PORT ANGELES. On October 21, 2025, Clallam County Superior Court Judge W. Brent Basden filed a five-page memorandum opinion and order denying Anthony Tomashefsky's motion to revise the stalking and anti-harassment protection order entered against him two months earlier. The opinion is methodical. It takes each of Tomashefsky's arguments in turn, service, free speech, the anti-SLAPP statute, the evidence, and the commissioner's impartiality, and rejects every one.
Basden is not a bystander to protection-order law. Appointed to the bench by Gov. Jay Inslee in late 2018 and re-elected unopposed in 2024, he spent a decade as the county's family court commissioner presiding over protection-order hearings before his elevation, and later served as the court's presiding judge. His opinion in Mavy v. Tomashefsky, No. 25-2-00595-05, bears the weight of that docket experience.
The procedural history the opinion lays out
The opinion's twelve numbered findings reconstruct the summer. Mavy filed his petition August 7, 2025, in district court; it was transferred to Superior Court the next day. On August 12 both men appeared, and Tomashefsky was given "an opportunity to say why an order should not issue" before a temporary order was granted. On August 13 Tomashefsky filed a motion for revision of that temporary order and set his own hearing for August 29; the same day, the court denied the motion and struck the hearing "as being improperly scheduled under local court rule." On August 22 he emailed the court administrator to say the August 26 hearing "must be stricken"; on August 25 he was told an email does not change court dates. On August 26 he did not appear, and Commissioner Brian Parker granted the order, issuing a fuller memorandum on August 27.
What followed, the opinion records, was procedural churn: a motion for revision filed August 27; a switch on September 8 to a motion for reconsideration, which led Basden to dismiss the revision motion as premature; the commissioner's September 15 denial of reconsideration; and finally, on September 25, the motion for revision that the October 21 opinion decides. Under the local rule, Mavy had ten days to respond to that motion. "Ten days have now elapsed and no response has been received," Basden wrote. "The court addresses each of the grounds that Respondent has alleged."
Argument by argument
Lack of service. Tomashefsky alleged he was never served. The opinion quotes his own words from the August 12 hearing back to him: "In the interest of judicial efficiency, the undersigned waives all objections related to the initial lack of service." Basden's conclusion is a single sentence: "Respondent cannot waive objections to service and then object to service."
Free speech. Tomashefsky argued that his reports to law enforcement "serve a legitimate legal purpose and hence cannot be restrained." The opinion answers: "The protection order does not limit speech, it limits conduct." Then comes the passage that defines the case: "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 anti-SLAPP statute. Tomashefsky argued the proceeding was barred by RCW 4.105, the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act. Basden walked through the statute: "Under subsection (3)(a)(ix), the provisions of RCW 4.105 do not apply to an order for antiharassment under RCW 7.105 (see Reviser's notes)." He noted that Tomashefsky "was clearly informed that his effort to unilaterally cancel the August 26, 2025, hearing was not accomplished by an email. He chose not to appear at the hearing and argue the applicability of RCW 4.105." And: "Respondent provides no authority for the position that a person seeking a protection order can be denied protection during the time it takes a respondent to file their RCW 4.105 motion and have a hearing."
The evidence. To Tomashefsky's claim that the record did not support the findings, the opinion gives its most quoted sentence: "On the contrary, the record amply supports the conclusion that Respondent has engaged in this behavior."
Failure to consider the record. "The court finds no error in what evidence was and was not considered," Basden wrote. "The undersigned did review the records and finds and concludes that even had they been considered, the issued protection order is still appropriate."
Failure to recuse. "The court finds no evidence that the court commissioner violated any judicial canon by hearing this matter."
The ruling
The opinion's conclusion occupies two sentences: "The court denies the motion for revision and the protection order remains in place. Because Petitioner did not respond, the court will not award attorney fees in handling this matter." It is dated October 21, 2025, and signed "Brent Basden, Judge."
The opinion is a public record in a public case file. It does not editorialize; it quotes, cites statutes, and rules. Read alongside the commissioner's findings it upheld, findings based on what the commissioner described as "some 55 pages of emails" between Tomashefsky and Wyoming authorities, it constitutes the considered judgment of two judicial officers who reviewed the same evidence and reached the same conclusion: the protection order was warranted, and it stands.
This article relies on public court records and public complaints. TROH welcomes a response from Mr. Tomashefsky and will publish it in full.