Tribune Stirring the Pot on Huntsman Lawsuit (or Trying To)

[smac97]

Last year we had this discussion: James huntsman (jon's brother) sues church for 'fraud'

Stirring the Pot:

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Meaning

Idiom:  stir the pot

• To deliberately try to make a situation or people more tense and upset.
• To unnecessarily create trouble or drama, often to get a reaction from someone.

 

Note:  Imagine a large pot of soup or stew that is filled with different vegetables, pieces of meat and beans.  If the soup is cool, many of the chunky ingredients will rest at the bottom of the pot.  However, when you stir the pot with a spoon, the vegetables, beans and meat pieces become mixed with the liquid again. This idiom describes how someone intentionally brings issues up to the surface and usually it's used to describe a negative influence on something.

Example sentences

— My old girlfriend was always trying to stir the pot and I really hated the drama.

— I look fat in these jeans? Wow, you're really trying to stir the pot.

— Please don't invite the marketing director to this meeting. He's very critical and always tries to stir the pot.

— My father is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but he enjoys arguing with people against the vaccine simply because he likes stirring the pot.

— I think President Trump's goal is to the stir the pot every single day on Twitter.

The phrase came to mind when I came across this article in the Tribune: Is James Huntsman a ‘religious dissident’ or a victim of fraud by the LDS Church?

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Is former Utahn James Huntsman a disgruntled ex-member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who wants his tithing back because he no longer believes?

Or was the wealthy California resident and brother of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. genuinely deceived by statements from top church leaders into giving millions to the faith, as he asserts in a federal lawsuit alleging fraud and demanding the money back?

Those opposing visions and supporting legal arguments are before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals nearly a year after U.S. District Court Judge Stephen V. Wilson ruled against Huntsman, saying no reasonable jury would believe ecclesiastical leaders had misrepresented how tithing funds were to be used.

Huntsman appealed in February. Attorneys are now preparing for possible oral arguments in the case, tentatively set for Nov. 15 before a panel of judges in Pasadena.

Here’s the latest on the case:

I suppose the Trib could simply be trying to pique some interest in forthcoming news items about the November 15 hearing noted above.  But pot-stirring also seems to be a part of the effort.

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{Huntsman} has alleged that while Latter-day Saint leaders, including then-President Gordon B. Hinckley, told members otherwise, they spent up to $2 billion in tithing funds on two private church-owned businesses, City Creek Center, an upscale mall in downtown Salt Lake City, and Beneficial Life Insurance Co.

Church lawyers don’t deny the spending but counter that the cash used was not tithing but instead earnings from invested reserves managed by its investment arm, Salt Lake City-based Ensign Peak Advisors — and that church officials never said otherwise from the pulpit.

Factually, I think it is correct.  Not only is Huntsman wrong on the law, I think he's wrong on the facts, too.

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New arguments are surfacing in appeals briefs in the case as lawyers ready for a potential face-to-face hearing.

Not sure what this means.  "New arguments" not raised in the court below are typically waived on appeal.

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As far as the church’s Los Angeles-based attorneys are concerned, “there has never been a ‘fraud’ case like this one.” Huntsman isn’t alleging the church did anything illegal with its donations, and he also doesn’t state he was damaged.

These are some solid contextual and equitable arguments. Huntsman is not alleging that the Church "did anything illegal," but rather that the Church manages its funds in ways that include investments.  I think Huntsman is objecting to the investments, and so is using a claim of fraud as a pretext.  The Church's attorneys are pointing out that the Church's use of the funds was lawful.

Also, "damages" is a required element of a fraud claim.  I suppose Huntsman could argue that he was "damaged" in a retroactive, "but for," "had I known how the Church was spending donations I would not have donated" way.  But this reasoning comes across as specious, as it would create grounds for pretty much anyone to claw back donations to any charitable organization.  

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Even if his claims are true, they argue, “it would mean only that some small portion of his ‘tithing’ was invested for future religious purposes rather than being immediately used for missionary work, religious education, or some other aspect of the church’s mission.”

Charities invest their financial reserves all the time to bolster their long-term missions, they write. “There is nothing wrong with a church investing its savings to increase the value of its assets for future religious or charitable works” — as it says it did with City Creek. But that is “very different,” according to the church’s legal arguments, from what Huntsman has alleged.

This is also a very good point.  Huntsman's lawsuit is long on bombast and short on legal and logical coherence.  The idea that a charitable organization is prohibited from investing a portion of donated funds is . . . bizarre.  It would be a very poor steward of such funds who did not do this.

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“This case is not really about how the church uses its money,” they write. “It’s about a loss of personal faith.”

Yep.  And the anger and desire for "payback" that can sometimes accompany such a loss.  I think that Huntsman just happens to have money to burn on this litigation, whereas John or Jane Everyman who has experienced such a loss of faith (and wants to extract a pound of flesh from the church) does not, and must instead settle for less expensive means.  Some can thread that needle by sensationalizing their departure from the Church.  Jeremy Runnels, John Dehlin, Kate Kelly, Sam Young, Bill Reel, Natasha Helfer, and so on.  These folks have all received leg-ups, to varying degrees, from pliant and credulous media outlets.

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Huntsman, they contend, “is a religious dissident.” Because the U.S. Constitution prevents him from legal action pleading that church doctrine is false, he has sought to create a secular dispute “by latching on to statements about how the church invested in the City Creek project.”

Ouch.  That is a painful, yet astute and probably necessary, characterization of what Huntsman is doing.  His lawsuit is really pretextual.  His lawyers know that a head-on lawsuit over "doctrine" would be kicked to the curb, so they looked for a way to secularize Huntsman's religious beef with the Church.  I don't think it is going to work (it certainly has not so far).

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The 51-year-old resident of Coronado Island has declined to comment throughout the case. But attorneys for Huntsman, who resigned his church membership in 2020, say the Utah-based faith “repeatedly represented to Mr. Huntsman, in unequivocal terms, that tithing funds would absolutely not be used to develop the City Creek mall.”

More to the point, it appears that tithing funds weren't "used to develop the City Creek mall."

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His lawyers state that financial documents submitted by the church for Wilson’s review do not prove that only earnings on invested tithing funds were used on City Creek.

Many of those documents are heavily redacted for the public, and the two sides also are locked in a separate dispute over Huntsman’s attempt to make some of them public. The church considers them “extremely sensitive” and accuses Huntsman of wanting to “promote public scandal” by seeking to have them unsealed.

This, in my view, further corroborates my assessment of why Huntsman is filing suit.  As I speculated earlier: "I think Huntsman filed suit as part of a vendetta.  Payback.  As a way of making the Church look bad."

Trying to get redacted documents publicized does not help his legal case, but it does further a personal vendetta, a desire to injure and embarrass.

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The church argues that Huntsman never referred to specific alleged misrepresentations by church leaders about the use of tithing for Beneficial Life, the way he did regarding the shopping center. So the judge was correct, the church states, to reject that claim.

This is likely going to be accepted by the court.  If he did not raise Beneficial Life as a basis for his complaint, he can't raise it now on appeal.

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The two sides are also clashing over whether Huntsman has proved the basic elements of fraud, including the notion he relied on false statements from the church when he made his contributions.

Statements about City Creek funding, including a 2003 General Conference speech by Hinckley — in which the faith’s top leader said money for City Creek had come from “commercial entities owned by the church” and the “earnings of invested reserve funds” — “did not cause Huntsman to give or stop giving tithes,” church attorneys write. Huntsman began paying tithing in 1993 when he returned from a Latter-day Saint mission, a decade before Hinckley’s statement. He stopped doing so 12 years after the church leader’s speech.

“In short, from 1993 to 2015, Huntsman gave tithes because he believed God wanted him to,” they write, “and he stopped giving when he no longer believed in the church’s teachings.”

If Hunstman started paying tithes in 1993, he cannot claim to have been relying on statements made by Pres. Hinckley in 2003 (reliance is an essential component of a fraud claim).  And if he stopped tithing in 2015, 12 years after the 2003 statement from Pres. Hinckley, then it becomes really hard to argue that his 2003-2015 tithes were made in "reliance" on the 2003 statement.

Fraud requires, among other things, a "false" statement of fact (which Huntsman has, I think, failed to establish), an intention by the speaker to deceive (called "scienter"), and "reasonable reliance" from the other person.  Here, Huntsman cannot, I think, establish that he "relied" on the 2003 statement when decided to pay tithing.

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Huntsman’s lawyers counter the church is mischaracterizing the court record and that he relied on several misrepresentations from leaders in continuing to tithe. When he stopped around 2015, it was because he was disillusioned with church doctrines, “including its support of polygamy and its open disdain for members of the LGBTQ community.”

Yeesh.  They actually admitted this?  That has doctrinal disagreements with the Church?

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Huntsman sought the return of past tithing only when he learned in 2019 of the whistleblower’s contentions, according to his attorneys, who say he has also pressed a separate legal argument that the church “fraudulently concealed” their use of tithing.

Fraudulent concealment is a different legal theory from regular fraud.  And it seems more fitting here.  However, I still don't think it works.

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Hovering over the entire case is the question of the First Amendment and whether its protections of religion bar some of Huntsman’s legal arguments. Tithing, the church argues, is a religious doctrine and pursuing some of Huntsman’s claims would run afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

“The mysteries of religious faith,” they contend, “cannot be adjudicated in secular courts.”

The federal courts, even the ones in California, are generally not too keen on wading into religious disputes.  And when Huntsman admits that he is "disillusioned with church doctrines, 'including its support of polygamy and its open disdain for members of the LGBTQ community,'" he validates that concern.

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Huntsman’s lawyers say his assertions center on “the use and misappropriation of specific church tithing funds, as opposed to the religious teachings underpinning the practice of tithing or any other dogma.”

The "religious teachings" that Huntsman admits he is "disillusioned" about?

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“In other words,” they write, “this is a case about fraud, not faith, and implicates no religious principles or tenets of Mormonism.”

I think this case is is "about fraud," but that this is a pretext because a "case about ... faith" would be kicked out immediately.

Huntsman wants his pound of flesh.  He wants to embarrass and injure the Church.  And by filing this suit and appealing the adverse result, and by getting publicity about that in a newspaper owned and controlled by his brother, he is succeeding to some extent.

Thanks,

-Smac

[ksfisher]

7 minutes ago, smac97 said:

in a newspaper owned and controlled by his brother

Does anyone think the Tribune would still be in business if it didn't constantly criticize the church?

[InCognitus]

10 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Huntsman wants his pound of flesh.  He wants to embarrass and injure the Church.  And by filing this suit and appealing the adverse result, and by getting publicity about that in a newspaper owned and controlled by his brother, he is succeeding to some extent.

I think he's just making himself look foolish.  (That's my opinion).  He's spending an awful lot of money on a personal vendetta. 

[blackstrap]

39 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

He's spending an awful lot of money on a personal vendetta. 

Critics might say that money could have been better used to help the poor . 😒

[smac97]

1 hour ago, blackstrap said:

Critics might say that money could have been better used to help the poor . 😒

Oh, pish.  Who are you to second-guess how a private party spends its money?  

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

1 hour ago, ksfisher said:

Does anyone think the Tribune would still be in business if it didn't constantly criticize the church?

I am grateful that the Tribune is here.  The Church needs a gadfly.  And their coverage is often pretty fair-minded and even-handed. 

But also often not.  To wit, see this opinion piece published today: Gregory A. Clark: Religious bigotry covered with polite-speak is still bigotry / Bigotry is alive and well and supported by all the Abrahamic sects.  It is a pretty vicious screed.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[Scott Lloyd]

11 hours ago, smac97 said:

The phrase came to mind when I came across this article in the Tribune: Is James Huntsman a ‘religious dissident’ or a victim of fraud by the LDS Church?

The Tribune’s paywall hinders me from clicking on this link and reading the story fully, and I refuse to buy a subscription just to do so. Nevertheless, I will comment on the matter of pot stirring. 
 

When covering a high-profile court case, it is standard practice for a newspaper to provide ongoing accounts as it follows the case through its various stages of adjudication, including the appeals process. In doing so, it is not unusual — or particularly inappropriate — for said newspaper to publish advance stories about upcoming hearings in the case. It can be argued that doing so serves the purpose of educating readers — especially those with keen interest in the case — by providing them with context that might easily have been forgotten or missed during what can be a long and tortuous legal process. 
 

By way of comparison, there was a high-profile and gruesome murder case in Ogden, Utah, in the 1970s that became known commonly as “the Hi-Fi Shop murders” based on the name of the store where the crime occurred.

After I went to work for the Ogden Standard-Examiner in 1982, I covered the judicial system. I thus became one in a string of writers at the newspaper who had written about the Hi-Fi Shop case over the years. 
 

The last story I wrote for the Standard-Examiner before quitting to go to work for the Deseret News in 1985 was an advance about an upcoming, important hearing before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver regarding the Hi-Fi Shop case. In the story, I summarized as best I could the elements of the court case, which had already been going on for many years. 
 

I suppose someone might have complained that I was engaging in pot stirring. I would have countered that I was giving due diligence as a reporter to provide the public with a contextual understanding of what was about to transpire and what was at stake with the pending court hearing in Denver. 
 

In making the above comments, I don’t posture myself as a friend of the Tribune. But from experience, I can apply an understanding of standard journalistic procedure in ongoing coverage of prominent court cases. 
 

Incidentally, I don’t think Huntsman owns the Tribune anymore. I think he might have divested a few years ago when the Trib became a non-profit, tax-exempt entity (it had been a money-losing enterprise for him). I think he still has some potential influence as a member of the newspaper’s governing board, but he has always maintained a hands-off public posture in terms of controlling the newspaper’s content and coverage. 

Edited September 30, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[smac97]

10 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

The Tribune’s paywall hinders me from clicking on this link and reading the story fully, and I refuse to buy a subscription just to do so. Nevertheless, I will comment on the matter of pot stirring. 
 

When covering a high-profile court case, it is standard practice for a newspaper to provide ongoing accounts as it follows the case through its various stages of adjudication, including the appeals process. In doing so, it is not unusual — or particularly inappropriate — for said newspaper to publish advance stories about upcoming hearings in the case. It can be argued that doing so serves the purpose of educating readers — especially those with keen interest in the case — by providing them with context that might easily have been forgotten or missed during what can be a long and tortuous legal process. 
 

By way of comparison, there was a high-profile and gruesome murder case in Ogden, Utah, in the 1970s that became known commonly as “the Hi-Fi Shop murders” based on the name of the store where the crime occurred.

After I went to work for the Ogden Standard-Examiner in 1982, I covered the judicial system. I thus became one in a string of writers at the newspaper who had written about the Hi-Fi Shop case over the years. 
 

The last story I wrote for the Standard-Examiner before quitting to go to work for the Deseret News in 1985 was an advance about an upcoming, important hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver regarding Hi-Fi Shop case. In the story, I summarized as best I could the elements of the court case, which had already been going on for many years. 
 

I suppose someone might have complained that I was engaging in pot stirring. I would have countered that I was giving due diligence as a reporter to provide the public with a contextual understanding of what was about to transpire and what was at stake with the pending court hearing in Denver. 
 

In making the above comments, I don’t posture myself as a friend of the Tribune. But from experience, I can apply an understanding of standard journalistic procedure in ongoing coverage of prominent court cases. 
 

Incidentally, I don’t think Huntsman owns the Tribune anymore. I think he might have divested a few years ago when the Trib became a non-profit, tax-exempt entity (it had been a money-losing enterprise for him). I think he still has some potential influence as a member of the newspaper’s governing board, but he has always maintained a hands-off public posture in terms of controlling the newspaper’s content and coverage. 

Good input.  Thank you.

Also, the Wikipedia article on the Tribune doesn't reference Huntsman's divestment.  Also, per the Tribune's "About Us" page, Paul Huntsman is still the owner.  Just FYI.

Thank you,

-Smac

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, smac97 said:

Good input.  Thank you.

Also, the Wikipedia article on the Tribune doesn't reference Huntsman's divestment.  Also, per the Tribune's "About Us" page, Paul Huntsman is still the owner.  Just FYI.

Thank you,

-Smac

Wikipedia entries can be quite outdated. I’ve noticed that from time to time as I’ve read the Wikipedia entry on the Deseret News. 
 

This paragraph from the “About Us” page, though written ambiguously, comports with my understanding about the Tribune’s ownership structure:

“Who will own The Tribune now?

“Since 2016, Paul Huntsman has been owner and publisher of The Tribune. Going forward, a nonprofit board of directors will govern The Tribune.”

I believe this was written at the time the newspaper took on non-profit status, and I thus take it to mean that while Huntsman had been owner and publisher up to that time, that this would no longer be the case “going forward.”

But maybe my memory is wrong; that has happened before. It IS clear in my mind that Huntsman knew a change had to be made because he couldn’t keep hemorrhaging his own funds trying to prop up the Trib as a failing commercial enterprise. 
 

Added later: This selection from a web page about 501 (c) (3) corporations might shed some light on the question of whether Huntsman (or any other individual)  actually owns the Salt Lake Tribune:

“The most popular business entity for nonprofits is the nonprofit corporation, making up well over 90% of all tax-exempt organizations.  This type of corporation is very different from the above-mentioned for-profit corporation.  A nonprofit corporation has no owners (shareholders) whatsoever.  Nonprofit corporations do not declare shares of stock when established.  In fact, some states refer to nonprofit corporations as non-stock corporations.

“A nonprofit corporation is formed to carry out a non-commercial purpose, whether that be religious, educational, charitable, scientific or other qualifying purpose.  It is prohibited from acting in a manner that results in private inurement (profit) to individuals.”

https://www.501c3.org/who-really-owns-a-nonprofit/

Edited September 29, 2022 by Scott Lloyd

[helix]

The tried and true formula:

Problem - You want to buy ad space on a newspaper's front page to complain about a church.  But it costs too much.

Solution - File a frivolous lawsuit against that church and contact that newspaper to run several stories in your behalf. 

The SL Trib needs page reader views.  James Huntsman wants to give black eyes.  It's a mutually parasitic relationship. 

The prior judge ruled against James because his entire argument rested on one quote from Hinckley.  James dishonestly provided only half the quote.  The judge quoted it in full and pointed out it completely undercuts the lawsuit.  Now James is appealing and he successfully gets more free SL Trib advertising space.  This judge will likewise toss the case.   This is not a case worthy of any media attention whatsoever.  All it serves is to encourage people to hate the church more and to file more frivolous lawsuits to gunk up the courts.

 

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by helix

[JAHS]

5 hours ago, ksfisher said:

Does anyone think the Tribune would still be in business if it didn't constantly criticize the church?

Ever since they started requiring paid online subscriptions I think they are getting fewer readers.

[Scott Lloyd]

3 hours ago, JAHS said:

Ever since they started requiring paid online subscriptions I think they are getting fewer readers.

I think they might tell you that the paywall, along with the restructuring as a non-profit, is what has kept the newspaper afloat for the past four years or so. They can rely on subscriptions and rich donors to prop them up. Non-paying online readers can’t pay the bills for an entity like the Tribune.