Episcopal Press and News
LOS ANGELES: Congregations ask state Supreme Court to review ruling
Episcopal News Service. August 7, 2007 [080707-02]
Three congregations made up of former Episcopalians who voted to leave the Episcopal Church for oversight by bishops in another Anglican province have asked the California Supreme Court to review a ruling that they cannot retain the parish property they left behind.
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 departing congregants had asked the appellate court to reconsider its ruling but the court refused on July 24. The congregations had 10 business days to petition for a discretionary review by the California Supreme Court and they filed that petition on the tenth day, according to the case's docket sheet.
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 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. 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.