A.S. Haley: Court Socks LA Presbytery with $400K in Sanctions

August 1, 2013

In an order made public by The Layman online earlier today, the Hon. Kay Bates, Judge of the 19th Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge, Louisiana imposed compensatory sanctions of $390,000 against the Presbytery of South Louisiana (“PSL”) for conduct by its agents and attorneys, as well as by personnel and attorneys from PCUSA headquarters, in the litigation between PSL and the Carrollton Presbyterian Church of Carrollton, in New Orleans—a unit of PCUSA which has only about 20 members—over the ownership rights to dispose of Carrollton’s property.

The order is remarkable not only for the amount of sanctions awarded, but for the public dressing down which Judge Bates gives to various PCUSA counsel for their egregious litigation tactics, which included:
 the rest

In other words, PSL's attorneys and agents joined in a conspiracy of extreme bad faith and disrespect for the judicial system, coupled with an abuse of its procedures in an attempt to render their opponent penniless. (And it is not as though Carrollton was trying to leave PCUSA. It wanted to lift the burden of its property from its small congregation by selling it to a neighboring Catholic school, and then leasing it back just for Sunday and occasional services—see the story linked above for details.)

Sound familiar, anyone? 815, are you listening?

The court learned of all this conduct when it ordered PSL's counsel to produce all in-house emails, including those between counsel, after determining that they did not qualify for the attorney-client or work-product privilege because they had been shared with so many who were not parties to the case. Judge Bates wrote: "The court is not speculating. The participants to this scheme astonishingly acknowledged all of this in their own words."

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