Has the Beverly Stayart Saga Ended?

Devoted Reader(s) will recall Beverly Stayart's lawsuits against various companies seeking redress for alleged damage to her online reputation.

We last covered this saga back in February. At that point, dismissals of her latest federal claims were awaiting affirmance at the Seventh Circuit, but her remanded state law claims were still pending in Wisconsin. The state law claims had been brought to my attention by a rude anonymous commenter to the earlier post:

Judge Randa authorized Stayart to go forward with her lawsuit in state court, which is exactly what she did. You apparently make up the "facts" as you go along. Your posts are riddled with lies.

As I reported then, the Walworth County case was "mired in discovery hell." In particular, the judge had recently granted a motion compelling Ms. Stayart's deposition in Milwaukee, which seems to have been necessary because she had, as I so delicately put it, left the jurisdiction. (If you're too lazy to follow the link, it apparently reveals that Ms. Stayart has a warrant out for alleged bail jumping. I leave it to you to sleuth for the underlying charges.)

Meanwhile, the Seventh Circuit has gotten around to affirming dismissal of her federal claims against Yahoo! and Google. Unless the Supreme Court takes it up, that part of the saga has ended.

And now her state law claims have been dismissed as well—on her own motion! From what I can tell from the docket, it appears that Ms. Stayart continued to dodge the deposition (probably because she did not want to come back into Wisconsin for the reasons noted above) and other discovery. There was a renewed motion to compel the deposition in Milwaukee, and the motion was again granted:

Shortly after that hearing, Stayart's attorney (her husband, Gregory) filed a motion for voluntary dismissal with prejudice. That motion was granted. The case is over.

One coda. Something that's bothered me all along is that Ms. Stayart has been primarily represented by her husband Gregory. On the dockets for the federal cases, you can see that he listed his office as located in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. But Mr. Stayart was never licensed to practice law in Wisconsin—he was always licensed only in Illinois and had to be admitted pro hac vice to represent Ms. Stayart in the Wisconsin state court case. I'm no stickler, but I always thought that setting up a law office in a state where you weren't licensed to practice law was the very definition of "the unauthorized practice of law." But I could be wrong about that.

Anyhow, Mr. Stayart has now moved back to Illinois and appears to be practicing out of an office (or his home) in Rockford. So that little problem is cured now, too, I guess.