Sarah Yule, petitioner, Respondent,

This opinion will be unpublished and
may not be cited except as provided by
Minn. Stat. § 480A.08, subd. 3 (2016).

STATE OF MINNESOTA
IN COURT OF APPEALS
A17-0211

Sarah Yule, petitioner,
Respondent,

vs.

Jan Kehlenbeck,
Appellant.

Filed September 5, 2017
Affirmed
Rodenberg, Judge

Anoka County District Court
File No. 02-CV-17-57

Sarah Yule, Coon Rapids, Minnesota (pro se respondent)

David R. Lundgren, Adam T. Johnson, Lundg ren & Johnson, PSC, St. Paul, Minnesota
(for appellant)

Considered and decided by Kirk, Presid ing Judge; Rodenberg, Judge; and Florey,
Judge.
U N P U B L I S H E D O P I N I O N
RODENBERG, Judge
Appellant Jan Kehlenbeck appeals from the district court’s grant of a harassment
restraining order (HRO). She argues that the district court abused its discretion by allowing
testimony regarding an event not noticed in the petition for the HR O and by limiting her

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cross-examination of respondent Sarah Yule, and argues that the record does not support
the district court’s decision. We affirm.
FACTS
Respondent and B.B. have a 14-year old daughter, A.Y. Re spondent and B.B.
separated shortly after discovering respondent was pregnant with their daughter. In late
2015, B.B. met appellant, and they began dating. Appellant developed a relationship with
A.Y. In December 2015, A.Y. was the victim of an assault.
Appellant and respondent exchanged text messages on September 8, 2016, and the
exchange concluded with re spondent asking appellant to stop contacting her. On
January 1, 2017, appellant sent a text mess age to respondent and B.B. that criticized
respondent’s parenting of A.Y. Responden t had set her phone to block messages from
appellant, so she did not receive this message. Appellant then sent this same text message
to her friends, and one of appellant’s friends forwarded the message to respondent on
January 3, 2017.
On January 4, 2017, respondent requested and received an ex parte temporary HRO
against appellant. In the petition for the HRO, respondent described appellant’s harassing
behavior, claiming that appellant had (1) reported respondent to child-protection
authorities multiple times and st ated that respondent was us ing drugs; (2) made false
accusations to respondent’s employer, causing respondent to be fired; (3) sent respondent
harassing texts on September 8, 2016; and (4) se nt text messages to respondent “from”
other numbers after respondent had asked a ppellant to not contact her and had blocked
messages from appellant’s cell phone.

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At a hearing on January 17, respondent te stified about the harassing behavior she
described in her petition. Re spondent also testified that appellant had violated the
temporary HRO by sending her a text message on January 9 through another person, B.B.
Appellant testified at the hearing. She deni ed that she had contacted child protection to
report that respondent used dr ugs. She also denied contac ting respondent’s employer.
Appellant admitted that she ha d sent respondent the text messages on September 8 and
January 1, and that respondent received a copy of appellant’s January 1 text from one of
appellant’s friends on January 3. But appellant invoked her Fifth Amendment right to not
incriminate herself and refused to answer qu estions about whether she sent B.B. a text
message to relay a message to respondent on January 9 in violation of the temporary HRO.
During the hearing, appellant objected to respondent testifying about the January 9
text message, arguing that it was not a basis for issuing an HRO because it was not included
in the original petition. The district court ov erruled her objection. The district court also
restricted appellant from cross-examining respondent about the assault on A.Y. over
appellant’s arguments.
The district court issued an HRO restri cting appellant from contacting respondent
for two years, making findings of fact in support of its decisi on. The district court found
that the texts sent to respondent on January 1 and January 3 were “f lat out unkind,” that
appellant instructed her friend to send the Janua ry 3 text message to respondent, and that
appellant attempted to contact respondent on January 1 and January 9. Although
respondent had requested that the HRO restrain appellant from harassing or having contact
with A.Y., the district court denied that relief.

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This appeal followed.
D E C I S I O N
Appellant raises three arguments on appeal. First, she argues that the district court
abused its discretion by allowing respondent to testify about a text message that appellant
sent on January 9, an allegati on not included in th e original petition. Second, she argues
that the district court abused its discretion by not allowing her to cross-examine respondent
about the circumstances surrounding the assault of A.Y. Finally, appellant argues that the
evidence is insufficient to support the district court’s issuance of an HRO.
I. The district court did not abuse its discretion in its evidentiary rulings.

Appellant challenges two of the district court’s evidentiary rulings during the
hearing. Evidentiary rulings are within a district court’s discretion, and this court will only
reverse such rulings for a clear abuse of that discretion. Johnson v. Washington Cty., 518
N.W.2d 594, 601 (Minn. 1994). An appellant is only entitle d to a new hearing based on
an erroneous evidentiary ruling if she demonstrates th e error was prejudicial. Kroning v.
State Farm Auto. Ins. Co. , 567 N.W.2d 42, 46 (Minn. 1997). An evidentiary error is
prejudicial if the error might reasonably have changed the result of the trial. Cloverdale
Foods of Minn., Inc. v. Pioneer Snacks, 580 N.W.2d 46, 51 (Minn. App. 1998).
Appellant first argues that the district court should not have permitted respondent to
introduce evidence of harassment that took pl ace after respondent petitioned for an HRO
without having amended the petition to include the postf iling incident of claimed
harassment.

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Minnesota law requires a petitioner to stat e the “specific fact s and circumstances
from which relief is sought.” Minn. Stat. § 609.748, subd. 3(a) (2016). The law does not
require that every detail of the alleged harassment must be catalogued in the petition.
Where, as here, the claimed harassment conti nues after the petition is filed, evidence of
that continued postfiling harassment is releva nt and admissible without an amendment of
the petition to encompass each additional incident of harassment. We see no abuse of the
district court’s discretion concerning this issue.
Appellant next argues that the district court abused its discretion when it did not
allow her to cross-examine respondent about the circumstances surrounding the assault of
A.Y. She argues that this issue is relevant because it shows that her messages to respondent
were based on a reasonable concern for A.Y. We disagree.
Only relevant evidence is admissible. Mi nn. R. Evid. 402. Relevant evidence is
“evidence having any tendency to make the existence of any fact that is of consequence to
the determination of the action more probable or less probable than it would be without the
evidence.” Minn. R. Evid. 401. The ques tion of whether resp ondent was somehow
responsible for the assault of A.Y. does not make it more or less probable that appellant’s
text messages were harassing. This issue al so has no relevance to whether appellant’s
conduct had or was intended to have an effect on respondent’s safety, security, or privacy.
The district court did not abus e its discretion in limiting appe llant’s cross-examination to
issues relevant to whether an HRO should be issued.

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II. The record supports the district court’s grant of an HRO.

Appellant argues that the record does not show that her actions were repeated
incidents of unwanted acts, words, or gestures that were objectively unreasonable and had
or were intended to have an adverse effect on respondent’s safety, security, or privacy.
We review a district court’s issuance of an HRO for abuse of discretion and will
reverse the order if it is not su pported by suffici ent evidence. Kush v. Mathison , 683
N.W.2d 841, 843-44 (Minn. App. 2004), review denied (Minn. Sept. 29, 2004). We will
not set aside a district court’s factual findi ngs unless clearly erroneous, and we give
deference to a district court’ s credibility determinations. Id. Whether the facts found by
the district court satisfy the statutory criteria for harassment is a question of law, which we
review de novo. See Peterson v. Johnson , 755 N.W.2d 758, 761 (Minn. App. 2008)
(explaining that the authority to grant an HRO is statutory and that appellate courts review
questions of statutory interpretation de novo).
A district court may issue an HRO if it finds that there are reasonable grounds to
believe that a person has engaged in harassmen t. Minn. Stat. § 6 09.748, subd. 5(b)(3)
(2016). Harassment is defined to include, among other things, a single act of physical or
sexual assault or “repeated incidents of intrusive or unwanted acts, words, or gestures that
have a substantial adverse effect or are intended to have a substantial adverse effect on the
safety, security, or privacy of another.” Id., subd. 1(a)(1) (2016). Respondent alleged no
act of assault by appellant.
To obtain an HRO, a petitioner must show both (1) objectively unreasonable intent
or conduct on the part of the harasser and (2) an objectively reasonable belief on the part

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of the person subject to harassment that the conduct had a substantial adverse effect on the
person’s safety, security, or privacy. Dunham v. Roer, 708 N.W.2d 552, 567 (Minn. App.
2006), review denied (Minn. Mar. 28, 2006). Objectively unreasonable conduct is limited
to conduct that “goes beyond an acceptable expression of ou trage and civilized conduct,
and instead causes a substantial adverse effect on another’s safety, security or privacy.”
Kush, 683 N.W.2d at 846. Statements that are merely argumentative or inappropriate do
not rise to the level of harassment. Witchell v. Witchell, 606 N.W.2d 730, 732 (Minn. App.
2000) (stating that an ex-husband’s criticis m of his ex-wife’s parenting decisions and
stating he wanted joint legal and physical custody of the children was not harassment).
The record supports the district court’s finding that appellant sent text messages, or
had text messages sent by others , to respondent on January 1, January 3, and January 9.
Appellant admitted that she sent the message to respondent on January 1 and that she later
forwarded it to her friends. Respondent testified and provided corroborating evidence that
she received a message from a phone number other than appellant’s number on January 3,
and that appellant sent B.B. a text messag e with a message to relay to respondent on
January 9. The district court found resp ondent’s testimony about the text messages
credible. While the district court could have made different findings based on this record,
the findings it did make are supported by the record. Vangsness v. Vangsness, 607 N.W.2d
468, 474 (Minn. App. 2000).
Appellant also argues that the text mess ages were objectively reasonable because
the messages were intended to “bring about positive change in the raising of a young child,”
citing two of our previous cases. See Peterson , 755 N.W.2d at 765-66 (holding that

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reporting specific concerns of child safe ty to the police is not harassment); Witchell, 606
N.W.2d at 732 (holding that an ex-husband’s criticism of his ex-wife’s parenting decisions
in a notebook specifically intended to fac ilitate their communication regarding parenting
issues was not harassment). Peterson and Witchell are distinguishable from this case.
Unlike the father in Witchell, appellant was not using an agreed-upon channel of
communication to express her parenting concerns and was instead texting her concerns to
respondent and multiple other people. 606 N.W.2d at 732. When respondent blocked
appellant’s text messages, appellant sent the messages to third persons who forwarded them
to respondent. Also, unlike the father in Peterson, appellant did not report specific
concerns to police, but instead sent generaliz ed criticisms to respondent and others. 755
N.W.2d at 765-66. We agree with the district court that the content and means of delivering
the messages were objectively unreasonabl e and intended to cause or did cause a
substantial adverse effect on respondent’s safety, security, or privacy.
Finally, appellant argues that the record does not support a finding that respondent
had an objectively reasonable belief that a ppellant’s conduct had a substantial adverse
effect on respondent’s safety, security, or privacy. Specifically, appellant argues that
respondent did not testify or offer evidence as to what effect, if any, appellant’s actions had
on her.
In her petition for an HRO, respondent lis ted the text messages sent by appellant
under the section that asked her to describe the harassing conduct, and stated that she
believes the harassment would continue. During the hearing, respondent also testified that
she was concerned about how the disagreements with appellant were affecting her 14-year-

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old daughter. We give deference to the district court’s determination that respondent had
an objectively reasonable belief that appellant ’s conduct had a substantial adverse effect
on her safety, security, or privacy, and th e record supports the district court’s
determination. Kush, 683 N.W.2d at 846.
Affirmed.