CA Ct App Overturns Church Property Decision

[Hassler, Jeffrey (student)]

Prof. Friedman asked "While some media reports say that the decision 
involved 3 breakaway parishes, the opinion appears to only relate to one 
of the parishes-- St. James Parish in Newport Beach. Does anyone have 
an explanation for the discrepancy?"
 
The best answer I could find was in an unpublished opinion located at 
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/G036730.PDF and excerpted 
in relevant part below.
 
It appears to me that they weren't technically consolidated, but were 
similar enough that the judges saw fit to consolidate the analysis.
 
Best,
 
Jeff Hassler
 
 
-----------------
 
This appeal, G036730, arises out of the same basic facts as set forth in the
opinion we publish concurrently, Episcopal Church Cases (June __, 2007, G036096,
G036408, G036868) ___ Cal.App.4th ___. The published opinion involves a Newport
Beach parish. This case involves two local parishes from Los Angeles County (also of
the Los Angeles Diocese of the Episcopal Church) who have also chosen to disaffiliate
themselves from the Diocese and national church. The two parishes are in Long Beach
(All Saints) and North Hollywood (St. David's). In each instance the Los Angeles
Diocese filed suit to establish that the property held by the local parish corporations was
held in trust for the Diocese. Normally, the two cases would have been considered by the
Superior Court of Los Angeles County, but one of the directors of All Saints in Long
Beach is Justice Fred Woods of the Second Appellate District, so the two cases were
transferred to the Superior Court of Orange County, where they were considered together
with the case involving the Newport Beach parish considered in the published opinion.

As we note in the published opinion, Justice Woods authored Korean
United Presbyterian Church v. Presbytery of the Pacific (1991) 230 Cal.App.3d 480
(Korean United), a case which, ironically, supports the position of the Diocese as against
the local parish. To the credit of the Korean United court generally, that opinion was the
first opinion in decades from the intermediate appellate court to actually follow
established California Supreme Court precedent (see id. at pp. 500-503).

There is very little to add regarding the two Los Angeles County parishes
that is factually different from the Newport Beach parish considered in the published
opinion, except perhaps for the interesting, but ultimately irrelevant, historical detail that
at a 1979 annual convention of the Los Angeles Diocese, representatives of both churches
had a say in the adoption of a diocesan canon declaring that all parish property would
revert to the Diocese upon dissolution of a parish. As we show in the published opinion,
however, the dispositive fact is that the "general" Episcopal church expressly provided, in
a "governing instrument" (specifically Canon I.7(4)) for a trust in the property of local
parish corporations who were, at that time, clearly "members" of the general church.
Under section 9142, subdivision (c)(2) of the Corporations Code, that is enough to
enforce a trust against the local parish property. Moreover, even without section 9142,
subdivision (c)(2), the common law of California as established by the California
Supreme Court was that the courts should defer to the organizational structure of a church
(be it hierarchical or non-hierarchical) in deciding questions of the use of church
property.
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