A.S. Haley: The Litigation Lottery in California: Same Facts, Different Outcomes

Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Litigation Lottery for the parishes of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin continues in the courts of California. I mentioned in an earlier post that as a result of a poorly reasoned decision by a trial court judge in Bakersfield, which granted summary judgment to Bishop Talton's rump diocese, two parishes in Kern County had decided to move out of their church buildings rather than carry the fight on to the appellate level -- even though the decision was so obviously wrong.

Now comes another trial court decision -- based on exactly the same underlying facts -- which denies summary judgment to Bishop Talton and his diocese. The Superior Court of Tulare County ruled on Tuesday of this week that there were disputed issues of fact remaining with regard to the ability of St. John's in Porterville to disaffiliate from ECUSA.

The reason that the three cases all involved the same facts is that all three parishes -- St. John's, Porterville; St. Paul's, Bakersfield; and St. Michael's, Ridgecrest -- belonged to Bishop Schofield's Diocese of San Joaquin, and left ECUSA after that Diocese amended its Constitution in December 2007 to become the first diocese to disaffiliate in modern times. All three operated under the same Constitution and Canons, and all three took exactly the same steps after the Diocese's vote: during the period of discernment extended to them by Bishop Schofield, they held vestry and parish meetings, discussed the matter, and took votes which ratified the Diocese's decision. Then they amended their articles to reflect their continued affiliation with the (now) Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin... the rest