Victoria Gardner

Why It Matters

Civil restraining orders carry immediate consequences: firearm prohibitions, custody and housing fallout, employment barriers, and reputational harm. When courts prioritize speed over statutory findings, or impose opaque fee practices, the result is predictable: rights are curtailed without the process the law requires, and the least-resourced litigants bear the heaviest costs.

Under the name Victoria Allison Elsmore, this official handled high-volume family, OFP, and HRO calendars as a referee. In July 2025 she took the oath of office as District Court Judge Victoria Gardner. TylerTech's Odyssey case-management system now rewrites historical records to show Gardner on events that occurred while she was still Elsmore, obscuring who acted under which authority at the time. This page exists to preserve that continuity for public review.

Former Ramsey County family-court referee Victoria Allison Elsmore, now serving as District Court Judge Victoria Gardner.

Countersignature: Her Own Words

On August 31, 2023, Minnesota Lawyer published a profile of Victoria Elsmore in her capacity as the incoming Ramsey County Bar Association President. She had been a permanent Ramsey County referee for eight months at that point. The reporter asked her about misconceptions people have about her work. Her answer, verbatim:

“Nobody knows what a referee is. Referees are hired by the chief judge, usually are limited to one practice area and do not run for reelection. I serve at the pleasure of the chief judge. I do the same work as a district court judge in family court, and my orders are countersigned by the district court judges.”

That last clause is her own operational description of her practice, given on the record, at the top of her bar leadership arc, nearly two years before the specific Elsmore-signed order in The Author’s corpus was signed. It is what she told the legal-affairs press countersignature normally looks like from her chambers. It is her own default.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals’ May 11, 2026 opinion in The Author’s case described the missing countersignature on a related referee order as “probably through an oversight.” Elsmore’s 2023 answer does not fit an oversight frame. It describes the countersignature step as routine — the standard component of her order-issuance process. Two things can both be on the record: her stated norm, and the specific order in The Author’s corpus that departs from it. Both are hers.

On the record: countersigned. In the record: blank.

A Documented Pattern

Before appointment as a district judge on July 21, 2025, Victoria Elsmore served as a Ramsey County family-court referee. Public bios and bar materials describe experience across dissolution, custody, support, OFP, and HRO calendars. In the Strickland v. Ramsey archive, multiple entries allege a pattern of form-driven HRO processing that tolerated incomplete or defective paperwork and orders issued without clear judicial countersignature or adequate findings.

After appointment, those same dockets now appear in Odyssey as the work of Judge Victoria Gardner, due to name-level updates in the underlying software. The exhibits linked in this archive preserve contemporaneous documents: unsigned orders, altered notices, and July 2025 record dumps where the same official still appears as Elsmore. Taken together, they document how both the person and the software layer contribute to a distorted record of what actually occurred.

Collins Buckley, Again

Elsmore joined Collins, Buckley, Sauntry & Haugh, PLLP in 2015 as a partner and stayed six years, until the Chief Judge’s pandemic-era referee appointment in 2021. Elizabeth Clysdale had been a partner at the same seven-attorney St. Paul family-law firm for about a decade before her own June 2015 elevation to the referee bench. Their tenures inside Collins Buckley’s door overlap in calendar-year 2015.

That is the same firm, the same practice area, the same year, and the same next-stop — the Ramsey County referee bench. Two of the three family-court referees whose signatures appear in The Author’s corpus went through Collins Buckley on their way to the bench, in a hand-off cycle that landed them both on the same Ramsey County docket.

The firm connection is not the only one they share. Both are William Mitchell College of Law graduates. Clysdale cum laude 2004; Elsmore 2009. Both served in Ramsey County Bar Association leadership — Clysdale as Secretary/Treasurer across multiple terms, Elsmore all the way through Vice President, President-Elect, and President 2023–2024. Both authored chapters in Minnesota CLE’s Divorce Practice Deskbook. The overlap is dense.

None of that, standing alone, is misconduct. What it is is documentation of a small recurring room — a bar leadership club, a firm, a law school, an alumni body — whose members keep landing on the same bench. When the same room keeps producing referees who sign orders the same way, the room is a fact of the case.

Two chairs at the same firm. Two seats on the same bench. Two signatures the record can’t explain.

A Seat at the Table

When Governor Walz elevated Elsmore from referee to district-court judge on April 23, 2025, the announcement listed her institutional affiliations. One of them was Trustee, Mitchell Hamline School of Law Board of Trustees (Governor’s press release). The MHSL Board of Trustees is a small governing body of alumni, judges, and community members. A trusteeship signals substantial institutional investment in the law school.

Mitchell Hamline is where Judge Nicole Starr teaches as adjunct faculty on the District Court Judicial Externship. It is the successor institution to William Mitchell — the law school Elsmore attended in 2009, that Clysdale attended in 2004, and that Cheri L. Brix attended in the early 1970s. It is the same law school whose Board of Trustees has now formally seated one of the two Ramsey County referees whose signatures appear in The Author’s corpus.

The other law school in the picture is the University of St. Thomas School of Law. Elsmore is, per the same Governor’s press release, an adjunct professor there. St. Thomas is the school where Referee Larmouth earned her J.D. in 2007. It is a professional intersection that connects the William Mitchell / Collins Buckley strand of the pattern to the RCAO / Larmouth strand.

Two law schools. One trusteeship. One adjunct role. One bar-association presidency. The relationship tree between the Ramsey bench and its institutional feeders keeps threading back through Elsmore’s résumé.

A trusteeship, an adjunct chair, a bar presidency — and the docket that runs under all three.

Procedure, Fees, and Access

Plaintiffs and respondents have reported systemic friction on the Ramsey County civil-restraining-order calendars: duplicated filing fees, contradictory fee-waiver handling, and orders issued from packets that lacked the signatures or findings required to survive appellate review. The archive alleges dozens of civil HROs at $300 each were processed despite facial defects, effectively taxing access while diminishing scrutiny.

Form orders without findings aren't justice; they are paperwork that looks like justice.

While neighboring jurisdictions emphasize minimizing financial barriers in sensitive proceedings, the record here describes a culture of speed and throughput over individualized adjudication — one that especially burdens self-represented, disabled, or low-income parties. Readers should review linked exhibits and docket materials to evaluate each instance on the merits.

Observed Calendar Practices

Reported practices associated with Elsmore/Gardner's calendars include: reliance on pre-printed forms; limited articulation of factual findings mapped to statute; and acceptance of packets later challenged as incomplete (missing countersignature or adequate service proofs). Training resources stress that OFP/HRO orders require an evidentiary basis, opportunity to be heard (including cross-examination), and findings that meet statutory elements — standards that, when not observed, produce void or voidable orders.

Post-appointment, Judge Gardner now exercises broader authority as a district judge. Given the allegations summarized here and the way Odyssey rewrites her historical identity, continued public scrutiny and rigorous adherence to OFP/HRO procedure are critical to safeguard due process.