C. Paige Hinkson v. Stuart Stevens, 239 A.3d 212

Background

Plaintiff (wife) sought a civil stalking order under 12 V.S.A. § 5133 after defendant (a local writer/strategist) allegedly made numerous masked phone calls to her cell, sent three packages of books about rape to the family home addressed to her husband, and stared at her in a coffee shop.
Trial court found by a preponderance of the evidence that defendant engaged in a “course of conduct” (phone calls, book shipments, and coffee-shop monitoring), that plaintiff suffered substantial emotional distress, and entered a six-month protective order requiring a 300-foot stay-away.
Defendant appealed. The Superior Court’s protective order expired during appeal; the Vermont Supreme Court found the collateral-consequences mootness exception applied and retained review.
The central legal question was whether the conduct constituted a statutorily defined “course of conduct” (two or more acts of following, monitoring, surveilling, threatening, or interfering) under the civil stalking statute, and whether statutory terms should be construed narrowly because they mirror the criminal stalking statute.
The Supreme Court majority construed the civil stalking statute narrowly (invoking lenity because the civil definition mirrors the criminal definition), held the phone calls were not “monitoring” nor threats of physical harm, held the book shipments were not threats of physical harm, and concluded that the record did not support a course of conduct (only one potentially separate monitoring act remained), so it reversed and vacated the order.
The dissent would have applied liberal construction, deferred more to the trial court’s factual findings, and concluded the combined acts could constitute monitoring and threats in context, so it would have affirmed.

Issues

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Mootness — may appeal proceed after order expired	Paige: order has ongoing stigma; appeal should be heard	Nolan: order is moot because expired	Held: collateral-consequences exception applies; appeal not moot
Do repeated masked phone calls constitute “monitoring” or part of a course of conduct?	Calls were repeated, masked, late-night, caused fear and thus constituted monitoring/threats	Calls were directed at husband/business line; did not track whereabouts or communicate threats	Held: calls were not shown to be monitoring or threats under § 5131; insufficient to be part of course of conduct
Do unsolicited shipments of rape-related books amount to a “threat”?	Shipments were an implicit threat/retaliation causing fear and emotional distress	Shipments were benign or constitutionally protected expression and did not threaten physical harm	Held: “threat” read to mean threats of physical harm; book shipments did not communicate intent to inflict physical harm; not a statutory threat
Do emails/article and coffee-shop stare complete a course of conduct?	Communications and in-person staring reinforced pattern and caused distress	Emails/article were protected speech and coffee-shop encounter was isolated	Held: emails/article were not threats of physical harm; a single staring incident cannot create a course of conduct (statute requires two or more acts); overall evidence insufficient

Key Cases Cited

Paige v. State, 171 A.3d 1011 (Vt. 2017) (supports collateral-consequences exception to mootness)
State v. Noll, 199 A.3d 1054 (Vt. 2018) (stating statute reaches only "true threats" not protected speech)
McCool v. Macura, 224 A.3d 847 (Vt. 2019) (standard of review: legal conclusions plenary; defer to trial court factual findings if supported)
State v. Waters, 87 A.3d 512 (Vt. 2013) (applying lenity in defining harassment and limiting overly broad readings)
Raynes v. Rogers, 955 A.2d 1135 (Vt. 2008) (remedial protective statutes should be construed liberally—cited by dissent)
Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (U.S. 2003) (defining "true threats" for First Amendment purposes)