Last Friday’s court interchange in Federal Magistrate P. Michael Mahoney’s Rockford courtroom concludes today with talk of a protective order.

This is the last installment of what happened last Friday in Zane Seipler’s wrongful termination lawsuit.

“We believe he (Sgt. Greg Pyle) has spoken to violations of a protective order and dissemination,” Blake Horwitz, Zane Seipler’s attorney said.

Horwitz laid out other lines of questioning for Pyle:

“What facts he knows of that, my client(‘s being) a liar, (the) stigmatizing of my client. Did he speak to the other defendants in the case?”

The question of who wrote the derogatory blogs about Seipler must also have come up, although I didn’t jot it down.

“Mr. Seipler knows who…,” the attorney for the three deputies seeking not to be deposed in the wrongful termination case interjected.

“How does he know?” the Magistrate inquired.

“You could put any name on the blog.

“He could put Rumpelstiltskin.”

“It’s Sir Pumpkin,” the attorney for the three deputies said.

“He’s entitled to ask those (questions),” Mahoney said.  “I think you need two hours.”

Horwitz asked for a “date certain to produce.”

Apparently the attorney for the deputies in the Pavlin case has a motion for summary dismissal of that case in January.

Magistrate Mahoney suggested coming back December 15th.

Horwitz asked for fees, but Mahoney indicated this was not the right time.

James Sotos, the lawyer defending county interests against Seipler’s wrongful termination charge, then brought up the topic of “fifty-five documents, all stamped confidential.”

The interchange heated up.

“I did ask you to withdraw it three times and you said, ‘No,’” Horwitz said, referring to some domestic complaint. “He will be a Sheriff’s Deputy (again).”

Going back to the fifty-five documents, Sotos asked, “Shouldn’t these documents be withdrawn?

“The problem is that the material is in the court file,” Mahoney observed.

Referring to the two different subjects the two attorneys were addressing, the Magistrate said,

“If it is a confidential document, it becomes a different (situation). If you believe it should be a confidential document, then it should be placed under seal.”

Out in the hall after the hearing Sotos and Horwitz agreed to look at and follow the 7th Appellate Court Circuit rules on the matter of the documents confidentiality.