---
title: One Day in Starkebaum and Years in Stevenson
url: https://justice-denied.org/protective-orders-starkebaum-stevenson/
date: 2026-09-24T01:38:06+00:00
modified: 2026-10-27T20:55:30+00:00
lang: en_US
---

# One Day in Starkebaum and Years in Stevenson

In Starkebaum, Judge Kevin Miller restricted a disputed settlement letter by the next day. In *Stevenson*, filings identified years ago as containing designated confidential information remain publicly downloadable.

---

On September 21, 2026, defense counsel in *Precision Locating LLC and Arvig Enterprises Inc v Martin Starkebaum* filed a public letter concerning settlement. Plaintiffs moved to restrict it three hours and eight minutes later. On September 22, [Judge Kevin M. Miller](https://justice-denied.org/judge-kevin-m-miller/) granted the motion. By the time the public docket was captured at 3:20 that afternoon, the letter no longer had a public download link.

That prompt response is not the problem. It is how a court should respond when a party presents a plausible confidentiality concern. The problem is what happened in *Stevenson v Stevenson*, where the same judge signed a more explicit protective order, received detailed notice of violations, and left the central public filings untouched.

Justice-Denied downloaded and reviewed the *Starkebaum* letter while it was publicly available in the court record, before the court restricted access. Justice-Denied will not reproduce or disclose the settlement terms. The comparison does not require republishing them. The court records establish the timing, the protective orders, the notice given in each case, and the very different results.

## A response by the next day

The *Starkebaum* letter was filed publicly at 11:48 a.m. on September 21. It did not display a visible Confidential designation. At 2:56 p.m., plaintiffs filed a motion and memorandum under Minnesota General Rule of Practice 11.04(c) and the April 18, 2025 protective order. They asked the court to strike the letter or make it confidential. Judge Miller granted the request the next day without a hearing and directed that correspondence from both attorneys be confidential.

The public docket then showed the entry for Document 216 but no download icon. Whatever one thinks of the merits of the restriction, the court recognized the asserted privacy interest and acted before the exposure became prolonged.

**Update — October 27, 2026:** A later [October 27, 2026 order](https://justice-denied.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/starkebaum-order-mediation-2026-10-27.pdf) permitted two exhibits, Indexes 227 and 228, to be filed confidentially following an [October 20 motion](https://justice-denied.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/starkebaum-confidential-filing-motion-2026-10-20.pdf). That separate request was decided seven calendar days after filing. The order also removed the December 7 trial setting and required mediation by January 15, 2027, with another pretrial if mediation fails. The September filing and restriction dates underlying the next-day comparison remain unchanged. **Sources: Index 226, pp. 1–2; Index 232, pp. 1–2.**

## What the *Stevenson* protective order required

Judge Miller signed the amended protective order in *Stevenson* on January 24, 2022 (Document 174). Paragraph 9 used mandatory language. A party filing a document that contained designated confidential information had to file that document as Confidential. The order also prohibited disclosure of designated documents and their contents outside the authorized group.

By March 2023, the issue was no longer hidden in discovery correspondence. Index 421, the March 15 summary judgment transcript, records counsel identifying pages 4, 6, 7, 24 and 25 of defendants' principal memorandum as repeatedly referring to private and confidential information drawn from deposition testimony designated confidential. Counsel said plaintiffs had raised the issue with defendants on February 28, asked them to refile the memorandum as confidential, received no response, and sought permission from the court to file a motion because earlier protective-order concerns had also gone unanswered.

Judge Miller said he would return to the issue later in the hearing, stated that he had made a note, and asked counsel not to let him forget. The transcript records no later return to the confidentiality issue before the hearing concluded. On March 21, Plaintiffs’ counsel filed a letter to the Court confidentially as Document 411 and again identified the public summary judgment memorandum, the designated deposition material it used, earlier incidents, and the corrective action requested. Because Document 411 is confidential, this article does not quote it.

No separate ruling restricted the summary judgment memorandum. On June 16, 2023, the court filed Document 429, granting summary judgment, dismissing the case, and treating the remaining motions and requests as “moot.” On September 1, 2023, the defendants, through attorneys [Kirsten Hansen](https://stichlaw.com/kirsten-kit-j-hansen/) and [Ross Tentinger](https://www.tentingerlawfirm.com/ross-n-tentinger/), filed a public memorandum in support of their sanctions motion. The memorandum again cited confidential exhibits and described their contents, even though the court had already been notified of repeated protective order violations.

## The comparison is stark

The essential comparison is response time. In *Starkebaum*, a formal motion was filed three hours and eight minutes after the letter, and access was restricted by the next day. In *Stevenson*, Plaintiffs’ counsel notified the court that designated confidential material appeared in public filings. No separate ruling restricted the identified public memoranda, and six identified filings remained downloadable in Justice-Denied’s September 22, 2026 MCRO review. *Stevenson*’s current protective-order violation inventory contains 41 line items across 10 disclosure episodes, nine unresolved.

Confidentiality response comparison

### One Day Versus Years

The same judge faced two confidentiality disputes with sharply different records and results.

The Starkebaum filing was restricted by the next day. The Stevenson filings remained publicly accessible for more than three to five years.

Starkebaum

Restricted by the next day

**Material**

One settlement-related letter with no visible Confidential designation.

**Notice to the court**

A formal motion was filed three hours and eight minutes later. The court granted it the next day without a responsive filing or hearing.

Stevenson

Public access continued for years

**Material**

Designated confidential depositions and exhibits; two exhibit pages visibly marked Confidential.

**Notice to the court**

The issue was raised at a hearing and detailed in confidential Document 411.

**Court response**

Judge Miller said he would return to the issue, made a note, and asked counsel not to let him forget. The hearing ended without the issue being revisited. On June 16, 2023, the court granted summary judgment and treated the remaining motions and requests as moot, without separately ruling on or restricting the identified public filings.

#### Elapsed public access

**Starkebaum**Filed September 21, 2026

Next day

One settlement-related letter

**Document 444**Filed September 1, 2023

**1,118** days

Filed after notice; cited confidential exhibits

**Document 384**Filed February 15, 2023

**1,316** days

Cited designated confidential depositions

**Document 130**Filed September 24, 2021

**1,825** days

Two exhibit pages visibly marked Confidential

012345 years

Stevenson durations update automatically from the current date: September 23, 2026.

## The procedural difference

The cases were not procedurally identical. *Starkebaum* presented a captioned Rule 11.04(c) motion. In *Stevenson*, the hearing transcript records an oral request; Plaintiffs’ confidential letter to the Court followed six days later.

Plaintiffs’ counsel identified the affected pages and confidential deposition material, reported an unanswered request to refile, and asked permission to file a motion. Judge Miller said he would return to the request later in the hearing, made a note, and asked counsel not to let him forget. The transcript records no return before the hearing ended.

Minnesota General Rule of Practice 11.03(c) permits a court to make an improperly public document nonpublic on its own initiative. Rule 11.05 permits anyone to notify the court administrator that nonpublic information appears in a public record and directs temporary restriction while the issue is corrected or decided. The *Stevenson* protective order itself said a filing containing designated confidential information shall be filed Confidential.

Minnesota's Public Access Rule 4 also matters. It can permit necessary and relevant discussion of information from nonpublic records in public pleadings. That rule prevents an automatic conclusion that every reference was unlawful. But no ruling applied that standard to the disputed passages, decided whether they were necessary, or reconciled the public-access rule with the case-specific protective order. Silence did not resolve the conflict.

## The 2026 Redesignation Motion and Ruling

After the appeals concluded, Defendants filed a Notice of Motion and Motion on April 1, 2026, seeking to redesignate broad categories of court filings and discovery as nonconfidential. Their May 1 public memorandum, Document 579, described the request as covering 40 court-filed documents, more than 1,600 pages of discovery, and 91 videos. Defendants submitted extensive confidential material to the court file on May 1 and May 15, after the protective order’s 60-day destruction-and-certification deadline had passed, and filed a public reply memorandum on May 15 as Document 611.

In their May 1 memorandum, Defendants asserted that the challenged material did not contain “trade secrets, competitively sensitive information, private personal information warranting protection, or **any other content warranting protection** under Minn. R. Civ. P. 26.03.” Plaintiffs’ public opposition, Document 598, pointed out that Defendants’ filing list included psychiatric and psychological evaluations, medical records, personal journals, private communications, home-security materials and deposition testimony. The descriptions in Defendants’ filing list contradicted their categorical assertion that protection was not warranted.

Plaintiffs compiled a separate, upload-by-upload inventory from the documents uploaded to the Judicial Branch’s MCRO case file on May 1 and May 15. It identifies 1,811 pages across 16 court entries—1,806 pages uploaded May 1 and five more on May 15. Of those, 710 pages are classified as medical records, including a 427-page document that also contains genetic data.

The court did not receive that separate inventory. It did, however, have the confidential submissions themselves. Plaintiffs’ public opposition stated that more than 1,700 pages of Confidential Documents had been placed in the court file across 16 identified docket entries. The court also had Marie Stevenson’s May 9 declaration, Document 601, with an attached chart identifying confidential documents, deposition transcripts and confidential court filings and explaining the reasons for their designations. The chart specifically identified the 427-page health compilation as containing medical records, test and laboratory results, intimate physiological information and genetic information concerning multiple family members.

Those categories carry protections beyond the case-specific protective order. [Minnesota’s Health Records Act](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/144.293) generally restricts the release of patient health records without consent or specific legal authorization and [must be construed more stringently than federal HIPAA requirements](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/144.2925). [Minnesota Statutes section 13.386](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/13.386) separately restricts the dissemination of identifiable genetic information without written informed consent or another express legal basis. The Court’s order on the redesignation motion did not determine whether either statute applied to the submissions or to copies distributed through e-service.

The materials were filed under a Confidential designation, which prevented general public access. But confidential filing did not prevent e-service distribution: recipients received links that allowed the documents to be downloaded for 30 days and saved. On August 17, 2026, Judge Miller filed Document 618, denying redesignation as untimely and holding that the court lacked jurisdiction to alter the confidential designations. The order found that the protective order survived termination, paragraph 11’s required acts were clearly defined, and Defendants had notice and a reasonable time to comply. It nevertheless stated, “It is unclear to the Court whether Defendants have failed to comply.”

The order relied on the attorney-retention exception but did not determine which materials fell within it, who could retain copies distributed through e-service, or whether submission, distribution and retention complied with the Minnesota Health Records Act and Minnesota Statutes section 13.386. Even so, **the order took no remedial action concerning the submitted materials.** It did not direct their removal from the Judicial Branch’s electronic case file, determine which recipients were entitled to retain downloaded copies, or require the return or deletion of copies outside the protective order’s attorney-retention exception.

The court also denied a contempt motion focused on post-termination destruction and certification duties. That ruling did not decide whether the earlier public filings complied with paragraph 9. Nor did it restrict Documents 130, 384 or 444. The unresolved issue is whether access controls are working and why the public versions that drew from designated material remain available.

## The question Judge Miller has not answered

In *Starkebaum*, Judge Miller acted by the next day and removed public access to the disputed filing. In *Stevenson*, the court received specific notice, but public filings containing or describing designated confidential information have remained available for more than three years—and, in some instances, as long as five years. The measurable difference is response time and result.

People disclose medical histories, family trauma, financial records and the interior of their homes because courts tell them protective orders have force. Those people are entitled to more than a signed order. They are entitled to consistent protection when violations of the protective order are brought to the court's attention.

Judge Miller has now shown what prompt protection looks like. The public is entitled to ask why the Stevenson family did not receive it.

## Sources and documentation

1. *Starkebaum* court record. 56-CV-25-198, Documents 19 and 216 through 223, including the September 22, 2026 docket capture; [October 20 motion](https://justice-denied.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/starkebaum-confidential-filing-motion-2026-10-20.pdf), Index 226, pp. 1–2; and [October 27, 2026 order](https://justice-denied.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/starkebaum-order-mediation-2026-10-27.pdf), Index 232, pp. 1–2.
2. *Stevenson* court record. 56-CV-20-2928, Document 429, June 16, 2023 summary judgment order and memorandum; Index 421, summary judgment transcript, printed/PDF pages 32–33 (confidentiality request and response) and 69–70 (hearing conclusion); and Documents 73, 113, 130, 174, 202, 384, 411, 432, 444, 566, 579, 580, 598, 601, 611, 612 and 618. Document 411 was reviewed but is not quoted.
3. Protective Order Violations v2.0, reporting date September 23, 2026.
4. Craig and Marie Stevenson. *2026-05-29 Documents Exposed on MCRO v2.0*, an internal accounting of the May 1 and May 15, 2026 submissions. This inventory was not submitted to the court.
5. Minnesota Health Records Act. Minnesota Statutes sections 144.291 through 144.298, particularly [section 144.2925](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/144.2925) and [section 144.293](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/144.293).
6. Minnesota treatment of genetic information. [Minnesota Statutes section 13.386](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/13.386).
7. Minnesota General Rules of Practice. Rules 11.03 through 11.05. [https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/rule/gp-11/](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/rule/gp-11/)
8. Minnesota Rules of Public Access. Rule 4, including subdivision 4. [https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/ra/id/4/](https://www.revisor.mn.gov/court_rules/ra/id/4/)
9. Minnesota Judicial Branch. *Minnesota District Court Registered User Guide for Electronic Filing*, “Receiving Documents Served Through eFile and eServe,” page 9, August 24, 2026. [Registered User Guide](https://mncourts.gov/_media/migration/scao_library/efs/Minnesota-District-Court-Registered-User-Guide-for-Electronic-FIling.pdf).