By VERNON ROBISON
The Progress
Two additional filings have been made in the ongoing legal skirmish between Mesquite Police Chief MaQuade Chesley, the plaintiff in the case, and local journalist Barbara Ellestad, the defendant.
On Thursday, Dec. 23, Chesley’s attorney filed a motion requesting the court to dismiss Ellestad from the proceedings without prejudice.
This motion was followed on Dec. 29 by a response from Ellestad’s attorney vigorously opposing Chesley’s motion.
The anti-SLAPP motion
Chesley’s motion to dismiss came nearly a week after Ellestad had filed a motion of her own to dismiss all claims against her.
Ellestad’s motion cited a Nevada law that prevents Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). This anti-SLAPP statute, as it is called, is meant to thwart lawsuits that would censor, intimidate and silence critics by needlessly burdening them with the high cost of legal defense.
Ellestad’s motion claimed that this is exactly what Chesley’s lawsuit has done to her. Ellestad has said that because of the fallout on this matter she has lost her business, her income and her “voice in the community” – and to date, she has accumulated nearly $20,000 in legal expenses.
As such, Ellestad’s anti-SLAPP motion asked that the court award her court costs and attorney fees.
Chesley’s Dec. 23 motion to dismiss without prejudice made no mention of court costs.
Background on the lawsuit
Chesley’s original complaint, filed back in October, named three parties: the City of Mesquite, former City Manager Aaron Baker and Ellestad.
No public filings have yet been made in the action against the City or against Baker.
Ellestad was named in the suit due to an article published on April 27, 2021 in the Mesquite Citizen Journal (MCJ), a local news website owned by Ellestad which was closed shortly after the article appeared.
The article, written by Ellestad, reported that Chesley was, at the time, being investigated by the Nevada State Attorney General’s office. It also claimed that multiple unnamed local sources had confirmed being interviewed by investigators from the Attorney General’s office about alleged inappropriate misconduct by Chesley.
According to the article, the allegations pertained to possible inappropriate and questionable texts, conversations and photos exchanged by Chesley with teenage girls in the community between 2015 and late 2019. None of the alleged sources or accusers were named in the MCJ article.
Chesley has denied that any such inappropriate activity ever took place. And the Attorney General’s office, after a preliminary investigation, stated that no evidence had been found of any criminal violation.
Chesley’s motion to dismiss
In his Dec. 23 motion to dismiss, Chesley acknowledged that Ellestad would come under the benefits of Nevada’s Anti-SLAPP as a member of the press, “regardless of her cavalier treatment of the truth.”
“We believe in freedom of speech and protections of legitimate journalism,” said Chesley’s attorney Philip Trenchak in a statement made to The Progress on Sunday afternoon regarding the motion. “This is not what we are dealing with here. Nevertheless, those protections would certainly be argued in a long drawn out and costly court process given the protections of Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute.”
Even so, the motion claims that “enough evidence exists to show that Ms. Ellestad was not being truthful in the article printed in the (MCJ) on April 27, 2021.”
In his statement to The Progress, Trenchak insisted that there is no doubt that Ellestad has a “clear and obvious vendetta” against Chesley and the Mesquite Police Department.
“Clearly, she used her platform to make attempts to deceive and persuade the public to feel and think negatively of the Mesquite Police Chief and the department as a whole,” Trenchak said. “Anyone who has reviewed any of her thirty plus anti-police articles, her social media comments, and text messages would come to the same conclusion. We firmly believe that the statements made in the (MCJ) article were made with malice and with the full knowledge of the falsity of these claims.”
In addition, Trenchak claims that Ellestad, in publishing her article, had shown “reckless disregard, at best” for Chesley and his family including his wife and three young daughters.
“If a member of the Chief’s family was to do an internet search of their father or husband, the article from the MCJ would inevitably pop up elaborating upon vicious lies that have been thoroughly investigated by the Attorney General’s Office and summarily dismissed,” Trenchak said. “Lies that would surely have been reported by a legitimate news source and most likely on a national level, had there been any validity therein.”
Trenchak said that one of the primary intentions in including Ellestad in the suit was to have the MCJ article removed from the site due to the impact it has had on Chesley’s family and reputation.
“What options do innocent people, placed in a similar circumstance, have to repair their name and reputation?” Trenchak asked. “The only answer is litigation. My client had no other option than to sue in order to get a blatantly false article removed and his name restored. Ms. Ellestad remains steadfast in doubling down on her lies, as is evidenced in her Declaration which closely mirrors, and which is tailor made to satisfy the requirements of the Nevada anti-SLAPP statute.”
Even so, Chesley’s motion asserts that Ellestad’s anti-SLAPP claim could be easily defeated in court. But the extended legal process of doing so would be pointless, the motion says.
“Ms. Ellestad is largely judgement proof, given that the (MCJ) is currently defunct and that Ms. Ellestad is believed to live on a set income,” the motion states.
A lawsuit against Ellestad “can therefore only result in Mr. Chesley spinning his wheels without any foreseeable recourse,” the motion concludes.
“The anti-SLAPP statute protects legitimate free speech concerns, but, as a necessary consequence, also must protect publications such as the MCJ,” Trenchak said. “Therefore, we filed a Motion to Dismiss Ms. Ellestad from that lawsuit.”
Ellestad’s response
But the response, filed by Ellestad’s attorney on Dec. 29, requests that the court deny Chesley’s motion to dismiss. Instead it asks the court to grant Ellestad’s earlier anti-SLAPP motion and award her court costs and attorney fees in keeping with the statute.
The response argues that the court, rather than dismissing the claims without prejudice as requested by Chesley’s filing, should instead dismiss the claims with prejudice.
In an interview last week, Ellestad explained being dismissed with prejudice would take her completely out of the complaint altogether. In other words, the plaintiff would not be able to reinstate the lawsuit against her in the future and Ellestad could not be called back as a witness in any further proceedings against the City in this case.
“If it is without prejudice, then I am living under a cloud of uncertainty throughout the rest of the case against the city,” Ellestad said. “I don’t want to incur any more costs involved in going through discovery.”
The response also asserts that the court should not simply ignore Ellestad’s anti-SLAPP claim while granting Chesley’s motion to dismiss.
The response begins by specifically addressing Chesley’s claim that Ellestad was knowingly untruthful in her April 27 MCJ article. The response points out that Ellestad had based her reporting in the article wholly on statements made by the City Manager himself regarding his declared first-hand knowledge of the Attorney General investigation into Chesley.
“Not a word Ellestad published was false,” the response states. “Everything that she reported on was a matter of fair report on statements by government officials. So why the lawsuit?”
“When the AG (Attorney General) writes a letter and confirms that: ‘Yes we did an investigation’,” Ellestad said, “and then (Chesley’s suit) is trying to tell people that I lied; well, wait a minute. The Ag just confirmed it was right! So where is the reckless disregard for the truth there? Which statement in the article meets that criteria?”
Ellestad’s response reasons that her inclusion in the case was merely an attempt to “bully her into silence.” Thus it should rightfully fall under the anti-SLAPP statute, the response claims.
“Chesley’s claims were flawed from the outset,” the response said. “…now after Ellestad appeared, answered and moved to dismiss this suit under Nevada’s anti-SLAPP statute, Chesley seeks to cut-and-run to avoid responsibility for bringing his baseless claims.”
In the interview, Ellestad expressed concerns that, if the court allows Chesley’s motion to circumvent the anti-SLAPP, it would be a dangerous precedent for the free press.
“I think it poses extreme danger to every journalist out there,” Ellestad said. “If they grant that motion, every time a journalist is hit with a frivolous claim of defamation and tries to file an anti-SLAPP, then all the plaintiff has to do is turn around and file a dismissal. Then they never have to answer the anti-SLAPP part. The journalist is still hit with the high legal costs.”
Ellestad said that, if this were the case, an average journalist – especially one covering a small town – would have a difficult time finding an attorney to represent him/her.
“If the anti-SLAPP is washed away and there is no hope for a journalist to recover any costs for frivolous claims, what attorney will touch it?” Ellestad said. “Only the richest newspapers and journalists would ever be able to afford the career. And it will have a destructive effect on access to justice. That would certainly dampen the free press from reporting the truth”
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11 thoughts on “New Filings Made In MPD Chief Lawsuit”
What a complete bunch of bull from Ellestad. She says she had based her reporting in the article wholly on statements made by the City Manager. Wait a minute! Someone tells you something so you print it without verification? The printed article was so vague that any reader could see something was wrong.
Next she says the city manager told her the AG was investigating the chief. Of course he knew that, HE made the complaint to the AG.
The disregard for the truth was this: Ellestad said there were numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and she couldn’t back it up. Did he or didn’t he? The truth is still out there and Ellestad wants to hide behind SLAPP. She wasn’t even a journalist, just writing a blog from her kitchen. Another hit piece on the PD.
Chesley needs a new lawyer and play hardball. Make Ellestad put up or shut up. Name names. It’s Chesley’s reputation we will all remember.
Nothing less than a courtroom hearing to determine who is telling the truth. I lean toward the Chief, whom I do not know, but he should have his day in court to clear his name and reputation. The status of his suit against the city and others should be updated. He must be going through a personal hell with all the rumors and mudslinging. That is not fair to him or the city. Let the case promptly go forward.
Well Martin, I believe she did both; put up and shut up. She’s spent tens of thousands in legal fees so far for a suit the chief wants to drop because he knows he’s goofed it big time. And she shut up when she closed down her newspaper because of the MPOA and chiefs harassment. He has readily admitted in his court filings that there was an AG investigation going on at the time about his alleged behavior. So how can her article be nonsense when in fact he admitted there was an AG investigation in his court filings?
Remember, this piece of trash you call the chief is suing the city. Taxpayer money. For discrimination for crying out loud! He’s a middle-aged white male Mormon. That’s about 70% of the city employees! He never mentioned in his lawsuit how he was discriminated against. Just throwing stuff on the wall to see what sticks. He’s looking for a big payout from the city so he can early retire and go back to his Saint George rat hole. And from all indications, the mayor and the corrupt council will cave-in and give him his payout. After all, they were elected because of the MPOA’s and police chief support.
To further reiterate on Mr. Rapson’s above comment, Mr. Chesley now knows, or should know, he is now going to be responsible for a judgement that requires that he pay for Ms. Ellestad’s legal fees in defense of the lawsuit that he brought against her.
Chief Chesley was sworn in as Mesquite Police Chief the same year (2019) as his former Mesquite Police Department Detective co-worker Gary Erickson plead guilty to criminal sexual conduct with a minor teen boy ,during a time that the current MPD Chief Chesley held a high ranking position in the Mesquite Police Department in September of 2018. Mr. Chesley declined to address the concerns of the Mesquite community when his co=worker at MPD Gary Erickson was arrested in LAS VEGAS! and was formally charged other than to acknowledge that Gary Erickson was terminated, and that the prosecuting and investigative agency in his hometown of Saint George, Utah should be contacted for further information. Maybe he chose this type of response to the concerns of the community at the time because he was advised by then City Attorney Bob Sweetin and City Manager Aaron Baker to do so, both of which are now gone due to the recent actions that are directly related to MPD Chief Chesley and the Mesquite Police Officers Association.
Instead of reassuring the local Mesquite community that no further acts of criminal sexual conduct have taken place involving himself or other members of the Mesquite Police Department and local youth related to the reporting by Ms. Ellestad of an AG’s investigation into Mr. Chesley’s possible involvement with local teenagers utilizing the MPD workout facilities against and in violation of MPD policy, Mr. Chesley has chosen to bring a legal suit and try and “cash in” for a supposed damaged reputation and discrimination, other than to acknowledge that his own reputation was made by his own actions involving his unwillingness to address the ” Detective Gary Erickson Sexual Crime involving a minor teenage boy”, his contributions and his decisions in the MPOA “Mayoral Election smearing of Bob Sweetin-Letter Mailing Campaign”… there again, involving issues of a teenager engaging in sex, and now this suit whereby his legal claims are alleged to be related to “small town rumors of teenager sex”.
It is a well known fact, and it has been extensively documented that the LDS church has had a long history and connection to issues of, and challenges involving the sexual abuse and exploitation of minors by church members. One only has to look at the recent connection of the LDS Church and Boy Scouts Of America and the $250 million dollars that the LDS church is paying towards a fund for sexually abused former Boy Scouts. Convicted child sexual abuser and former MPD Detective Gary Erickson, that Chief Chesley worked alongside with at MPD, held Scoutmaster responsibilities for many years in Bunkerville, Nevada, along with varied leadership positions within the LDS Church prior to his conviction in 2019 for sexual abuse of a minor for which he is now serving a 5 year prison sentence.
Mr. Chesley should be sensitive to the Mesquite community’s needs for law enforcement and the protection of it’s citizens, especially the safety of it’s children! rather than to be concerned with his own little hurt ego about what he alleges as unfounded rumors about his reputation. After all, Mr. Chesley is the “Chief” of the Mesquite Police Department and everything that goes with it!
I second the comments of Mr. Rapson.
If you can’t handle the heat….get out of the kitchen Mr. Chesley! Resign from your position and your highest paid employee of the City of Mesquite $125,000 + yearly salary!
My prediction, Mr. Randazza will discount his legal fees for Mr. Chesley to pay and Mr. Chesley agrees to remove Ms. Ellestad from any further litigation in a nice tidy private settlement. Ms. Ellestad will simply have to agree to a non-disclosure of terms.
Cheers to the Moapa Valley Progress for the continued coverage.
Freedom of the Press! We The People!
Mr Rapson,
I think you just proved Martin’s point, If the city and the council are going to payout, there must be nothing to Ellestad’s story and the chiefs reputation has indeed suffered. Please remember, Ellestad started this mess. All she had to do, like any responsible journalist, is lay all of her facts on the table and let the court decide. She should not be let out of this lawsuit and everyone else suffers the consequences of her actions.
She screwed up. She didn’t like the police department and wrote some pretty serious allegations that she won’t back up. There was only an AG investigation because her friend Baker made a complaint and the AG himself also said “there’s nothing here to investigate.”
As David said above, this whole mess needs to go to court and let the facts tell what happened. That’s justice.
Agree with most of what said George and Like you but as a member of the LDS Faith what does his or my religious faith have to do with anything? Honest question..thanks….
Didn’t think you would publish my comment yesterday RE: LDS church members child sexual abusers _LDS Church $250 million for abused boy scouts LDS is a cult and your little news rag and yourself are pro LDS …probably celebrate your “pioneer history” and jesus’ birthday on april 6th.
Joseph Smith was a con man not a prophet.
It is absolutely beyond logical comprehension that commenters claim Ellestad started this “mess”. Ellestad reported facts that were substantiated by the Nevada AG’s office and the Mesquite City Manager in a public meeting. The article’s content in question was a hard news piece and not an opinion piece. The article reported the AG was investigating Chief Chesley. As previously stated, the Chesley lawsuit confirms the investigation. There is no claim that Ellestad filed the complaint with the AG’s office, which is inferred in these comments.
It’s a fair comment Eric. I was trying to point out that there’s very little potential for discrimination when he fits the profile of the majority of the city employees. It’s not an indictment on any of those characters but simply pointing out the obvious. He is male. He is white. He is young. And he is Mormon. Those are essentially what typical discrimination suits involve. Gender, religion, race and age.
To David Ballweg,
1. Ellestads report did NOT substantiate facts. She refused to provide details.
2. NOTHING was substantiated by the AG. His report said there was no credible info to pursue.
3. A lawsuit does not confirm anything.
4. The comments clearly state Aaron Baker made the complaint to the AG.
I think your facts are as muddled as Ellestads. All she had to do was provide the facts of her hard news piece and this mess would be over. Yes, Ellestad started this mess, she could end it.
Well, I never read the story but two things are clear: this case needs to go to trial to determine if Ellestads allegations are true and the police chiefs reputation and his future career prospects is in the toilet.