Former Jefferson County Circuit Judge Dianna Bartels is asking for $50.5 million in damages in a lawsuit she has filed against the county’s 23rd Circuit Court and 11 other defendants, including former and current judges; the circuit clerk; the prosecuting attorney and a handful of others who have worked in the County Courthouse in Hillsboro.
Bartels is representing herself in the lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 5 in both the Jefferson County and St. Louis County circuit courts, and claims the defendants discriminated against her and/or defamed her. She says she was discriminated against because she is a woman, has autism and is of Irish descent.
Along with the Jefferson County court, the defendants named in the suit include Circuit Judge Brenda Stacey; former Circuit Judge Darrell Missey; Circuit Clerk Mike Reuter; Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney Trisha Stefanski; former Jefferson County assistant prosecuting attorney Thomas Hollingsworth; local attorneys Derrick Good, Mark Bishop and Allison Sweeney; former Circuit Court employee Alicia Pinson; as well as Missouri Court of Appeals – Eastern District Judge Gary M. Gaertner Jr. and James Smith, administrator and counselor for the Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline, which handles complaints against judges. Gaertner chairs that commission, which had investigated complaints against Bartels during her time as a judge, according to her lawsuit.
She says in the suit that the commission investigated 13 “charges” against her and “closed” them. However, she also says the commission forced her to resign from the bench before her term ended following her unsuccessful 2022 bid for reelection to a second term.
Bartels resigned on Nov. 1, 2022, and attorney Travis Partney, who beat her in the election, took over the seat three days later.
The Leader sent Bartels an email seeking a comment about her lawsuit and asking several questions, but she did not answer and instead sent a “cease and desist” letter to the publisher and editor. In that letter, she demanded the newspaper not pursue the story about the suit and warned that if the paper did not drop the story, she would file an injunction.
The Leader consulted the Missouri Press Association’s hotline attorney, Dan Curry, who said that “cease and desist letters typically address issues of copyright infringement,” adding that “it would be difficult to envision a scenario where reporting on legal proceedings would invite, much less justify, a cease and desist letter.”
Seven of the defendants listed in the suit were contacted for comment, and six of them said they were aware of the lawsuit but had not officially been served with the suit. One of the defendants, Smith, would not comment at all.
Stacey, who took over as presiding judge after Missey left the bench in December 2021 to take a job as director of Missouri’s Children’s Division, would not comment about the case other than to say she had not been served, and neither would Missey.
Missey has since retired from his job with the Children’s Division.
Sweeney would not comment either.
Both Reuter and Stefanksi did not comment except to say they denied all the claims Bartels made about them in her suit.
Good, however, said he thinks once the defendants are served and their attorneys respond, the case will quicky be dismissed.
“I’m confident the lawsuit will go away,” he said.
In her lawsuit, Bartels claims she ran against former Jefferson County Div. 3 Circuit Judge Nathan Stewart, who she unseated in the 2016 November election, because the FBI asked her to do so and “report back any findings.”
She does not say in her suit what she was supposed to be reporting back about but claims to have been a “privileged informant.”
The presiding judges during Bartels’ tenure indicated they were not aware of any FBI investigations into the court or any personnel there.
Good agreed.
“As far as I know, there was no FBI investigation and no reason for one,” he said.
Discrimination claims
In her suit, Bartels says Missey told her “she was not a good judge” and that “no one liked (her) as a person or as a judge.”
She says those criticisms stemmed from her being a woman, and she claims in the suit that Missey gave examples of other female judges “being less than adequate and below his presumed standards.”
Bartels says in the suit that Missey also told her Jefferson County attorneys “did not want to practice in front of her.”
She goes on to say that Missey and Good “perpetrated the rumor that (she) was stupid due to her autism,” adding that “Missey created an atmosphere of hostility that other attorneys felt comfortable to join in and treat (her) with disdain.”
Good said he and others who worked in the Courthouse were disappointed to see Bartels unseat Stewart in 2016 but did not treat her poorly.
“She beat a really good, sitting judge. But, we treated her with respect and tried to help her when we could,” Good said. “In fact, I thought I went out of my way to help her.”
In the suit, Bartels claims Missey had assigned her too much work and wanted to add more, but she refused and afterward “heard talk that she would not increase her workload as she was lazy because she was Irish.”
Bartels says Stacey conspired with Missey to personally attack her and then once Stacey was presiding judge, continued “overworking” her.
Also in her suit, Bartels describes an alleged conversation she had with Good, whom she says asked about her Irish heritage. She claims Good said he “had an ‘in’ with the New York Irish and connections with the Chicago Irish as well.” Bartels says she took those comments as “veiled threats” but did not respond because she had “been trained her whole life by her Grandpa Mullen how to handle an ‘Irish veiled threat.’”
She claims “Good then resorted to threatening (her) with his connections from Mexico.”
Defamation claims
Bartels claims she was defamed when Missey, Stacey and some of the other defendants spoke about her to the Leader editor who wrote a column about Bartels’ 2022 bid for reelection and endorsed Partney prior to the election.
When Missey was interviewed for the column, he said Bartels didn’t have much experience with criminal cases, so she was assigned civil cases and divorce and custody cases, but later, after many disqualifications and requests for a change in judge in the cases she handled, she was given cases involving traffic violations and other less important cases, more like those an associate circuit judge would be assigned.
In her lawsuit, Bartels says Missey used the term disqualification incorrectly and denies she had trouble handling the cases she was assigned.
She also says in her suit that the statements Missey and others made for the column resulted in her losing the 2022 election for another term on the bench.
Bartels says Missey’s “damning statements caused such carnage to (her) reputation that it echoes years later.”
“It is simple,” she says in the suit, “Judge Missey hated (her) because she was a female, had the audacity to win an election against his best friend (Stewart), he considers her stupid because she is autistic and he used the might of the 23rd Judicial Circuit of Jefferson County as his instrument for vengeance.”
Reuter also was interviewed for the Leader column, and he said as the Circuit Clerk, he was familiar with the judge assignments and saw a lot of continuances and judge reassignments for the cases Bartels handled.
Stefanski told the Leader that because Bartels was mainly handling cases involving traffic violations, other circuit judges were absorbing more work
In her lawsuit, Bartels claims that the statements made by Missey, Stacey, Reuter and Stefanski, as well as their actions, violated the Hatch Act, and they “used their positions to influence the voters not to vote for “her” but (for) her opponent Travis Partney.”
She says Good and Bishop also conspired to make sure she lost her bid for reelection.
Workplace complaints
In her suit, Bartels says that Missey “retaliated” against her for unseating Stewart and then “systematically made (her) life a living hell by working her and her clerks to death,” adding that Missey and Stacey expected her “to fail under the workload (they) had given her.”
In her suit, Bartels says she returned from a month off work because she suffered seizures after getting the COVID vaccine, and Stacey didn’t reduce her workload.
Bartels also says that she was a COVID “long-hauler” and had arranged to “completely” work from home, “and Missey harassed her often because she was not in the Courthouse.”
She goes on to say that Stefanski treated her unfairly and worked to help Partney beat her in the election, participating in his fundraising. Stefanski denied those claims.
Bartels says Hollingsworth disrespected her in the courtroom.
She says Stacey, Reuter, Pinson, Gaertner, Smith and Circuit Court Judge Ed Page, along with Jefferson County resident David Day, conspired to bring the charges against her that the Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline investigated.
Bartels says in her lawsuit that Good also filed a complaint against her with the commission, recounting another alleged encounter she had with him.
She says Good walked into a courtroom where she, a court clerk, a bailiff and a court reporter were talking about whether Taylor Swift should have sued Kanye West for using her likeness in his “Famous” video, and Good disagreed with her opinion on the subject. Bartels says the conversation got heated when the subject of Britney Spears’ conservatorship came up.
Bartels says she had been following proposed changes in the laws regarding conservatorships in California, and Good stated that “Missouri did not need any changes to the laws regarding conservatorships” and demanded Bartels sign a document he had regarding a person under the supervision of the county’s Public Administrator Office. Bartels says she told Good that she would sign the documents if “he provided updated medical (records) that she requested ... as she did not want another Britney Spears [situation].”
Bartels goes on to say that Good submitted a complaint to the commission about her request for medical records, adding that “Good used the Ms. Britney Spears quote and Judge Bartels request for medical records against her when filing the commission complaint.”
Bartels says in the suit that after 12 of the charges against her were closed, a 13th charge was “brought back” in an effort to have her “removed from office early so (she) would not be able to qualify for her pension or unemployment and maybe lose her bar license.”
She also says the commission forced her to resign from office early.
According to the commission’s website, the agency’s papers and proceedings are kept confidential unless a formal recommendation for discipline or disability retirement is filed by the commission before the Supreme Court.
Bartels also says in her suit that it was common knowledge among people who worked in the Courthouse that she had autism, and some of them caused problems to “set off” her autism by starting alarms or sitting outside her courtroom, making excessive noise. She says decisions she was writing went missing from her desk and were never recovered.
Bartels says in her suit that as a result of the treatment she received during her time on the bench, she “entered what is called autistic shutdown due to autistic burnout followed by mass cell activation syndrome. Autistic shutdown is a state of withdrawal and disengagement which sent (her) into her closet for a year.”
She also says she has severe post traumatic stress disorder and is still trying to recover from all those conditions.
Also in her suit, Bartels says she has had trouble finding employment since leaving the bench, and asks for no less than $50 million in compensatory damages and no less than $500,000 in punitive damages, as well as compensation for all legal and court fees.
Jefferson County Counselor Jalesia F.M. Kuenzel said the county is responsible for providing legal representation for Stefanski and Hollingsworth, and county insurance would pay any potential settlement or award, although the county would have to pay a deductible.
Good said he, along with the other attorney’s named in the suit, Bishop and Sweeney, would either represent themselves or hire attorneys to represent them in the suit, and their insurers would cover costs for any possible settlements or awards.
He also said he believes the Missouri Attorney General’s Office would be responsible for providing legal representation for the former and current judges named as defendants, and its insurance also would cover the cost of any settlement and award.
Reuter said the Attorney General’s Office will provide him and the office’s former employee with legal representation, and the office’s insurance would cover any funding for a settlement or award. He also said that while he had not been served yet, the Attorney General’s Office had already been informed of the suit and assigned a litigator to the case, Kelli Reichert.
Neither Reichert nor the Attorney’s Office responded to requests for information.
The Commission on Retirement, Removal and Discipline, an independent agency, could not be reached, and likely would be responsible for providing its own legal representation, as well as insurance to cover any costs.