It's worth repeating that the only evidence that's come out so far in pre-trial proceedings that Fr Kelley has stolen anything was Mr Lancaster's motion for summary judgment against Fr Kelley based on the assertion that Fr Kelley had stolen leftovers from parish potlucks, thus reducing his grocery bill. Other courts, including the California appeals court, have noted that there is no evidence of any financial irregularity on Fr Kelley's part.
Another issue that's been at the back of my mind since I attended the oral arguments at the appeals court is how Mr Lancaster is being paid. When Anthony Morello and Stephen Strawn called a parish meeting (with less than a day's notice) on May 26, 2012, after seizing the parish, my wife asked during the meeting who was paying for the legal work. My wife reported that Morello was not pleased about the question and spoke vaguely that "private funding" was involved.
Possibly. But more than two years later, William H Lancaster and his partner, Damon Anastasia, are still on the case. Lancaster, let's recall, was fired as a partner from a prestige law firm in 2009 after a malpractice suit. If you google "William Lancaster attorney Los Angeles", the first three hits that come up are to his firm's web site, a news article about Lancaster's firing, and the link to my blog's discussion of Lancaster's history. (Hint to Mr Lancaster: there are people who can get rid of bad google hits like these, or at least bury them way down on the list, but they do charge to do this, and there may be situations they can't fix.) I went to the Lancaster & Anastasia web site, and although there is a page for "News", the only item on it is from 2011: they'd moved their office. (I haven't checked to see if this is just a mail drop.)
The problem I can see is that anyone who hires an attorney for the kind of case Lancaster handles is going to google the guy and check references. When two of the first three hits that come up on google are that bad, anyone with any sense is going to decide Lancaster isn't the only attorney in LA and go elsewhere. So, watching Lancaster wearing the same suit he wore at the 2012 trial in the 2014 oral arguments, I started wondering how many other clients Lancaster has. My wife, a retired attorney, thinks the St Mary of the Angels litigation is a full-time gig. In other words, Lancaster, as far as I can speculate, has no other clients, and he's billing full time to Mrs Bush and the ACA. Or maybe him and Lancaster both, huh?
In my wife's estimate, billing for two years of legal work, full time, on the St Mary of the Angels case has got to be into many hundreds of thousands of dollars, possibly closing in on a million. With the St Mary's assets tied up in litigation, it's unlikely that the money is coming from the parish. But Lancaster has five kids to put through college and a lifestyle to support. How is he being paid? Mrs Bush lives in a fancy penthouse condo, but I guarantee you, I was the parish treasurer, and she ain't that keen on church work. Candles, yes, lawyers, no (sorry, Marilyn, you know what you did to earn this.) If she ever fronted Lancaster any money, it wasn't for long.
So how is Lancaster being paid? Here's one possibility:
Banks and credit unions will often refuse to advance funds to attorneys and law firms because attorneys frequently have very little physical collateral; legal funding is a viable alternative that exists specifically to advance capital to attorneys. Legal lenders will have comparatively higher interest rates than banks or credit unions, but this expense is usually offset by the application, which is fined-tuned specifically for attorneys, and a faster distribution rate. Legal funding has developed into a viable industry that advances capital to attorneys and law firms who would be denied by traditional lenders.But here's the problem: the St Mary's case has dragged on for two years, with no end in sight. They're even having a hard time going after Fr Kelley for the potluck leftovers he "stole"! Remember that the ACA thought they were going to seize the parish in May 2012; the temporary restraining order was just a formality, and Judge Jones was going to award it to them permanently two weeks afterward. Right. If Lancaster is getting advances on this thing from a legal factor, the legal factor is almost certainly starting to see that the ACA, Mrs Bush, and Mr Lancaster have at best -- at best -- a 50-50 chance of winning their case. If they lose control of the parish, they won't have the parish property to plunder, and that possibility is long overdue anyhow.
What's going on? I think there may be an answer on the Freedom for St Mary's site, which I hadn't thought about until recently.
