rather than slobber your piss poor excuses all over your chest, feel free to prove the records were not opened after the court order
To keep divorce records sealed, a defendant must prove that the release of the documents would cause objective harm to a concerned party, typically a juvenile. Indeed, the Ryans argued that salacious details of their case would damage their 9-year-old son. But the court ultimately concluded that only some of the documents contained information that might damage the child's psyche and unsealed the rest. Unfortunately for Ryan's campaign, the courts don't construe the disclosure of embarrassing sexual quirks as innately harmful.
This is hardly the first time that a politician has tried to prevent a media outlet from digging into his matrimonial secrets. One of the most famous was 1992's
In re Keene Sentinel, in which a New Hampshire newspaper sued to unseal the divorce records of former Rep. Chuck Douglas. The New Hampshire Supreme Court ruled that "there is a presumption that court records are public," and that it was up to Douglas prove "with specificity" how the unsealing of the records would cause him harm.
The Ryans' records might never have been sealed at all if not for an unbalanced Trekkie named Marlon Pagtakhan. When Jack Ryan initially asked the court to seal the divorce records in 1999, the judge denied his request. But a year later, Pagtakhan was arrested for stalking Mrs. Ryan, who was then playing the
buxom Seven of Nine on the TV show
Star Trek: Voyager. In hundreds of sexually explicit e-mails, he made graphic threats against the actress's family. (Pagtakhan was sentenced to five years of probation in 2001.) The stalking was enough to convince the judge that the Ryans' information should be sealed, lest some private details fall into the hands of other deranged fans.
did it ever occur to you the records were not sealed for a year after the divorce and anybody could have had access to them ...
nah course not, youre a lawyer