Fargo In Maine

The Maine Supreme Court has remanded in a matter involving a granted civil protection order  due to a lack of certainty about the timing of alleged threats

Because the court’s finding of abuse relied upon an erroneous assumption that the events that Doe described as happening on April 22, 2022, occurred on May 13, 2022 in violation of an amended temporary protection order, we vacate and remand for clarification of whether the court concludes that those events, which occurred at a time when no protection order was in effect, when considered independently or in conjunction with Lindahl’s other acts, constituted abuse pursuant to 19-A M.R.S. § 4002(1)(B).

Initial complaint

Doe and Lindahl have been married since 2012. Shortly after Lindahl filed for divorce in January 2022, Doe filed her first protection from abuse (PFA) complaint alleging abuse by Lindahl. In the complaint filed on February 28, 2022, Doe asserted many allegations of abuse, including that Lindahl had threatened to “throw [her] in a woodchipper.” A temporary order of protection was granted the same day. At a hearing held on April 6, 2022, the court (Martin, J.) denied the complaint because Doe failed to prove her allegations, stating: “The Court finds [Doe’s] testimony incredible.”

Sixteen days later

The statement asserted that Lindahl “has threat[en]ed me many times that if I leave him he will ‘ruin me and bury me,’ that ‘I’m going in the wood chipper out back,’ ‘put me in the bottom of his lobster trap,’ or ‘throw me in jail.’” A temporary order of protection was granted (Martin, J.) the same day, barring Lindahl from entering the marital residence or going onto the property.

Two months later

The final hearing on the second complaint was held on July 12, 2022. Doe and her daughter both testified that Lindahl had made a threat of violence against Doe in April 2022. Doe testified that a few days before April 22, she and Lindahl had a “big fight” during which he threatened to throw her into a woodchipper; her daughter testified that, at some point during April 2022, she heard Lindahl, while he was in the kitchen of the home, threaten to throw Doe into a woodchipper or a lobster trap. During his testimony, Lindahl denied being in the house or speaking to Doe during April 2022.

As a result

Concluding that Lindahl felt emboldened and empowered by the dismissal of the first PFA complaint, the court noted what it stated was a credible threat Lindahl made on an unspecified date to throw Doe into a woodchipper. In a clear reference to Doe’s daughter’s testimony, the court found that Doe’s daughter had witnessed the threat and had said that she would hang herself from the front porch if anything happened to her mother. Although both Doe and her daughter had testified that Lindahl had made the threat during April 2022, the court expressed uncertainty as to when the threat was made, but commented, “Even if the event occurred prior to the dismissal of the first Complaint for Protection from Abuse, the court is entitled to consider background and history in assessing this current complaint.

The uncertainty

The court heard Doe’s testimony and Doe’s daughter’s testimony regarding Lindahl’s alleged statement sometime during April 2022 that he would “throw [Doe] in a woodchipper,” but did not make any finding about when the statement was made, and left open the possibility that it was made before Doe filed the first PFA complaint. The issue of whether Lindahl made such a statement was part and parcel of the first PFA, which was denied by that court upon a finding that Doe was not credible. The court here did not determine whether the threat described in its findings was made before or after the dismissal of the first PFA complaint. Only if the threat that the court found Lindahl had made was not the same threat as the threat alleged in Doe’s first PFA complaint could that finding support the court’s finding of abuse.

(Mike Frisch)