LOS ANGELES: Appeals court will not reconsider property ruling
Episcopal News Service. July 30, 2007 [073007-03]
Mary Frances Schjonberg
A California Court of Appeals has refused a request that it review its June ruling against three Episcopal congregations where the majority of members had voted to leave the Episcopal Church for oversight by bishops in another Anglican province but retain the congregations' property.
A notice posted July 24 on the website of the California 4th Appellate District Court Division 3 said that the petition for a rehearing filed by attorneys for the departing members had been denied.
The appellate court, in an exhaustive 77-page document issued June 25, ruled in favor of the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Los Angeles and overturned rulings by a lower court. The case involved property retained by congregations now calling themselves St. James Anglican Church, Newport Beach; All Saints' Anglican Church, Long Beach; and St. David's Anglican Church, North Hollywood. The congregations voted in August 2004 to amend their articles of incorporation, and maintain that they are now part of the Anglican Province of Uganda.
The appeal court's review of U.S. Supreme Court and California appellate decisions as well as a pertinent California statute, and held that where a hierarchical church -- such as the Episcopal Church -- has determined that the real and personal property of subordinate bodies must be used and maintained for the benefit of the larger church, the courts in California must respect and enforce that determination.
The court found that a "governing instrument" of the Episcopal Church -- such as its 1979 "trust" Canon I.7(4) -- "expressly impresses a trust on the property of a local church corporation" which must be enforced by the courts.
The congregations have 10 days to petition for a discretionary review by the California Supreme Court.
Legal sources say California is the only state where appellate decisions in recent decades have not favored the Episcopal Church.
The case on behalf of the Diocese of Los Angeles was brought by Holme, Roberts and Owen, the law firm of the diocesan chancellor, John R. Shiner, who successfully argued an issue relating to California's "anti-SLAPP" statute. The Episcopal Church was represented by Goodwin Procter in Washington, D.C., the law firm of David Booth Beers, the Chancellor to the Presiding Bishop. Beers' partner Heather H. Anderson argued the merits of the appeal.