any 
response to the Rule 60, nor to forfeiture.  Now, as this 
Court knows that rights are forfeited if you do not 
assert them in a timely manner.  And specifically, if you 
raise an argument at appeal and you hadn’t brought it up 
to the district court beforehand, it's been forfeited.  
This case has already gone through appeal.  Any 
objections were forfeited by the time of the appeal 
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because they hadn’t been raised, and you can’t raise them 
after the fact.  And they don’t dispute that.  To be 
clear, they have been on notice for four years, and did 
not do anything to get documents redesignated by the 
Court in that time.  That is forfeiture.   
  Now, when we get into the actual cases that 
Defendants rely upon, it appears that they did not 
actually look at these cases in detail because they don’t 
support their position.  They actually are contrary to 
them.  Defendants spend a lot of time focusing on cases 
of Yates out of Ohio and Tucker out of Maryland.  And 
both of those state that the Court should not be 
modifying protective orders to remove confidentiality 
provisions.  The reasons why is clear in Yates; if the 
parties were free to disclose confidential information 
upon dismissal of a case, protective orders would cease 
to fulfill their intended purpose, which is to encourage 
full disclosure of all relevant information.  And it was 
the same in Tucker.  In fact, Tucker said that this 
request that the Defendants have raised that they need 
documents for possible future litigation is insufficient.  
The Tucker court says that the court should not be 
modifying or terminating a protective order in such a way 
that it imposes new or affirmative obligations on the 
parties.  And the Court should avoid issuing discovery 
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orders that are applicable only to collateral litigation 
in another court.  Because the obligations were agreed to 
by all the parties, one party cannot be free to ignore 
those now.  And to be clear, like these have been 
repeatedly addressed by various courts.  And in 
GlaxoSmithKline, which was the AG case filed by the Sta-- 
with the State of Minnesota, they also stated that.  If a 
state has discretion to release documents under 
subdivision 2a, as the state argues, the provisions of 
the confidentiality agreement and the protective order 
are largely meaningless.  And the provisions that grant 
the district court authority to determine whether 
documents are properly designated are nullified.  And 
that court once again said, you can’t just modify a 
protective order.  It’s important that GlaxoSmithKline 
rejected that, an attempted modification for the exact 
reasons the defendants are asking for today, because the 
state wanted to use confidential documents in a second 
litigation.  Confidential documents which the state 
received from the other party.  That is exactly what 
Defendants are asking this Court to do.  To use 
confidential documents, and actually, not even keep them 
confidential, make them public, and use them in another 
litigation.  A hypothetical litigation.   
  And in the meantime, each of these cases that are 
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cited by Defendants, they attempt to say that there’s a 
difference between stipulated protective orders and 
stipulated blanket protective orders; not one case makes 
any differentiation between the two.  Not one.  That is 
not in Graham.  That is not in F.T.C vs. AbbVie.  That is 
not in Guzhagin.  That is not in Cordes or even Iowa Beef 
Processors.  Iowa Beef Processors isn’t cited by 
Defendants.  And also, what’s not cited is 
Jochims v. Isuzu Motors in the Southern District of Iowa.  
This was relied upon by the Minnesota District Courts, 
but not cited by Defendants.  Why?  Because it is 
actually oppositive (sic) to their position today.  It 
says that, unless a valid Rule 26c protective order is 
equally and fairly enforceable, parties must be able to 
rely upon them.  And it rejected an argument that they 
conclude a party can be removed and be able to nullify 
their obligations after the fact.   
  Now, we can spend time in this Court addressing what 
the burden is, but again, there’s no subject matter 
jurisdiction.  If we are post-litigation, so to get 
relief from an order, it has to be Rule 60, which puts 
the burden on Defendants, and they have not even alleged 
that there’s any cause for that.  And all of the caselaw 
in the district of Minnesota in the 8th Circuit puts all 
that burden on defendants for modifying a protective 
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order after the fact.  After a litigation.  In fact, the 
cases that they cite upon have rejected, in argument, 
that you can remove confidentiality for use outside of 
the litigation.  In the cases that have considered other 
litigation.  Specifically, Yates and Tucker, they said 
that if it is being used for another litigation and a 
protective order is modified, the documents retain their 
confidentiality designations.  It is only modified to 
allow use of those in the other litigation with the same 
protections that the parties already have them under.  
And even more recently, in 2024, 
The United States v. Dornsbach -- this one I did not have 
cited in my memorandas (sic), Your Honor.  It’s 
730 Federal Supplement 3d 897 and specifically, it’s at 
page 903, -- the District of Minnesota goes over that a 
party cannot be moving to modify the protective order to 
use documents it received in subsequent litigations.  And 
that’s exactly what was also rejected in Yates and 
Tucker.   
  So now, Your Honor, we go into the actual 
designations.  Defendants somehow actually told this 
Court that the documents have no protected status, which 
on its face is incorrect.  The documents, as they 
identified them, include psychological evaluations, 
medical reports, petition for a harassment restraining 
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order, multiple medical records, and, as this Court 
knows, just rules of public access; those documents are 
protected as it is.  And medical records in particular 
are protected by both state and federal law.  And even 
now, we don’t know why Defendants seek to have -- make 
all of Plaintiff’s medical records, their confidential 
information contained in there, including their medical 
record numbers, birth dates, addresses, all of which is 
protected under HIPAA, available to everyone that 
Defendants seem to want to disclose it to.  But these 
documents are protected.   
  Plaintiffs have provided sufficient and significant 
analysis identifying each of these documents and why 
they’re protected.  Defendants have not disputed any of 
those.  And it should be obvious to anyone that if we are 
disclosing testimony, deposition testimony, of abuse, 
victims are going to be concerned, and that’s gonna cause 
a chilling effect.  In fact, Lisa’s deposition, Lisa to 
our knowledge, has not consented to redesignation of her 
deposition.  Nor has she consented to redesignation of 
any of the documents that discuss abuse that Lisa 
suffered.  And the only person who can consent to that is 
Lisa, and no one should be making that decision for her.  
  Defendants have not identified how they think that 
any of these documents lack confidentiality.  They just 
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seem to say, if we say that they’re not confidential, 
then they’re not.  And there’s big questions about that.  
When we had to go through and find these documents, which 
were organized in no logical order, we -- Defendants 
specifically asked for six pages of medical records as 
plaintiff 5362, through 67, to be redesignated as public.  
That was in the middle of hundreds of medical -- pages of 
medical records.  5089 through 5361, they don’t ask to be 
redesignated; all of which are medical records.  5368 
through 5423, those are medical records.  They don’t ask 
those to be redesignated.  And just for the Court’s 
information, on Exhibit 5 of my declaration, this is the 
chart that’s at page 27.  So when you take out six pages 
out of hundreds of pages of medical records, a medical 
appointment from 2013, that’s unrelated to this case, it 
raises significant questions.  Why are you seeking that 
record to be redesignated as public?  There’s no good 
reason.  The only logical conclusion is that it was 
already disclosed.  Because otherwise, you wouldn’t care.  
You wouldn’t want that one report.   
  We also, Your Honor, specifically brought up first 
amendment, right of free speech and association.  This is 
addressed GlaxoSmith and Kline (sic), that confident-- 
confidentiality is necessary because it can chill the 
freedom of association, and particularly subject members 
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to harassment or intimidation, and this case arose 
because of Defendant’s beginning a campaign to cause harm 
to Plaintiff by intentionally contacting people and 
making false statements about them.  And as of today, 
when they’re coming back and asking for thousands of 
pages to be redesignated, it brings us significant 
concerns as to what the actual purpose is.   
  Now, I also want -- I did speak briefly about the 
future disputes, Your Honor, the Courts have rejected 
that future litigation is a basis to amend a protective 
order.  But I want to go back to the procedural history.  
We asked three times for the reason for Defendant’s 
redesignation request.  If they were concerned about 
future disputes, why didn’t they raise that and say that?  
If they were concerned about a website, why didn’t they 
say that?  They could have, and we asked for it 
repeatedly.  But they refused to do so, and it appears 
that they were trying to just come in here after the fact 
and make this claim late.  But there would be no need for 
a future dispute over confidentiality if Defendants 
complied with their obligations.  We -- the 
certifications we provided were very limited.  Lisa 
signed it.  Both the plaintiffs signed it.  It said that, 
I’m the Defendant, or in the plaintiff’s case, I’m a 
plaintiff, I have complied and deleted all the 
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confidential documents designated by the opposing party.  
It said, I had complied with my obligations and may not 
abuse, disclose, or transfer any of the confidential 
documents or their information, and I understand my 
obligations survive.  
  Defendants could not execute that.  And that raised 
a significant question: why, when that is an obligation 
under the protective order that you do not use, disclose, 
transfer, communicate the confidential documents, why you 
cannot declare you actually did comply with that 
paragraph?  And that was when, really, concerns started 
rising up on plaintiff’s end.  And when Plaintiffs sent 
their second letter, after the second demand for 
redesignation, we asked Defendants to identify the use 
and disclosure.  They also refused to do that.  They 
never said that they didn’t use or disclose.  They 
refused to identify any disclosures.  So if you don’t 
identify disclosures and you refuse to say that you had 
complied, it raises even more concerns.  And then, 
Defendants refused to comply, expressly refused to 
comply, with their obligations.  And that’s where we are, 
Your Honor.  
  Defendants were required to delete and destroy all 
confidential -- all documents.  And I want to make this 
clear, the protective order says, “all documents 
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designated by the opposing party as confidential.”  That 
includes medical records that the Defendants confused, 
that were plaintiff’s medical records, which plaintiffs 
designated as confidential.  And they did not delete and 
destroy those within sixty days.  They filed some of 
those with this Court.  They then execute a certification 
saying that they deleted and destroyed confidential 
documents.  They removed the actual chart that plaintiffs 
provided of the documents they designated as 
confidential.  So we don’t know what was designate -- 
what they alleged to have deleted or destroyed.  But then 
they file additional confidential documents with this 
Court.   
  So at this point, we know documents have not been 
destroyed, and documents have been used in this 
litigation after the time they were supposed to be 
destroyed.  And they were used in this litigation after 
Defendants claimed they had deleted and destroyed those 
documents.   
  It is appropriate for this Court to order to show -- 
to issue an order to show cause for Defendants to come 
into this Court and explain this, and if they have 
disclosed these documents, used, disclosed, transferred, 
communicated them, Plaintiffs need to be able to remedy 
that harm.  We don’t know what they’ve done with 
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Plaintiff’s medical records.  Have they disclosed them?  
Have their medical record numbers been issued and 
released to the public?  We don’t know.  And we can’t 
know that until Defendants come into this Court and show 
cause.   
  And I want to note that Defendants’ defense to this 
appears to be, well, we filed a motion with this Court.  
That doesn’t terminate any of their obligations.  They 
did not seek relief from this Court, asking to with -- to 
retain these documents in the meantime.  They did not try 
to get a motion to be heard before the sixty days.  They 
didn’t do anything, and we provided the caselaw that the 
case terminated at day sixty, on February 26th.  Those 
obligations were due to be complied with by April 27th.  
That was before they filed their supporting papers with 
this Court.   
  Defendant’s theory was, well, we just have no 
enforceable obligation.  There’s no legal support for 
that.  There is no caselaw providing that a party can 
file a motion and be relieved of its obligations.  That 
is actually an absurd interpretation, and that is what 
the courts have found in other cases, and I have this in 
my memorandums, that when you’re trying -- saying that a 
court order is interpreted in a way that makes it 
unenforceable, that is not reasonable.  And under this 
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theory, if you file a motion, defendants have no 
obligation to comply; that is unenforceable.  It means 
that they would never be required to delete and destroy 
documents because filing a motion for contempt, because 
they didn’t comply, relieves them of all their 
obligations.  That’s not reasonable.  That is not what 
the court intended.  That is not what the parties 
intended.  Defendants just decided that they didn’t wish 
to be bound.   
  Now, we’ve raised this -- the question today, 
because when you look at everything, it appears that 
defendants used, disclosed, transferred, or communicated 
confidential documents.  They are seeking relief from 
this court order and seeking to eliminate their 
obligations of confidentiality.  Why would they need to 
do that, unless they’ve already used, disclosed, 
transferred, or communicated those documents?  Because at 
the end of the day, the fact that they did not, would 
not, declare under penalty of perjury that they 
understood their obligations continued through and they 
remained even after termination of the case, which was in 
the protective order, the only other reasonable 
conclusion is that they didn’t intend to comply with the 
protective order at all.  And that would be an even 
bigger issue of this court.  Because at that point, they 
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would have made false representations to plaintiffs, to 
this Court, and to counsel, which were relied upon by 
everyone in that protective order.   
  So today, we ask this Court to issue an order to 
show cause.  And we also ask this Court to order 
attorney’s fees for two bases.  One is the fact that 
under the contempt law, attorneys’ fees are recoverable 
because they are an injury and damage; they’re a loss to 
get a party to comply with a court order.  And two, 
because Defendant’s motion is simply frivolous.  There’s 
no legal support.  There’s no factual support.  Had they 
done their research, they would have known there’s no 
subject matter jurisdiction.  It is not enforcement.  
They continue to change their theory in an attempt to 
make it appear that there’s jurisdiction which simply 
doesn’t exist.  
  So at the end of the day, Your Honor, we ask that 
you enter an order to show cause, make Defendants show 
cause if they disclosed documents, to provide relief 
identifying what’s been disclosed, identifying who, so we 
can take the appropriate remedial measures needed to 
protect those confidential -- that confidential 
information contained therein.  And deny Defendant’s 
motion and grant Plaintiffs their attorney’s fees.   
   THE COURT:  All right.  Mr. Tentinger.   
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   MR. TENTINGER:  It sounds like we just kind of 
rolled into the Plaintiff’s contempt motion.  So, 
Your Honor, I guess to the extent there’s any rebuttal to 
our motion, I think the legal analysis you were provided 
at this hearing is flawed.  I’ll defer to our written 
submissions. 
  As far as why these records, well, excuse me.  As 
far as why Defendants want to be able to maintain these 
records, I’ll go back to the HRO.  The Plaintiffs used 
medical records.  They removed the confidentiality 
designation for the purpose of that HRO.  Those HRO 
records are not filed under seal.  The medical records 
still available if Sean wanted to go to the courthouse 
and get ‘em.  On top of that, now they’re reasserting the 
confidentiality of those records.  They’re publishing it 
on their website, specifically quoting medical records.  
The Defendants are very concerned that this same stuff is 
going to come up again, despite rules and caselaw that 
says it shouldn’t, it does seem like these parties will 
meet again.  They want to be able to preserve it.   
  As far as some of the records, I believe that 
Plaintiff’s counsel touched on, Defendants are of the 
position that those records are being amendive (sic) -- 
amended, I think the records themselves show that there’s 
been amendments to those records and changes to those 
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records.  Some of the originals, Defendants are concerned 
that if they ever needed it again, would not be available 
to them.  Those records, while removing the 
confidentiality designation, would still be governed by 
any applicable state or federal regulations.  But 
Defendants are just -- do not want to have to destroy 
those records and without ever being able to potentially 
get ‘em again.  That’s where that comes in.  For the 
rest, I’ll just defer to the briefing.   
  As far as the response to the contempt motion goes, 
I think the timing presented by Plaintiff’s counsel is 
incorrect.  The, the -- following judgment, the 
Plaintiffs would have had -- there would have been 
opportunity to appeal any of that, or Defendants could 
have appealed that, there would have been 30 days there 
and another 60 days then to comply.  So Defendants still 
complied within the requirements of the protective order.   
  On top of that, the Plaintiffs are seeking a 
certification that stretches beyond what is explicitly 
required of clause eleven in the protective order.  
There’s not a chance in the world I’m going to allow my 
clients to sign anything under oath that’s going to go 
beyond what they’re required to do.  These additional 
certifications, whatever Plaintiffs wanted to include, 
I’m just not going to allow the clients to sign that if 
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they’re not required to do so.  I get that Plaintiffs 
want it, but they don’t -- they can bring a motion then 
to amend the protective order, then to get additional 
certification requirements.  But absent that, I’m going 
to advise my clients not to sign anything further under 
oath, and they are absolutely bound to because I think 
it’s just going to subject them to more scrutiny.  It’s 
not an admission at all that they violated a protective 
order; they didn’t comply with any of that stuff; they’re 
just not going to provide that certification beyond what 
is required by the actual order itself.  On top of that, 
the -- the tables that Plaintiffs have attached to that 
certification that they want signed includes records that 
are publicly available through other means and are not 
properly designated confidential.  So that table itself 
brings a problem.   
  But ultimately, civil contempt is to get parties to 
comply with a court order.  That’s already been 
satisfied.  Plain-- Defendants have been provided those 
certifications as required by Rule 11.  They were 
provided to this Court with my affidavit and response.  
Civil contempt is not available here because they’ve 
already complied.  And quite frankly, we’re pretty clear 
that they would -- well, I’ll just defer to the rest of 
the argument -- arguments are in the briefing.  I don’t 
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think we need to expand on it any further. 
   THE COURT:  All right.  Ms. Wolfgram, any final 
statement? 
   MS. WOLFGRAM:  I just wanted to bring up one 
thing, Your Honor.  Mr. Tentinger talks about an HRO; 
those records are not publicly available.  That case is 
not available.  As the Court knows, that those cases, 
records are very limited, and specifically, medical 
records are never publicly available in those cases.  And 
the protective orders are covering documents that are 
received through discovery.  Plaintiffs obtained their 
own medical records.  Plaintiffs are able to disclose 
them as they need to.  That doesn’t provide the other 
party the right to disclose confidential documents that 
are Plaintiff’s medical records.  And if the Court needs 
that citation, I can find it.   
   THE COURT:  I think I’m good with that.  
Anything further, ma’am? 
   MS. WOLFGRAM:  No, Your Honor. 
   THE COURT:  All right.  The Court will take 
this matter under advisement, and I will issue an order 
within the statutory timeframes.  So that will conclude 
our hearing here today.  Thank you, everyone. 
   MR. TENTINGER:  Thank you. 
(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 action; that I thereafter 
transcribed to typewriting the foregoing transcript from the 
digital recordings taken in Otter Tail  County, Minnesota on 
May 22,2026; and that the foregoing transcript consisting of 
thirty-one (31) pages, constitutes a full, true, and accurate 
transcription of said proceeding.  
Dated:  June 28, 2026 
 
/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 
 
 
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