Church Moves to Dismiss Anti Lawsuit

[Avatar4321]

Didn’t see it elsewhere. Forgive me if I missed it

 

https://legalnewsline.com/stories/523453853-mormon-church-facing-lawsuit-over-teachings-says-case-mocks-both-the-court-and-religion#

[JAHS]

10 minutes ago, Avatar4321 said:

Didn’t see it elsewhere. Forgive me if I missed it

 

https://legalnewsline.com/stories/523453853-mormon-church-facing-lawsuit-over-teachings-says-case-mocks-both-the-court-and-religion#

"She claims the alleged factual truths "would have altered" her and church members' decisions to remain with and join the church. "

Sounds like they joined the Church for the wrong reasons. There are lots of incorrect "facts" about the church brought about by fallible members and leaders. 
Knowledge of and confirmation from the Holy Ghost about the Doctrines and Principles (Not policies and history) of the church is what should help convert a person. 

[smac97]

We discussed this case at length here: RICO Act, Proposed Class Action against the Church - it is filed

The court has schedule a hearing for February 23, 2020 at 1:30 p.m. on the Church's Motion to Dismiss.

There will likely be no further developments in this action until that hearing.

I think the Motion to Dismiss will be granted.

I think the attorney who filed this farce should be ashamed.  She wasted the court's time, her client's money, and the Church's time and money.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Robert F. Smith]

19 hours ago, smac97 said:

............................................

I think the attorney who filed this farce should be ashamed.  She wasted the court's time, her client's money, and the Church's time and money....................

Yes, but I have been told that in America you can sue a ham sandwich.

[Robert F. Smith]

20 hours ago, Avatar4321 said:

...............................https://legalnewsline.com/stories/523453853-mormon-church-facing-lawsuit-over-teachings-says-case-mocks-both-the-court-and-religion#

I particularly like the following Church pleading:

Quote

"It is not the province of judges or juries to determine whether Moses parted the Red Sea, whether Noah predicted and survived the flood, whether Mohammed ascended to heaven, whether Buddha achieved a state of enlightenment, whether Jesus walked on water, or whether Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ."

 

[Kenngo1969]

On 1/17/2020 at 10:45 AM, Robert F. Smith said:

I particularly like the following Church pleading:

 

Quote

"It is not the province of judges or juries to determine whether Moses parted the Red Sea, whether Noah predicted and survived the flood, whether Mohammed ascended to heaven, whether Buddha achieved a state of enlightenment, whether Jesus walked on water, or whether Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ."

A guy I know made much the same point when Tom Phillips sued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on very similar grounds in the UK.  The way he put it, "Courts just love litigating religious truth claims!"

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/62767-president-monson-issued-a-court-summons-is-this-for-real/

P.S.: Actually, now that I think about it, Mr. Phillips did not sue: He brought a private criminal prosecution.  Oi, vey!

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by Kenngo1969

[smac97]

16 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, but I have been told that in America you can sue a ham sandwich.

Actually, the "ham sandwich" thing doesn't have much to do with civil lawsuits, and instead pertains to the prosecutorial misuse of "overcharging" and plea bargains in criminal proceedings.  See here:

Quote

That particular expression, indict a ham sandwich, was coined in 1985 by Sol Wachtler, the later disgraced chief judge of New York State. Wachtler was in favor of scrapping the grand-jury system. District attorneys had so much power, Wachtler argued, that “by and large” they could get grand juries to “indict a ham sandwich.” His remark was made famous just two years later by Tom Wolfe, whose Bonfire of the Vanities quoted Wachtler in discussing the poor chances of its guilty protagonist, Sherman McCoy.

See also here:

  Quote

Glenn Reynolds has a terrific, and very short, paper on SSRN on Ham Sandwich Nation: Due Process When Everything is a Crime, which I highly recommend.  (Conor Friedersdorf blogs about it here.)   Here is the key passage that summarizes the problem:

Overcriminalization has thus left us in a peculiar place: Though people suspected of a crime have extensive due process rights in dealing with the police, and people charged with a crime have even more extensive due process rights in court, the actual decision whether or not to charge a person with a crime is almost completely unconstrained. Yet, because of overcharging and plea bargains, that decision is probably the single most important event in the chain of criminal procedure.

"Overcharging and plea bargains" have, in many important respects, superseded the presumption of innocence and other due process safeguards that should be in place.

Civil lawsuits are, I think, a rather different beast.  Access to the full panopoly of the courts is can be somewhat limited.  Motions to dismiss at the earliest stages of litigation are very common, and very frequently granted.  Moreover, access to the federal courts has become substantially more limited thanks to two cases: Twombly and Iqbal.  See here:

Quote

The aggregate impact of this new pleading standard is proving to be significant. In a Yale Law Journal note by Jonah Gelbach, a law student at Yale Law School and former economics professor at the University of Maryland, Mr. Gelbach describes a study by the Federal Judicial Center which suggests that defendants are more than fifty percent more likely to file a motion to dismiss now than they were before Twombly and Iqbal. See Jonah B. Gelbach, Locking the Doors to Discovery? Assessing the Effects of Twombly and Iqbal on Access to Discovery, 121 Yale L.J. 2270, 2273 (2012). Mr. Gelbach goes on to suggest that a higher percentage of cases is subject to dismissal before reaching discovery, and that twenty percent more cases fail to reach discovery under the heightened pleading standards imposed by Twombly and Iqbal. See id. at 2277; Allison Frankel, “Twombly, Iqbal rulings have ‘substantial impact’: study,” available online at http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuters.com/Legal/News/ViewNews.aspx?id=33303 (last visited May 25, 2012).

My practice is overwhelmingly on the defense side, so this state of affairs works to my clients' advantage.  

Overall, I am not a big fan of "lawfare."  I think the courts should be reserved for genuine legal disputes.  The suit against the Church is a big fat waste of everyone's time and money (including the plaintiff's).  

Thanks,

-Smac

[Meadowchik]

21 hours ago, JAHS said:

"She claims the alleged factual truths "would have altered" her and church members' decisions to remain with and join the church. "

Sounds like they joined the Church for the wrong reasons. There are lots of incorrect "facts" about the church brought about by fallible members and leaders. 
Knowledge of and confirmation from the Holy Ghost about the Doctrines and Principles (Not policies and history) of the church is what should help convert a person. 

Facts are part of the spiritual experience. If not, the church could just teach doctrines and principles and ignore history completely.

[smac97]

6 minutes ago, Meadowchik said:

Facts are part of the spiritual experience. If not, the church could just teach doctrines and principles and ignore history completely.

This is a very important point.  I agree with it wholeheartedly.

For me, "facts," what I have concluded to be factual and real and true, are vital.  For example, the reality of the Plates helps anchor my faith to reality.  The reality of Jesus Christ, of His divine sonship, His miracles, His resurrection.  I think we sometimes run the risk of thinking of the Savior in too abstract of terms, such that He ends up as being just another admirable person, like Lincoln or Atticus Finch, like Thomas More or Gandalf, like Audie Murphy or Captain America.  Note that the foregoing pairings are comprised of real and fictional persons.  In some ways, Atticus and Gandalf and Steve Rogers are just as admirable as Lincoln and More and Murphy.  And yet . . . the former will never measure up to the latter.  Ever.  Because fact will always trump fiction. 

A popular refrain from the "Inspired Fiction" folks is that The Book of Mormon has value even if it is entirely fictional, just like the parables of Jesus need not be literally historical in order to have value.  However, I disagree with this comparison.   Parables have value irrespective of their historicity, I agree with that. However, Jesus Christ being the Son of God and Savior of the world only has value because of the historicity tied up with that declaration. Historicity matters when we consider various scriptural passages, such as this one: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Absent historicity, this passage has no salvific meaning or value. Without historicity, Jesus would be just another admirable fictional character (again, like Atticus Finch, or Captain America). Jesus would, in the end, be about as valuable to me as an imaginary life preserver would be to a drowning man.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Meadowchik]

3 minutes ago, smac97 said:

This is a very important point.  I agree with it wholeheartedly.

For me, "facts," what I have concluded to be factual and real and true, are vital.  For example, the reality of the Plates helps anchor my faith to reality.  The reality of Jesus Christ, of His divine sonship, His miracles, His resurrection.  I think we sometimes run the risk of thinking of the Savior in too abstract of terms, such that He ends up as being just another admirable person, like Lincoln or Atticus Finch, like Thomas More or Gandalf, like Audie Murphy or Captain America.  Note that the foregoing pairings are comprised of real and fictional persons.  In some ways, Atticus and Gandalf and Steve Rogers are just as admirable as Lincoln and More and Murphy.  And yet . . . the former will never measure up to the latter.  Ever.  Because fact will always trump fiction. 

A popular refrain from the "Inspired Fiction" folks is that The Book of Mormon has value even if it is entirely fictional, just like the parables of Jesus need not be literally historical in order to have value.  However, I disagree with this comparison.   Parables have value irrespective of their historicity, I agree with that. However, Jesus Christ being the Son of God and Savior of the world only has value because of the historicity tied up with that declaration. Historicity matters when we consider various scriptural passages, such as this one: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Absent historicity, this passage has no salvific meaning or value. Without historicity, Jesus would be just another admirable fictional character (again, like Atticus Finch, or Captain America). Jesus would, in the end, be about as valuable to me as an imaginary life preserver would be to a drowning man.

Thanks,

-Smac

Yup. This, to me, is why "God lives" is a critical result of an LDS testimony.

That said, facts cannot be forced to fit into place. But I grant that we all evaluate facts differently.

[Thinking]

21 hours ago, JAHS said:

There are lots of incorrect "facts" about the church brought about by fallible members and leaders.

IMO in order to have chance at winning, she will need to show that the Church intentionally misrepresented its history.

[provoman]

19 minutes ago, Thinking said:

IMO in order to have chance at winning, she will need to show that the Church intentionally misrepresented its history.

Wouldn't she also need to show the her choices regarding membership, tithing, church participation were made because of specific representations?

[JAHS]

52 minutes ago, Thinking said:

22 hours ago, JAHS said:

There are lots of incorrect "facts" about the church brought about by fallible members and leaders.

IMO in order to have chance at winning, she will need to show that the Church intentionally misrepresented its history.

I think the only thing that she might be able to show is that the church doesn't openly talk or teach about some points of history in the classroom or when teaching investigators. 
Someone doing the research on their own can certainly find out about all of it.

Edited January 17, 2020 by JAHS

[smac97]

54 minutes ago, Thinking said:

IMO in order to have chance at winning, she will need to show that the Church intentionally misrepresented its history.

I doubt she could win even then.

The civil courts are really not interested in adjudicating the truth or falsity of religious claims.  They are vigorously not interested.  Such a request would be a misuse of the court system.  And an experienced attorney (like the one who filed this dreck) would certainly have known that beforehand.

Thanks,

-Smac

[poptart]

Since I'm part German does this mean I can sue the Catholic Church for reperations for harassing all those innocent vikings and Saxons?  They were coerced into all those raids after all, they didn't do nothing.  Mean old Christians, the pagans did no wrong.

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

I doubt she could win even then.

The civil courts are really not interested in adjudicating the truth or falsity of religious claims.  They are vigorously not interested.  Such a request would be a misuse of the court system.  And an experienced attorney (like the one who filed this dreck) would certainly have known that beforehand.

Thanks,

-Smac

I hope so, this is dumb.   Here's me cheering for you guys. 

Edited January 18, 2020 by poptart