PORT ANGELES. Washington law defines unlawful harassment as a knowing, willful course of conduct that "serves no legitimate or lawful purpose." So when Anthony Tomashefsky faced a stalking and anti-harassment petition in Clallam County Superior Court last summer, the decisive question was whether his campaign of monitoring Benjamin Mavy had a lawful purpose.
According to the court record, when the question was put to him directly, Tomashefsky declined to answer it.
"On the record, Respondent was invited to offer a lawful purpose for his extensive course of monitoring and reporting on Petitioner," Court Commissioner Brian Parker wrote in his August 27, 2025, memorandum opinion in Mavy v. Tomashefsky, No. 25-2-00595-05. "Respondent declined to do so."
Fifty-five pages of emails
The evidence before the commissioner was not ambiguous about the conduct. "In addition to the petition and responsive pleadings, I considered some 55 pages of emails between Respondent and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, as well as other Lincoln County, Wyoming government officials," Parker wrote. "These emails contain extensive descriptions of Petitioner's activities, movements, location, and travel plans. Petitioner states under oath he did not provide this information to Respondent."
The emails were part of Tomashefsky's effort to have Mavy prosecuted in Wyoming over statements about residency on a hunting-license application. On its face, reporting a suspected violation to authorities is lawful, and Parker's opinion says so. What the record showed, he found, was something else:
"These exhibits reveal an extensive history of attempts at contacting, monitoring, tracking, surveillance, keeping under observation, disrupting activities in a harassing manner, or following of another person," the opinion states. "Such an involved course of monitoring, tracking, surveilling, or keeping under observation would cause a reasonable person to feel intimidated, frightened, under duress, significantly disrupted, or threatened. Petitioner has testified that the extensive surveillance did cause such a feeling."
"Methods and motives"
The opinion's central passage draws the line Tomashefsky crossed:
"The issue isn't the reporting of suspected violations by Petitioner to out-of-state authorities, it is the level of detail Respondent had about Petitioner's movements and plans (which were not shared with him by Petitioner), the persistence and intensity in which Respondent displayed in attempting to pressure the Wyoming Game and Fish Department or other Wyoming law enforcement to not only sanction Petitioner, but to arrest him in front of his children at a family funeral," Parker wrote. "Arguments could be made Respondent was well within his rights to report Petitioner, but both Respondent's methods and his motives cross the boundaries of the permissible."
On motive, the opinion is blunt. "It is clear from both the wording and tone of the emails between Respondent and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department or other Wyoming law enforcement that his goal is to humiliate or harm a perceived rival," Parker wrote. Respondent's communications, he found, "go beyond merely reporting a suspected violation, but [are] an attempt to recruit the agency into assisting him in harming his perceived rival. Respondent offers to perform extensive monitoring or investigation of Petitioner to this end."
The opinion also notes the personal context: "The level of animosity between Petitioner and Respondent are well documented, in this and other court cases (including Petitioner's ongoing divorce action, in which Respondent has inserted himself)." Tomashefsky is dating Mavy's ex-wife, a relationship reflected in background materials in the case file and remarked on publicly by readers of Tomashefsky's website. The court did not rely on that relationship; it relied on the emails.
"A punitive campaign of aggression"
Parker addressed the free-speech framing head-on. "I will concede the court does not favor prior restraints on either speech or attempts to access justice," he wrote. "However, we judge Respondent's course of conduct as a whole. The fact some elements of the course of conduct may be legitimate or even protected does not legitimize the entire punitive campaign of aggression."
His conclusion: "I cannot find a lawful motive exists for Respondent's aggression and punitive actions toward Petitioner. I also cannot find that because the Respondent's weapons of choice were the courts or law enforcement, that his actions are acceptable. I conclude Respondent's extensive course of monitoring, surveilling, watching, tracking, gathering information on, and aggressive lobbying of law enforcement to not only prosecute his perceived rival, but to arrest him at a family funeral where, presumably, Petitioner's children would be present goes beyond the bounds of any protected speech, and as a whole his actions constitute harassment."
Rejected again on review
Tomashefsky revived the legitimate-purpose argument in his October motion for revision, contending that "his reports to law enforcement serve a legitimate legal purpose and hence cannot be restrained," as Judge W. Brent Basden's October 21, 2025, memorandum opinion recounts. Basden's answer crystallized the legal problem with the theory:
"The protection order does not limit speech, it limits conduct. Under Respondent's theory of this case, an individual could engage in any stalking or harassing behavior, and then 'legitimize' or 'protect' that behavior if it happened to uncover wrongdoing by the individual harassed or stalked."
The temporary order issued August 12, 2025, had flagged the same problem at the outset: in its handwritten basis, the court noted that Tomashefsky did not deny the volume of his email communications with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and declined to state a purpose for them.
Two judicial officers, reviewing the same record two months apart, reached the same destination: the monitoring had no lawful purpose that Tomashefsky would state on the record, the statute required one, and the protection order stands.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.