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THE MISSING PUBLIC RECORDS FROM MARK DAYTON’S DIVORCE
By Luke Hellier | August 30, 2010
Candidates that are looking to hold a position such as Governor should be fully vetted before the election so the public knows who they are voting for.
In this race specifically, the Star Tribune has spent considerable time and resources looking into personal court documents related to Tom Emmer, and we have yet to see the same on Mark Dayton.
As a member of the public I have been committed to exploring Dayton’s past for the benefit of the voters. Much of this research consists of Dayton’s votes in the Senate, public statements, and news articles about the former Senator.
This is common practice in many elections. In 2004 Jack Ryan was running against Barack Obama for US Senate in Illinois.
Brendan Koerner wrote in Slate:
Records from the 1999 divorce of Illinois Senate candidate Jack Ryan were unsealed Monday, and the revelations contained therein are spooking some of his supporters. The documents contain allegations from his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, that her then-husband had a predilection for taking her to raunchy sex clubs. Both Ryans opposed the unsealing of the divorce records. Why was the court permitted to overrule their wishes?
Because the First Amendment rights of media organizations generally supercede the privacy rights of litigants, since the American legal system favors transparency in all court proceedings. In the Ryan case, the Chicago Tribune and a Chicago TV station sued in Los Angeles (where the divorce proceedings took place) to unseal the records. In keeping with prior rulings nationwide, the court concluded that the public’s right of access outweighed whatever emotional distress the unsealing might cause.
To keep divorce records sealed, a defendant must prove that the release of the documents would cause objective harm to a concerned party, typically a juvenile.
Furthermore, in 2006 the Star Tribune spent specific time and resources looking in to the record of Republican candidate for congress Alan Fine. Mitch Berg at Shot in the Dark has that story.
In 2000 Conrad deFiebre from the Star Tribune wrote about Dayton’s past:
Similarly, when asked why he mounted his fourth campaign for statewide office this year, he said it was because of his recent second divorce. If he had still been married, he said, he would be tending cattle with his second wife, Janice Haarstick, instead of running for election.
“I expect my life to be scrutinized,” he said. “Accurate and fair are all I’ve ever asked for. As Harry Truman said, `If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ (deFiebre, Conrad. Public Quest Pulls Private Man… August 30, 2000).”
Following this divorce Dayton made several comments to the press about the proceedings.
Recently divorced for a second time, Dayton said he delayed getting into the Senate race because he was preoccupied with personal matters. “Up until the middle of January, my main priority had been to try to save my marriage,” he said. ”Unfortunately, that didn’t work out, and that also opened the possibility of undertaking this campaign.”
Following any divorce there are public records on file with the courts. It’s not uncommon for parties involved to have the records sealed from public viewing.
In the course of review of the court file in Goodhue County, Minnesota, some documents were available for public review, but two sworn statements from Dayton’s ex-wife had been removed from the file and given to Dayton’s attorney.
The documents in question involve Dayton’s second divorce from Janice Haarstick in 1999. Dayton was petitioner in the case, which means he brought the divorce case.
During the early stages of the divorce proceedings an application for temporary relief was filed. This is a sworn statement from a party in support of a request for the Court to grant some sort of interim relief.
For example, during the pendency of the action, the Court can decide who would live in the house and grant temporary spousal maintenance, otherwise known as alimony. In cases with children, temporary custody between the parties could be set.
Following the Mark Dayton’s initiation of the divorce, Mark Dayton’s now ex-wife brought a sworn application for temporary relief and filed this with the court administrator in Goodhue County, Minnesota on June 8, 1999.
A few days after filing this application for temporary, Mark Dayton’s ex-wife filed another sworn affidavit with the Court, ostensibly in support of the application for temporary relief. This document was entitled “Second Affidavit of Janice Haarstick Dayton” and filed on June 15, 1999.
On March 31, 2000, Janice Haarstick’s attorney from Leonard, Street and Deinard, Roseanne Nathanson, apparently without any authorization under the law to do so, removed these sworn statements and some other documents from the court file. It’s unclear why she was allowed to physically remove these documents from the file without any court order to do so.
We know that this was done, because there is a receipt for them in the court file. Seven days later, an order was signed by the Honorable Richard C. Perkins allowing these documents to be returned to each parties’ attorneys.
This Order was not filed with the Court Administrator until April 10, 2000 (One full week after his announcement he was running for the United States Senate), ten days after the documents had already been removed by Janice Haarstick’s Attorney.
What’s strange, and why the public should be informed, is that Dayton’s records were not sealed but they were actually removed from the court and returned to the Dayton and Haarsticks’ attorneys.
Haarstick’s sworn statements were physically removed from the public record under very suspicious circumstances.
After reviewing this information with a few attorneys I have discovered this is an unprecedented maneuver to conceal what is in the documents, and there is no specific provision for it in Minnesota law.
We see from the timeline of the case that at the time the documents were removed from the court file, there was no legal authority for this to be done.
I am asking the Mark Dayton campaign, in the spirit of full disclosure, to return all the public documents from his divorce case including the two sworn statements filed by Ms. Haarstick.
This is nothing new for Minnesota as in 1990 when DFL Governor Rudy Perpich called several news conferences across the state discussing the public divorce papers of Republican Jon Grunseth.
Please stay tuned to MinnesotaDemocratsExposed.com as more information becomes available.
Tags: 2010 Election, 2010 Governor, Mark Dayton
Topics: 2010 Election, 2010 Governor, Mark Dayton | 10 Comments »
10 Responses to “THE MISSING PUBLIC RECORDS FROM MARK DAYTON’S DIVORCE”
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August 30th, 2010 at 6:48 AM
It speaks volumes that you spent most of this post just trying to convince us that your own efforts are not sleazy.
August 30th, 2010 at 8:07 AM
Jeff what post did you just read? The post shows a reason why a divorce can bring down a candidate. In the case that he cited it was the divorce that helped Barrack Obama get an easy win in the 2004 senate election which helped him get elected President.
In this case what Luke proved what easily could’ve been a major story in 2000 and at least three reporters who were given the story didn’t want to check up on it. Dane Smith for example is a liberal who doesn’t want to embarrass Democrats. When he wrote a story in 2001 about how the AFL-CIO gave an “Unanimous” endorsement of Senator Paul Wellstone he ignored the fact that a delegate had contacted him and told him that the chair had declared the motion pass without the nays. Thus an illegally passed motion. What made it worse was that the delegate who protested to him was waiting to vote nay and was well aware of what had just happened.
But Jeff instead of attacking Luke how about a few questions:
One, you aren’t alarmed that a lawyer could walk in and remove materials from a court file. The employee who allowed this to happen should’ve been fired?
Two, you don’t care at all about the timing? It’s done just before Mark announces he is running and the judge issues the order to make the so called act legal?
Three, while judges are suppose to be nonpartisan was the judge aware that he allowed a potential US Senator to have his public divorce record (unlike a sealed record which Obama had to get opened up)
Four, so are you saying after a group of Dayton relatives have used their money saying Tom Emmer is a drunk driver who doesn’t deserve to be governor we can’t ask is there anything in this divorce file that might embarrass him.
And Luke a side note on what helped bring down Mr. Ryan in 2004. He gave an interview to a couple of reporters just before the file came public. He had told them that there was nothing in the file. If I remembered right this was after he knew it was coming public. Ryan was destroyed because assuming he knew what was in the file he was ignoring the potential damage.
Here it certainly looks like Dayton was trying to clean up his divorce decree to avoid trouble.
Walter Hanson
Minneapolis, MN
August 30th, 2010 at 2:03 PM
I think what you need here is a statute (or a rule) that says the attorney couldn’t do it, and you don’t seem to have one. What the facts suggest to me is that there was an agreement between the parties to have the documents removed and that they were in fact removed. It seems to me that the only person who has standing to object is one of the parties. The fact that an order allowing the was issues suggests that neither party objected, and that is pretty much it.
Concerning legal authority, this is the way the world workds. Judges pretty much can do anything they want, unless there is a statute or rule somewhere that says they can’t which can be used for the basis of an appeal.
August 30th, 2010 at 2:15 PM
“One, you aren’t alarmed that a lawyer could walk in and remove materials from a court file. The employee who allowed this to happen should’ve been fired?”
Not particularly. I don’t know the facts of the case, but my guess is that the documents were removed with the mutual consent of the parties. It just took a while for the paper work to catch up. A divorce isn’t really anyone’s business except the parties.
“Two, you don’t care at all about the timing? It’s done just before Mark announces he is running and the judge issues the order to make the so called act legal?”
I think the concern is the removal of the documents, not the timing. If I had to guess, I would say the documents probably contained embarrassing statements. People often make embarrassing statements in divorce actions. But that’s between the parties.
“Three, while judges are suppose to be nonpartisan was the judge aware that he allowed a potential US Senator to have his public divorce record (unlike a sealed record which Obama had to get opened up).”
The judge might very well have been aware of that. What of it? Again, a divorce action is between the parties. If the parties agree that a document should be removed, no one else has an enforceable interest in keeping it there.
“Four, so are you saying after a group of Dayton relatives have used their money saying Tom Emmer is a drunk driver who doesn’t deserve to be governor we can’t ask is there anything in this divorce file that might embarrass him.”
You can ask all you want. It’s a free country. And the public is free to draw any conclusions it wants from these facts, and the public is free to speculate to it’s heart’s content about what the missing documents might contain. And the public is also free to speculate why Minnesota’s Republicans are so eager to discuss a long ago divorce action, and so reluctant to discuss what their candidate for governor might do in office should he actually get elected.
August 30th, 2010 at 2:26 PM
Luke’s name appears at the top of this piece. It sure doesn’t sound like his writing.
Is Luke lying about being the author? Who is he covering for?
August 30th, 2010 at 2:27 PM
The MN GOP is stuck with Emmer.
Their only hope is to blow up Senator Dayton on the launch pad.
Sad but true.
August 30th, 2010 at 3:53 PM
“On March 31, 2000, Janice Haarstick’s attorney from Leonard, Street and Deinard, Roseanne Nathanson, apparently without any authorization under the law to do so, removed these sworn statements and some other documents from the court file.”
“I am asking the Mark Dayton campaign, in the spirit of full disclosure, to return all the public documents from his divorce case including the two sworn statements filed by Ms. Haarstick.”
Anyone see the problem with asking Mark Dayton to return the documents?
August 30th, 2010 at 5:43 PM
danbrome said:
“Their only hope is to blow up Senator Dayton on the launch pad”
So funny.
It’s not a hope, it’s a foregone conclusion. Have you heard about the “scary trackers” yet? Perhaps you’ve listened to Mark tell you how he needs “supercomputers” to figure out all the complicated math stuff he’ll need if he is to be governor.
Nobody can “blow up Senator Dayton on the launch pad” better than Senator Dayton (one of Time Magazine’s Worst Senator, in case you missed it: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1183984,00.html ).
August 30th, 2010 at 6:35 PM
It’s hilarious watching liberals defend a two-time divorced mental patient alcoholic who has tried for two decades to convince Minnesotans to “just like me…please!”
August 30th, 2010 at 7:51 PM
Reposted from Minnpost:
Mr. Hellier apparently wants to know what happened to these documents: an application for temporary relief and a “Second Affidavit of Janice Haarstick Dayton”.
From Mr. Hellier’s blog:
“On March 31, 2000, Janice Haarstick’s attorney from Leonard, Street and Deinard, Roseanne Nathanson, apparently without any authorization under the law to do so, removed these sworn statements and some other documents from the court file. It’s unclear why she was allowed to physically remove these documents from the file without any court order to do so.”
From the April 7, 2000, order linked to from Mr. Hellier’s blog:
“all filings [with very specific exceptions]shall be returned to counsel for the filing party.”
While the written order is dated April 7, it is not unusual for orders to be issued orally, from the bench, and for those orders to be issued in writing at a later date.It is likely that this occurred here. Orders issued from the bench are immediately effective.
It is even more likely that the parties themselves had agreed to this procedure.
There’s plenty to criticize when it comes to Mr. Dayton’s candidacy. Why this might be relevant, however, eludes me.