Having followed these cases for six years, it's plain that the lawyers and the courts have chewed every possible issue into a fine mush, and the rulings have seesawed back and forth. Thus it's no surprise to me that Judge Murphy issued a tentative ruling granting the ACA's and the Bush group's motion for a permanent injunction that gives them the parish property.
The December 1, 2017 ruling of the Appellate Division of the Superior Court, State of California, County of Los Angeles (App. Div. of Sup. Ct. No. BV031682) along with the March 23, 2018 Remittitur, are binding authority on this Court. Pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code § 128, this Court has the power to “compel obedience to its judgments, orders, and process, and to the orders of a judge out of court, in an action or proceeding pending therein.” Plaintiff in their opposition to Defendant’s motion supplies no sufficient argument or relevant authority to invalidate the judgment of the Appellate Division finding the property and parish are under the control of Defendants. Therefore, this Court must follow the precedent set forth by the Appellate Division’s prior rulings on this issue.Based on the foregoing, Defendant’s motion for order to transfer control of property pursuant to the judgement of the Appellate Division is GRANTED. Additionally, pursuant to Cal. Civ. Code §§ 3368, 3422, Defendant’s motion for permanent injunctive relief is GRANTED.
On the other hand, Mr Lengyel-Leahu on behalf of the vestry was able to persuade Judge Murphy to re-read the California Appeals Court's 2014 ruling that, as far as I can see, and which Mr Lengyel-Leahu argued, has two parts. First, it found that the legal vestry was the one elected in February 2012. Second, it returned the issue of whether the August 2012 vote to leave the ACA was valid to the trial court.
This brought up the question of what the status quo ante before the August 2012 vote actually was, granting the August 2012 vote to leave was not valid per the Appellate Division's 2017 reversal. Mr Lengyel-Leahu argued that the parish was no longer under the authority of the ACA in any case.
Judge Murphy said he would take the matter under submission and come back with a final decision by the end of the week. He did say he's inclined to stay with his tentative decision. On the way out of the courthouse, I noted to the parish's senior warden that, even if Judge Murphy changes his mind, it simply opens things up for another 20 years of litigation.
Indeed, this could be the case either way. It is truly a modern Jarndyce v Jarndyce, and I sympathize with Judge Murphy, who clearly indicated in January that it was time for things to come to resolution.
The more I look at the history involved here, the more I think the current state of affairs is a direct result of reckless decisions by Fr Barker and the parish from 1976 to 1978 to leave TEC. This lack of obedience to authority is by definition un-Catholic, and Cardinal Mahony in my view was correct in citing it in refusing the parish's application to come in under the Pastoral Provision in 1986.
In effect, the parish's guiding demons brought in an acknowledgement that extra-ecclesial actions would thenceforth govern how things were run. The problem I have is that Bp Law seems to have had some involvement in setting the parish on that course, which from then to now has had nothing but futile and destructive results.
Bp Law has gone to where he must account for that and a great deal else, and we'll not hear anything more from him about it. I doubt we'll ever hear much more from Fr Barker, either, though I'd love to find out from him in more detail what advice Law, and probably Stetson as well, actually gave him.
