The state has paid the damages a jury said Laura Zylstra Kaiser deserved for the retaliatory and discriminatory treatment she received from the Division of Criminal Investigation after she complained about sexual harassment by a Brown County Sheriff’s deputy. The checks, totaling $1.54 million, were cut at the end of March; why didn’t Zylstra Kaiser get her money until yesterday?
The payments reflect a settlement amount reached at the end of February, she said, but state officials also sought her signature on a non-disparagement agreement, which would have allowed her to talk about her case but not say anything negative about the state.
When she refused to sign the agreement, she said, there were delays in finalizing the settlement, which was to be paid April 1 [Elisa Sand, “Zylstra Kaiser Paid by State in Harassment, Retaliation Lawsuit,” Aberdeen American News, 2018.05.24].
You got that right: the state wasn’t going to pay Zylstra Kaiser unless she promised not to say anything bad about the state that supported and never disciplined male law enforcement officers who swiftly closed ranks and punished a highly skilled female officer with excellent performance evaluations, just because she told one of them not to talk about her butt and her underwear.
Kristi Noem’s critique of Marty Jackley’s foot-dragging in giving Zylstra Kaiser her due is muted somewhat by this payment, but it can now follow a new venue: Jackley and the state’s effort to prevent Zylstra Kaiser from criticizing the good-old-boys’ club of which Jackley is a card-carrying member.
How much more proof do you need that the people in power in South Dakota are a criminal syndicate? Good grief, a non-disparagement agreement! What the hell is wrong with these people?
What’s wrong with them is the voters who enable this behavior.
Cory
Did Zylstra sign a new non-disparagement agreement that allows her to discuss the case?
This is another demerit against the DCI and Attorney General’s office in that they disobeyed a court scheduled timeline to deliver the payments. And the Attorney Generals’s office has its own Sarah Sanders with her own set of alternative facts in Sara Rabern. The court had to order the DCI head to court to explain why the checks, which were drawn in late March were not delivered to meet the April 15 delivery schedule, but Ms. Rabern says there was no delay and that the Attorney General has no authority to expedite the checks, although the DCI, which Gortmaker directs, is a department of the Attorney General’s office, and the Attorney General has oversight over it. Of course, claiming oversight would put Jackley in a position to determine if Gortmaker should be charged under this law: “3-16-1. Willful failure to perform official duty as misdemeanor. Where any duty is or shall be enjoined by law upon any public officer, or upon any person holding any public trust or employment, every intentional omission to perform such duty, where no special provision shall have been made for the punishment of such delinquency, is a Class 2 misdemeanor.”
Laura Zylstra Kaiser will explain the settlement at a press conference today at 4 p.m. in Sioux Falls. LZK tells AAN, “I wouldn’t be doing this, but for Marty accusing my attorneys of conspiring with Kristi Noem’s team to sabotage (his) campaign.”
I am a bit confused as to the timeline of some of this. It said in the previous article that pursuant to the guilty verdict, the payment was due by April 15.
Then, later, it says the settlement agreement wasn’t even signed until May 21, and the agreement provided for payment between May 21 and June 8. This post states she received the money on May 23, which is just two days into the 18 day time frame allowed.
I’m not following how anybody did anything wrong – but if I am missing something, somebody please correct me.
Apparently we’re learning more, Ryan. LZK is saying the original settlement was supposed to be paid April 1. She balked at the gag, so the dates may have changed in whatever new dealing was happening.
https://www.aberdeennews.com/news/local/zylstra-kaiser-lawsuit-settlement-process-took-nearly-months/article_cf52f8d7-8e95-5db8-a347-07f078c7c356.html?block_id=475371
LZK’s news conference may make me revise my primary prediction from 58-42 Jackley to a much closer outcome, if not a flip:
Jackley can’t put that story back in the bottle. Noem is going to tell it.
As I mentioned under a previous LZK post, the Brown County GOP has a photo of the Kaisers sitting with Noem at the Brown County Lincoln Day dinner on April 5.
David N your article is hiding behind a paywall.
So do we know if there is a gag that w signed ?
And is the m man on tape with these accusations
Hasn’t anyone learned anything by now ? Record record record
I would like more elaboration with her claim with sabatoage accusations
Such corruption and game players
Mike, They used to give a couple of free articles before closing the paywall door, but here it is:
Laura Zylstra Kaiser this afternoon outlined the nearly three-month process it took to finalize a settlement in her civil lawsuit after attorneys reached an agreement at the end of February.
She was awarded $1.2 million in December by a federal jury in Aberdeen in a lawsuit she filed against Bryan Gortmaker as director of the state Division of Criminal Investigation. The final settlement, which includes forward pay and attorney fees, is $1.54 million. In a phone interview today, Zylstra Kaiser said the settlement includes $543,000 for attorney fees.
A combination of state money and insurance funds were used to pay the settlement, according to Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for the governor’s office.
Gortmaker was to appear in federal court Thursday to address an order to enforce the settlement agreement. That hearing was canceled after the settlement was finalized Monday and payment was made to Zylstra Kaiser Wednesday.
Those final signatures and the payment came after her attorneys filed a motion to enforce the settlement on May 14. But, Zylstra Kaiser said, the timing had nothing to do with politics.
“This isn’t about politics,” she said at the news conference. “For me, it’s about telling the facts.”
Attorney General Marty Jackley is running for governor. Also running is Rep. Kristi Noem. Both are Republican candidates in the June 5 primary. When news broke Monday that there were delays in the settlement payment, Noem called Jackley out for stalling. Jackley swung back with accusations of campaign sabotage.
Jackley’s office maintains there was no intent to delay finalizing the settlement. The paperwork for the settlement arrived Friday, and the Office of Risk Management finalized settlement paperwork Monday, according to a news release from his office.
His campaign manager Jason Glodt, in a news release issued this evening, reiterated that take, saying Jackley had “no authority” over the settlement.
“This is nothing more than a desperate political stunt orchestrated by the Noem campaign 11 days before the election,” Glodt said in the campaign release.
But Zylstra Kaiser said there were plenty of opportunities to get the matter resolved prior to this week. Settlement documents were drafted at the end of February and approved, but the state also wanted Zylstra Kaiser to sign a non-disparagement agreement. That would have meant she could talk about her case, but not talk about the state in a negative light. She said she received the agreement March 21, and her attorneys notified DCI that she would not be signing the agreement on April 4.
At that time, the settlement payment was anticipated no later than April 15, according to Zylstra Kaiser.
From that point, she said, repeated communication between her attorneys and DCI’s attorney met with little to no response. DCI’s attorney also had plenty of notice that the motion to enforce the settlement was being filed. Here’s how Zylstra Kaiser laid out a timeline:
• April 20: Communication from Zylstra Kaiser’s attorneys referenced an intent to schedule a hearing with federal Judge Charles B. Kornmann.
• April 30: DCI’s attorney received a copy of the motion to enforce the settlement.
• May 4: DCI’s attorney indicated Gortmaker would sign the agreement by May 7.
• May 8: New agreement was received Zylstra Kaiser’s attorneys from the state with a proposed payment date of no later than June 8. Multiple attempts to contact DCI’s attorney went unanswered.
• May 14: Gortmaker was ordered to appear in court.
“Every week I was told today is the day,” Zylstra Kaiser said in a phone interview.
In statements to the media, the attorney general’s office has repeatedly said there was no intention to delay the payment. Documents were received last week and signed Monday. The attorney general’s office has also indicated that the entire process has been handled by the Office of Risk Management.
While Zylstra Kaiser can’t say with certainty that Jackley was involved in the settlement process, she said Jackley’s name was included in the first draft of the settlement agreement, and there were times when his absence from the office was used as a reason for delays.
Zylstra Kaiser sued Gortmaker in 2015 for retaliation following an investigation of harassing comments made to her by a Brown County deputy. Zylstra Kaiser and the deputy were both members of the local drug task force a the time — 2012.
Following the investigation, and amid growing tensions between DCI agents and task force members, Zylstra Kaiser was demoted and transferred to a different DCI post in Pierre.
“I’m here today because unfortunately I feel the retaliation continues. To accuse my attorneys of conspiracy to undermine his campaign,” Zylstra Kaiser said at the news conference. “I’m sorry, Mr. Jackley, it’s not about you. If he wants it to be about him, he should stick to the facts and let everyone make their own decisions.”
Zylstra Kaiser’s husband, Dan Kaiser, is challenging incumbent Sheriff Mark Milbrandt in the Brown County GOP primary.
Follow @ElisaSand_aan on Twitter.
Elisa Sand writes:
This is much more than a political stunt, Jason. It’s a revelation of rampant corruption and cronyism in South Dakota law enforcement. Apparently you and Jackley and Gortmaker aren’t finished stealing time and joy from the lives of the Kaiser family yet, but hopefully you will be soon.
Yup. Just what Kurt said, word for word.