I've said here in the past that the object of the appeals court in sending the case back for retrial on narrow factual issues was to see justice done and avoid messy detours into legal quagmires, which abound in this case. As a result, the appeals decision took up questions like "who is the real rector of St Mary of the Angels?" and decided that if the outcome of the August 6, 2012 vote could be confirmed by the trial court, any decision by the appeals court on this and similar issues would be unnecessary.
The decision by the appeals court not to publish its decision formally also meant that, although parties watching the case would have preferred that it be a precedent, it would be much less likely that the California Supreme Court would hear a further appeal. The appeals court's judgment in this matter turned out to be correct.
Judge Strobel has said at least once during scheduling and case management conferences that she felt the appeals court had provided a clear road map on how to resolve the case. It's worth pointing out that the judge has herself just returned from several months' service on the same appeals court. She is likely to know the colleagues who wrote the opinion and hold them in regard. On the other hand, her question prior to concluding arguments indicated that she felt that Mr Lancaster, in raising new issues like whether Mrs Bush had received adequate notice of a vestry meeting, was asking Judge Strobel to deviate from the appeals court's road map.
The question of whether Mrs Bush had voluntarily abandoned her position on the elected vestry or whether, as she blithely insisted in testimony, she was both the senior warden of the Morello-appointed vestry and a member of the elected vestry, is a legal quagmire. It is a new quagmire that was not anticipated by the appeals court, but it's a quagmire of the type that the appeals court clearly intended to bypass. I believe that Judge Strobel will want to follow the thinking of the appeals court and do everything she can to avoid this quagmire.
(I do note that among the audience for the trial was an attorney for the Church Mutual Insurance Company, taking copious notes. If the ACA and Mrs Bush lose this case, there will almost certainly be lawsuits against Mrs Bush, a deep pocket, for damages. Church Mutual would insure vestry members of St Mary's against such actions, but Mrs Bush's case, in which she clearly claims to be on both potential plaintiff and defendant vestries, will be interesting to say the least. The quagmires won't go away; let's hope they occur in cases other than this one.)
Mr Lancaster's citation of Huber v Jackson turns out to be an illustrative red herring. I was able to find some discussion of the case:
In Huber v. Jackson, (CA Ct. App., June 9, 2009), a California appellate court held that the Episcopal Church and its Diocese of Los Angeles are the owners of the property of St. Luke's parish. The congregants of St. Luke's voted in 2006 to break away from the Episcopal Church and affiliate with the more conservative Anglican Church of Uganda. Applying "neutral principles" of law (as required by a recent California Supreme Court decision), the court found that St. Luke's had agreed to be bound by the governing documents of the Episcopal church, and this includes Canon I.7.4 which provides that all parish property is held in trust for the national church and its diocese:The determining factor here, under neutral principles of law, was that the St Luke's bylaws said explicitly that the parish held its property in trust for the national church and its diocese. This, of course, is the Episcopal Church's Dennis Canon, adopted in the wake of the first St Mary of the Angels case, in which the court held that the St Mary's bylaws, which explicitly reserve property ownership to the parish, were the operative document.as a matter of law that when defendants voted for disaffiliation, they denounced their prior promises to be subject to the governing documents of the national church and the diocese, abandoned their membership in the corporation, and lost the power and authority to be directors of the corporation, as they were no longer members in good standing of the Episcopal Church. Thus, their purported amendment of the articles of incorporation and bylaws to make the corporation part of the Anglican Church were a legal nullity, or ultra vires.
In other words, neutral principles of law call for different outcomes in the St Mary of the Angels case and the St Luke's case. Mr Glazer of TroyGould argued in front of the appeals court precisely this: the so-called "Episcopal Church cases" in fact support St Mary of the Angels's claim to own its property outright.
An attempt misleadingly to cite Huber v Jackson in support of his case is another indication that Mr Lancaster recognizes its weakness. My expereince watching Judge Strobel is that she does not take well to this sort of thing.
I'm told just now that Judge Strobel is not likely to issue a "tentative" for the two sides to engage over yet again. She indicated to them that she would issue a written ruling, and deliver it probably by mail. I would say that this is consistent with my perception that she would like to come to a clear resolution of the case and avoid further legal quagmires.
