A. S. Haley: Making Heresy Pay: ECUSA's Hired Expert

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

In each of its multiple lawsuits against departed parishes and dioceses, ECUSA usually files a sworn statement ("affidavit" or "declaration") from Prof. Robert Bruce Mullin, who teaches at its General Theological Seminary in New York. Required discovery disclosures in some of the lawsuits have finally given opponents a handle on the degree of bias which Dr. Mullin brings to his task. Without mincing any words, let me come right to the point:

Over forty months from September 2007 through December 2010, ECUSA has paid Prof. Mullin, over and above his salary at GTS, a total of $672,020.00 in hourly fees. ECUSA has also paid to reimburse him for a further $8,487 in expenses he incurred in his researches, including travel to various locations to have his deposition taken, or to testify at trials.

Let me put that number into some perspective. It represents just over one percent of the $60 million ECUSA has borrowed against its headquarters at 815 Second Avenue in order to stay in business.

There are a number of subsidiary facts revealed by the discovery which are almost as amazing as the accumulated totals themselves:

• Dr. Mullin has billed ECUSA for over 3,500 hours of work, although no precise total can be stated because he frequently makes errors in totalling his bills, which ECUSA catches only haphazardly.
  
  
• Of his total hours, nearly 40%, or some 1,300 hours alone, has been for research on what he calls just "hierarchy" in his billing statements. (His statements are not detailed as to the work done on any given day. A typical entry will read just "2/04 6h30m hierarchy".)

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