“WE KNOW PEOPLE IN THIS TOWN AND IT’S NOT GOING TO FLY”: HOW A LOCAL POWER COHORT USED AN 18-MINUTE HEARING TO SHUTTER A BUSINESS AND SILENCE AN ARTIST
By Diana Vance
Justice by Trial Contributor
OGDEN, UT — As public debates regarding free speech and government overreach intensify across Utah, a disturbing case out of Weber County has pulled back the curtain on how a citizen’s fundamental constitutional rights can be stripped away in less than twenty minutes, and then frozen indefinitely by judicial inaction.
Certified records and hearing transcripts from the Second Judicial District expose a massive breakdown in due process that has completely chilled the First Amendment expression of a local recording artist, obliterated a commercial livelihood, and triggered a full-scale constitutional crisis.
The 18-Minute Constitutional Freeze
The crisis began on June 23, 2025, during an emergency protective order hearing before family court commissioner Brandon Richards. In a proceeding lasting exactly eighteen minutes, a localized personal dispute was weaponized to suppress a creative music career and shutter a registered less-lethal defense products business.
The entire protective order was pushed through on unsworn attorney proffer by Ron Haycock of the law firm Strong and Hanni, lacking cross-examination, witness testimony, sworn affidavits, or a single piece of authenticated physical evidence entered into the record from the petitioner’s side. The case launched with an absolute absence of any physical altercation, domestic violence history, or corporate threats. In the sworn petition itself, spanning a ten-year relationship, the section dedicated to documenting prior history or abuse was left completely blank.
The defense was completely barred from placing the petitioner on the witness stand. The only items submitted were the original petition and raw text fragments that textually contradicted the allegations. While the petitioner claimed to possess messages containing actionable threats, these alleged communications were entirely absent from the court record. No time-stamped, authenticated texts showing a threat of physical violence were ever filed, leaving a fatal evidentiary vacuum where the court substituted naked attorney storytelling for actual proof.
When the written allegations regarding hand grenades and rifles completely fell apart because the items were standard airsoft pellet toys, Commissioner Richards actively stepped into an adversarial role. The commissioner guided and coached attorney Ron Haycock on how to restructure their parameters, directing the wording to expand the restriction to all weapons, which effectively dismantled the respondent’s manufacturing business by administrative decree.
At the conclusion of this eighteen-minute window, the respondent issued a direct final protest on the record, asking the commissioner a straightforward administrative question: “How do I actually get this report read? Because all the evidence is in there”. Commissioner Richards completely evaded the question, hiding behind the boilerplate phrase that he cannot give legal advice, despite no legal advice being requested. The commissioner then instructed the respondent that he could file an objection to the recommendation, confirming that the objective evidence inside the file was being completely bypassed.
The 277-Day Standstill: Justice Delayed and Denied
While the suppression of speech and business operations was instantaneous, the path to legal recourse has been stonewalled by an agonizing, multi-month standstill. Certified timelines reveal that a formal Rule 108 Objection challenging the order has remained frozen and completely undecided by the district court for 277 days, while a corresponding Request to Submit has languished for 259 days.
This systemic inaction directly bypasses Utah Code Section 78A-2-223, which strictly mandates that judicial officers must decide submitted matters within a two-month statutory window. By exceeding this legislative deadline by nearly two hundred days, the district court has effectively blocked the ordinary path of appellate review, keeping the recording artist trapped in a devastating administrative loop.
The Evidentiary Denial and the Post-Deadline Interception
The refusal to grant a lawful trial continued on July 28, 2025, before District Court Judge Matthew Hansen. The respondent expressly requested a full, formal evidentiary hearing with witnesses and cross-examination. Despite this explicit demand, the court stripped away the respondent’s due process by converting the trial into an informal proffer hearing, a procedural shortcut that is completely unauthorized under Utah rules when facts are sharply disputed.
Following that hearing, the respondent filed a Rule 60(b) Motion to Set Aside on August 4, 2025. Ron Haycock failed to file any timely written opposition on the merits, leaving the motion completely unopposed. On August 19, 2025, the respondent properly submitted the case to the judge for an immediate decision on the papers.
The public record reveals that this delay was sustained through highly irregular, post-deadline procedural maneuvers orchestrated by the petitioner’s counsel. On August 20, 2025, two days after his legal deadline had expired, attorney Ron Haycock sent a late, unrecorded email directly to the judge’s clerical team, actively instructing court staff not to enter the order. Ron Haycock claimed that the purpose of this interception was to allow him to file a formal written opposition. However, the record proves that he never filed an opposition, and instead used an administrative backdoor to bypass his default. By August 21, court staff capitulated to the late email interception, executing an administrative reversion that routed the motion back onto the regular calendar of Commissioner Brandon Richards.
Coordinated Administrative Rerouting and the December 30th Hearing
The administrative manipulation intensified dramatically on December 1 and December 2, 2025. The certified district court docket explicitly notes that Commissioner Richards and Judge Hansen were conducting off-record, unrecorded strategy discussions regarding who and how the respondent’s pending motions should be handled. The very next morning, December 2, Commissioner Richards issued a summary, non-hearing administrative order striking the respondent’s emergency motion to stay enforcement, utilizing a clerical formatting excuse to suppress the motion while preserving their upcoming hearing dates.
On December 30, 2025, Commissioner Richards proceeded to conduct a formal hearing on the motion to set aside despite the respondent’s absolute and continuous objections on the record. The respondent explicitly informed the court that the entire proceeding was invalid and that he was only present under duress, having been forced to cancel a critical medical appointment to take his terminally ill father for cancer testing and a PET scan. The record reveals that court staff entirely failed to docket the respondent’s emergency continuance motion detailing this family medical emergency, proceeding with the hearing as if the respondent’s data and civil rights did not exist.
During the hearing, Commissioner Richards attempted to publicly admonish the self-represented respondent, accusing him of using artificial intelligence software to generate incorrect legal citations. However, the transcript reveals a dramatic turn where the respondent immediately corrected the commissioner in real time, demonstrating an exact command of the text by pointing out that the commissioner was relying on a criminal rule while the respondent was citing civil code Section 6-401.
Despite being caught in a series of direct contradictions, and despite attorney Ron Haycock admitting on the record that he could not recall the geographic or factual basis for the stalking allegations used to secure the protective order, Commissioner Richards still issued a summary recommendation denying the motion to set aside. Under Utah Rule of Judicial Administration 6-401(3)(C), a court commissioner is strictly prohibited from conducting hearings on any matter previously certified to a district judge. This unauthorized proceeding operated as a direct ultra vires freeze, keeping the respondent’s business operations and career suppressed without a judge ever reviewing the evidence.
The Electronic Footprint: An Unlawful Civil Intervention
Following the initial detour, certified records from subsequent civil proceedings, case number 260903814, reveal a second, severe procedural irregularity. This standard civil action for defamation and abuse of process was formally assigned to District Court Judge Reuben Renstrom.
Family court commissioners have zero legal jurisdiction over standard civil litigation lawsuits seeking financial damages. However, a separate fee-waiver document associated with the case bears the electronic signature stamp of Commissioner Brandon Richards, although the docketed June 5 fee-waiver order identifies the assigned District Court Judge.
This crossover is anchored by an identical administrative assignment pattern on the public record. Certified dockets reveal that the court system internally routed control of both the domestic protective order case and the independent Office of Recovery Services child support case to Brandon Richards at the start of June 2025, scheduling the first in-person hearing on his calendar on June 3. Official files from the Utah State Archives document that his signed Oath of Office was not formally executed or received until June 6, 2025. While this three-day gap occurred prior to any active rulings on his part, the record documents that the administrative routing loop took effect before he was formally bound by oath to the Second District bench.
Legal experts classify actions taken entirely outside an official’s statutory subject-matter jurisdiction as ultra vires, meaning acts committed completely without color of authority. Compounding this ultra vires intervention is a stark conflict of interest. Thus, a central adverse figure in the broader litigation appears on court paperwork inside a separate civil lawsuit whose factual allegations expressly criticize his handling of the underlying protective-order proceedings.
Shifting Narratives and the Community Overlap
The factual theory supporting the protective order did not remain static. The original petition relied substantially on the song Exposed, including a version of the central lyric that differed materially from the recorded words. The song states, “the truth’s like a bullet, and I’m ready to click,” while the protective-order allegations treated the lyric as though it referred to the petitioner’s “lies” as bullets. The song also contains express language denying threatening intent.
As the proceedings continued, additional theories involving stalking, blackmail, and business-related threats became increasingly prominent. Some of those allegations were disputed by objective records. In one example, an allegation concerning the artist being “five houses down” was challenged with location evidence and the contention that the reference concerned his own residence. At a later hearing, opposing counsel Ron Haycock was unable to recall the factual basis for that allegation.
The public record also reflects overlapping community connections among individuals associated with the dispute. Commissioner Brandon Richards has served actively on a local community high school council, while members of the family associated with the underlying dispute hold prominent, longstanding ties within that exact same broader community. Public records also reflect substantial charitable contributions by a family-connected commercial business, including a $100,000 donation to local schools.
This deep community alignment provides critical, documented context for a case defined by unusual procedural routing, off-record communications, commissioner involvement after district-judge proceedings, and extended judicial inaction. It directly materializes the explicit, real-time text warnings sent by the petitioner on June 1, 2025, detailing the family’s intent to bring corporate retaliation: “There are a lot of people very mad about this situation! And they aren’t afraid to take the steps they need to. They are all going to take action. We know people in this town and it’s not going to fly. You can’t blast a companies name in a song in a disparaging way and not have some legal shit coming your way.”
The Question of Immunity and Accountability
This complex paper trail raises an ultimate, pressing question that legal observers are beginning to ask: what can be done when the very officials entrusted with enforcing the law violate its most basic boundaries?
Under long-standing American and Utah legal doctrines, suing a judicial officer personally is virtually impossible. The law grants them absolute judicial immunity to protect the independence of the bench. However, legal scholars recognize that this immunity is not an absolute blank check. Absolute immunity only protects official acts performed within a court’s lawful subject-matter jurisdiction. It disappears completely when an official engages in ultra vires conduct, meaning they act entirely outside their statutory sandbox.
When a family court commissioner steps completely out of domestic relations, overrides explicit on-record jurisdictional objections, and physically signs processing orders inside a standard civil lawsuit targeting his own prior conduct, the traditional armor of absolute immunity faces a severe test. Non-judicial, administrative interventions executed completely without color of authority are not protected by state immunity rules. While the average citizen faces immediate consequences for systemic errors, this certified timeline poses a stark challenge to the Utah judiciary: can a quasi-judicial officer be held personally accountable when they leave their own electronic signature stamped on a conflict of interest?
Higher Court Intervention
The history of chronic late filings from the petitioner’s counsel reached its conclusion when he finally scrambled to respond to the respondent’s recent Omnibus Motion. With a formal Petition for Extraordinary Relief now finalized for submission to the Utah Court of Appeals, the Second District will soon be forced to answer to a higher panel of judges. The electronic signature on a civil case document, the unsworn destruction of a business, and 277 days of administrative silence have left a definitive, unerasable paper trail of institutional overreach. The recording artist’s battle has shifted from a personal dispute into a full-scale defense of First Amendment liberties and judicial integrity in the State of Utah.
