Who Is William H.Lancaster?

A friend was updating me on the status of the various legal actions against Fr Kelley the other day, and as a result, I was curious enough to google the lead attorney representing the Anglican Church in America and the St Mary of the Angels dissidents, William H. Lancaster. Mr Lancaster, it turns out, is well matched with his clients. (In court, when asked exactly which client he represents, he's answered the ACA, although he appears to work closely with the unelected St Mary's vestry, whose interests are not necessarily the same as those of the ACA.)

By far the most notable event in Mr Lancaster's professional history appears to be a malpractice lawsuit brought against him and his then-firm, Seyfarth Shaw, and a subsequent lawsuit Mr Lancaster brought against Seyfarth Shaw alleging demotion as a result of the malpractice suit. The pertinent details appear here, among other places.

A demoted Seyfarth Shaw LLP partner has sued the firm for allegedly forcing him from an equity partnership position, claiming that executives used the attorney's purportedly poor handling of a case involving Tae Bo creator Billy Blanks as an excuse to de-equitize.

Seyfarth partner William H. Lancaster, who is still employed at the firm, filed suit against the firm and several members of its executive committee on Nov. 25 [2009] in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Los Angeles.

According to the complaint, greedy executives jumped on a now-reversed $31 million malpractice verdict stemming from Lancaster's casework with Blanks as an excuse to demote him.

After Lancaster's representation of Blanks led to the malpractice verdict against Seyfarth, firm executives publicly backed him, the suit states.

“Defendants publicly pronounced with confident [sic] that the verdict was wrong, that no error or malfeasance existed and that the verdict would be reversed on appeal," Lancaster said. [I'm a little concerned about the apparent error in that quote, of course.]

In private, however, executives cited his performance on that case as the reason behind their efforts to strip Lancaster of his equity partnership, the complaint alleges.

Executive compensation committee members allegedly promised to make life at Seyfarth “very difficult” for Lancaster if he didn't accept a demotion to a nonequity position, according to the suit.

The details of the malpractice suit are also revealing:

The decision in Blanks v. Seyfarth Shaw, No. B183426, stems from a case that Blanks brought against an accountant who acted as his agent -- even though he did not have an agent's license -- in violation of the Talent Agencies Act. Blanks was represented in that action by Seyfarth Shaw attorney William H. Lancaster, a partner in its Los Angeles office.

In March 2002, the California labor commissioner dismissed the case against the accountant, finding that Lancaster, acting on behalf of Blanks, had not met the deadline for filing it with Labor Commissioner. In addition, the California state court dismissed the case because it was not filed on time with the Labor commissioner.

Blanks then filed a legal malpractice lawsuit against Seyfarth Shaw and Lancaster, alleging that the attorney's failure to file the action on time before the labor commissioner caused Blanks to lose millions. In addition, Blanks asserted that Lancaster purposely delayed filing in order to generate fees.

After a six-week trial, a jury found the law firm liable on all causes of action and ordered it to pay Blanks $15 million in punitive damages, in addition to about $15 million in compensatory damages.

My wife, a retired attorney, suggests that a simple error like failure to file on time is highly unusual for a partner in a prestige law firm -- Lancaster presumably had a great deal of support from associates and paralegals at Seyfarth to handle such details, and it is extremely puzzling that he could have missed something so simple. The $30 million verdict against him was dismissed on a technicality, but it appears that Seyfarth Shaw had already made a determination on Lancaster's suitability.

The timeline here is intriguing.

Lancaster became an equity partner in April 2000 and was demoted to nonequity status six years later.

However, by August 2000, Lancaster missed the Aug. 2, 2000 deadline to file a petition despite the Court of Appeal’s prominent discussion of the commissioner’s exclusive original jurisdiction and the one-year statute of limitations in a case earlier that year. In other words, within four months of becoming a partner, Lancaster was, at least as suggested by the record, screwing up big time. The disappointed plaintiff, Blanks, then filed a malpractice suit in 2003 against Lancaster and his firm.

It doesn't seem to task the intelligence greatly to conclude that Seyfarth's initial opinion of Lancaster changed. In addition,

After the $30 million malpractice verdict was issued in the Blanks case, Seyfarth’s malpractice insurer required another partner to supervise Lancaster’s work in another major case.

So,

It was in this atmosphere, the suit says, that [managing partner Stephen] Poor “brusquely interrupted” Lancaster during a 2005 preliminary compensation review. Poor told Lancaster he was a liability for the firm and the executive committee believed it would be best if he looked for work elsewhere. “Plaintiff was shocked by Poor’s attitude and words,” the suit says. Lancaster had a productive practice, yet Poor asserted he would not be able to get work from clients, the suit says. He was asked to leave again in a 2006 compensation meeting.

On May 20, 2009, the California Supreme Court refused to review an appeals court decision that threw out the $30 million judgment against Lancaster and Seyfarth Shaw on a technicality. Not long afterward, Lancaster turned around and sued Seyfarth.

My own experience as a sometime writer of corporate policies and procedures was that it's pretty typical for a corporate policy to say that any employee who sues his employer is subject to immediate termination -- of course. Lancaster, however, continued to work for Seyfarth for some period after filing his suit, something that clearly raised the eyebrows of several commentators on blogs and journals. We must assume that at some time after filing his suit in 2009, Seyfarth settled the case and Lancaster left the firm -- apparently taking another partner there, Damon Anastasia, with him. The resume in the link says that Anastasia became Lancaster's partner in a new firm, Lancaster & Anastasia LLP, in 2010. There's no equivalent specificity in Mr. Lancaster's professional profiles on the web.

We know nothing of the circumstances under which Mr Anastasia left Seyfarth Shaw, except that the professional histories of both men suggest they'd worked together at previous law firms. Neither can be said to have been on any sort of fast track -- according to my wife, a lawyer should expect to be named partner at a law firm within seven years of being hired; both Lancaster and Anastasia appear to have jumped around at various firms before making partner later in their careers. But then Lancaster seems to have had an unhappy time at Seyfarth, finally leaving amid controversy, with Anastasia, possibly a Lancaster protégé, leaving at roughly the same time.

Details in the various commentaries on these cases suggest that a partner at Seyfarth could expect to earn a little over $500,000 per year. Lancaster, following his demotion, was down to about $260,000, with tuition payments for half a dozen kids and a lifestyle to support. We don't know what Anastasia was making. Clearly Lancaster had no choice but to leave Seyfarth, but it's hard not to think Anastasia was unlikely to clear anything like either amount leaving that firm for a new one born in controversy following a botched malpractice suit.

As my wife says, we're probably looking at just the tip of an iceberg here. All we can be pretty sure of is that Lancaster & Anastasia LLP has been working a series of rather farfetched, nickel-and-dime lawsuits against Fr Kelley for well over a year at this point. They must really need the money.

Los Feliz Ledger Article

The local controlled-circulation weekly, the Los Feliz Ledger, published an article today on the St Mary of the Angels situation. There's not much new.

In a press release, the Ordinariate wrote that St. Mary’s was barred from joining the Catholic Church because of issues with the clergy, management and corporate structure. The Ordinariate did not return phone calls seeking comment.

That apparently refers to this release, dated May 5, 2012:

The rector, wardens, and vestry of the Church of St. Mary of the Angels, Hollywood, CA, have previously expressed a desire to become a part of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter within the Catholic Church. However, a number of issues relating to the parish's corporate structure, the Catholic formation of its clergy and members, and the resolution of some management concerns have yet to be resolved. The Ordinariate thus has no jurisdiction over St. Mary of the Angels; however, individual parishioners are welcome to join the Ordinariate if they wish to do so. The gift of full communion requires a spirit of reconciliation and the healing of relationships, and to this end, the Ordinary, Msgr. Jeffrey Steenson, offers his prayers for all involved.

Strictly speaking, the release doesn't say "barred", it says "yet to be resolved". And it's worth pointing out that I'm not aware of any communication from the Ordinariate regarding how anyone would join it as an individual. (Would you receive the Sacrament over the web?) I have, however, received a somewhat snotty semi-official statement from a knowledgeable party that any Ordinariate group in Los Angeles would be, on one hand, headed by Andrew Bartus, but on the other, would have no connection with St Mary of the Angels.

Huh? Wasn't Bartus a highly unsatisfactory curate at -- where was it? -- St Mary of the Angels? That's a non-starter, Msgr Steenson. If the Ordinariate wished to start a totally new group not related to anything from the past, it would quite simply need to lose Bartus as part of that equation. How difficult is that to understand, Bill?

The other quote worth noting is:

St. Mary’s continues to operate with dwindling parishioners and minimal services.

According to Vestry member [Marilyn] Bush the church once had about 60 attendees at Sunday mass during Kelley’s tenure. The number of regular parishioners today, she said, has shrunk by about 2/3rds.

Currently, a priest who is the head of the Anglican Diocese of the West—based out of Arizona—holds services on the first Sunday of every month, according to Bush. Other clergy conduct Sunday mass the rest of the month, but weekday evening services have halted.

I Came Here For The Waters -- IV

Where have we seen this before? Interest in a new Anglican initiative is wildly overestimated, but in practice its numbers fall short of even the most lowball predictions. The result is an organization with membership in the very low four digits, parishes in two digits, though the great majority are iffy missions that don't even have their own buildings.

In other words, the Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter is little more than a clone of half a dozen tiny, corrupt "continuing Anglican" denominations. The US Ordinariate is inarguably tiny. But with allegations of cronyism, careerism, old-boyism, this-is-our-policy-except-when-it-isn't, I think a serious case can be made that it's corrupt as well. A good thing, it would be my guess, that Pope Francis has far more important matters to occupy his time.

Trying to see this thing in context, it seems to me that Jeffrey Steenson is in precisely the same league with James Mote, Louis Falk, John Hepworth, or David Moyer, much less a visionary than an opportunist. That the US Ordinariate, touted as a historic development, a generous gesture by the Holy Father, would turn into something so trivial raises serious questions about Steenson's discernment. He spent his career for this?

I've done this blog as an investigation into what my other options might be, once the option of this historic development, this generous gesture, went down the tube, and how this state of affairs came about. I think the following conclusions are inescapable:

• Even if it were practically possible for my wife and me to participate in an Ordinariate parish, it would not be good stewardship of our time, talent, and treasure.
• Since it isn't possible for us to attend an Ordinariate mass within a reasonable distance, that's not an option anyhow, especially when there are scores of Catholic parishes closer at hand.
• Even if we chose to attend an Ordinariate mass out of curiosity, while traveling for instance, there are so few such parishes anywhere, and indeed most in places like Baltimore or Indianapolis, that this isn't an option, either.
• At least an Ordinariate mass, said according to approved liturgy and with a Catholic priest, is a valid sacrament. A "continuing Anglican" mass doesn't even have that advantage.
• Participation in any "continuing Anglican" denomination was never a serious option for my wife and me in any case.

I Came Here For The Waters -- III

Where, exactly, does the US Ordinariate stand? As of today, there are now 27 groups or parishes listed on the Ordinariate's communities page, up from 25 at my last visit. However, the exact status of the groups, and whether some are "ordinariate" groups not listed, is as hard to determine as ever. It's worth pointing out that the Ordinariate office never replied to my e-mail asking which of the 36 communities they've claimed in press releases are not listed on the communities page.

As far as I can tell, the following parishes listed on the communities page actually have their own buildings:

Church of the Holy Nativity: Payson, AZ

Parish of the Incarnation: Orlando, FL

St. James: St. Augustine, FL

Mount Calvary Church: Baltimore, MD

Saint Luke's Church: Bladensburg, MD

Christ the King Church: Towson, MD

St. Thomas More Catholic Community: Scranton, PA

Our Lady of Walsingham Church, The Principal Church of the Ordinariate: Houston, TX

Saint Timothy's Church: Fort Worth, TX

As of today, St Mary the Virgin in Arlington, TX, while it says it's an Ordinariate parish on its own web site, is not listed on the Ordinariate's communities page. (This may have to do with the complexities of transferring its jurisdiction from Anglican Use.) By my count, this is nine eight seven parishes with their own buildings, leaving St Mary the Virgin out. The rest are groups or sodalities meeting between Roman masses at Roman parishes or other facilities.

Because there is no authoritative source for this information, and because no other "Anglo-Catholic" blogger seems to care, I will welcome updates and corrections here. (My wife and I discussed it the other week, and we consider ourselves mainstream Vatican II Catholics, not Anglo-Catholics.) I'll add to or remove items from this list here as I receive them, so please help!

On June 15, 2011, Cardinal Wuerl estimated an initial total of 2,000 parishioners and 100 priests for the Ordinariate. The actual number of priests appears to have fallen well short of 100 -- as of late 2012, the number in press releases was put at 29. The number of parishioners in the same press releases is given at 1,600 among 36 parishes.

Since the Ordinariate has not, for whatever reason, identified all 36 of the parishes it claims, I am going to estimate the actual total of parishioners in proportion to the number of communities listed on the Ordinariate web site: 27 is 75% of 36. 75% of 1,600 is 1,200. My own completely intuitive guesstimate of the Ordinariate's actual size is 1,000, but for now, I'll say 1,200.

Eighteen months after the erection of the Ordinariate, its totals are well short of the estimate from Cardinal Wuerl. I assume, by the way, that since Msgr Steenson was so closely associated with the initial planning, these numbers would have come from him, and if he'd had any sense, he'd have made an estimate that would allow him to look good by over-delivering. Didn't happen.

Let's not even talk about the 250,000 that Bishop Clarence Pope gave Cardinal Ratzinger in 1993.

I Came Here For The Waters -- II

The next question I've been working through as part of this journey has been, "What, exactly, is the thing that's so great about an Ordinariate?" This is related to the question a visitor e-mailed me wondering why anyone would need the inducement of an Ordinariate to become Catholic. Certainly when I began attending St Mary's and heard the initial discussions, I couldn't help but think this was a historic development, a generous gesture, and so forth.

The problem, though, became twofold. First, it wasn't going to be as easy as anyone may have thought actually go get into an Ordinariate, and I've discussed here the ways in which Msgr William Stetson may have misled parishioners about this himself -- and Stetson, effectively the vicar general for Anglican Use on behalf of Cardinal Law, was no stranger to these exact issues. By making the reported remark that he didn't check passports at the communion rail, he clearly gave the impression that parishioners who may have had obstacles to becoming Catholic, or who simply did not wish to do so, would have these matters finessed.

This wasn't going to happen, and it was certainly one factor (though by no means the only one) that led to problems in the parish over entry to the Ordinariate. Clearly there were similar problems elsewhere, such as the reversal at St Aidan's Des Moines when parishioners learned that Anglican annulments wouldn't be recognized by the Catholic Church, and the Vatican really meant what it said about Freemasonry.

On the other hand, as things began to fall out, the Ordinariate itself wasn't inclined to exert itself overmuch over parishioners who had no obstacles and who did sincerely want to become Catholic, and in our case, the Chancellor simply misled my wife and me, advising us to stick with the process via St Mary's, as it would take much longer to back out of the St Mary's process and go through RCIA.

I never trusted that advice; we wanted to become Catholic, we didn't have the time in our lives to dilly-dally, and RCIA was clearly the only possible route once things fell apart at St Mary's. Frankly, the implicit message I take away from this is that the Chancellor, and by implication the Ordinary, simply didn't care. I'll come back to this later.

But once we finally did become Catholic via RCIA, no thanks to anyone connected with the Ordinariate, my almost immediate reaction was, "But there's so much more to eat here!" I don't know how else to put this. Bl John Henry Newman is one thing -- St Thomas Aquinas is another thing entirely.

I Came Here For The Waters -- I

I would never drop the Annie Dillard epigraph that I have for this blog, but a second choice, in hindsight, might be this dialogue from Casablanca:

Capt. Louis Renault: What on earth brought you to Casablanca?
Rick Blaine: My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.
Capt. Louis Renault: The waters? What waters? We're in the desert.
Rick Blaine: I was misinformed.

The first item of business I have, which will almost certainly be a process of wrapping up this journey, is this: were Cardinals Manning and Mahony, at the time Archbishops of Los Angeles, justified in turning down St Mary of the Angels in its effort to become a Roman Catholic Anglican Use parish in the mid-1980s?

I think they were. In the process of becoming Catholic at Our Mother of Good Counsel, the parish a few blocks away from St Mary's, I discovered that it had gone through its own period of angry dissent in the 1970s. I don't know all the details, although there are people there, including Fr Mott, who lived through that time and have vivid memories (Fr Mott has said that it provoked a crisis for him over his own vocation). The most I can say, subject to correction from those more knowledgeable, is that it was basically over Vatican II, that the senior priest at the time barricaded himself in the rectory, that parishioners were picketing, and that Cardinal Manning finally had to get involved and put a stop to it.

By the time St Mary's left The Episcopal Church and entered its first set of lawsuits, the business at Our Mother of Good Counsel would still have been vivid recent history for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. Leaving the question of women's ordination aside, liturgical modernization would have been basically the same issue that provoked the controversies at both parishes. I have a feeling that, although Cardinals Manning and Mahony were both liberals, the question of church authority would have been paramount: St Mary's, if admitted as an Anglican Use parish, could potentially have become a locus of anti-Vatican II dissent just a few blocks away from a parish where this had already been a sore point. Indeed, liturgical conservatives like Charles Coulombe were following St Mary's application to join the Ordinariate in 2012; while I'm sure they meant no overall harm, the liturgical issues were still present and still the same. If I'm correct, turning St Mary's down in the mid-1980s would have been a no-brainer.

While we were on vacation, my wife and I went to mass at a Catholic parish where problems had come up due to the appointment of two new priests with Spanish surnames: pledges and receipts were down 20%, with parishioners leaving on the basis that the diocese was going to "turn it into a Mexican parish". I suppose this is one thing bishops are for; he has my sympathy in this matter. I would also guess that this sort of thing has been going on since before St Paul's epistles. But why would any bishop want to admit a new parish that was already going through this sort of thing?

So, in hindsight, that's my answer to the first question I began asking when I started going to St Mary's.

On Vacation

Time for a break. Back in a week or so, but it may be time to wrap this thing up.