A. S. Haley–Translating the Appellate Decision in the San Joaquin Case

What does this decision signify for the other nine cases pending in various local courts in the Diocese of San Joaquin? (These are the ones filed, since the Fresno trial court’s decision in this case, by Bishop Lamb and the Episcopal Diocese against the individual incorporated parishes within the Anglican Diocese.) It is probably too early too tell. More skirmishes will have to occur, and the facts become clearer, before that question may be definitively answered. For each of the parishes in question did not leave the Diocese to which they have always belonged; instead, the Diocese in question left the Church to which it belonged, and the parishes came along with the Diocese. Now that the Court of Appeal has, in effect, ruled that state courts cannot inquire into the ecclesiastical legalities of that departure (which would require them at the same time to decide who is the proper Bishop of San Joaquin), it would appear that the local courts might be equally well precluded from inquiring whether the parishes correctly followed the Diocese.

Once again, if we take the present opinion as our guide, it would seem to say that the ownership of the individual parishes’ property will have to be decided based on neutral principles of property law — the deeds and the parish articles will be examined, as well as the diocesan and the national constitution and canons. And here is where the parishes have some breathing room. For the Dennis Canon was never adopted as such in the Diocese of San Joaquin, from the time it was enacted at the national level in 1979 until the date the Diocese withdrew from the national Church in December 2007. When it was admitted as a Diocese in 1961, San Joaquin acceded only to ECUSA’s Constitution, and said nothing about acceding to its canons; its diocesan Constitution still reads the same way today, under Bishop Lamb. Indeed, the Diocese enacted in 2005 a type of anti-Dennis Canon, which negated any trust interest in diocesan or parish property for the benefit of the national Church:

No ownership or proprietary interest in any real or personal property in which title and/or ownership is held by the Diocese of San Joaquin, its churches, congregations, or institutions, shall be imputed to any party other than the Bishop as Corporation Sole (including a trust, express or implied) without the express written consent of the Bishop and the Standing Committee of the Diocese.

Given these circumstances, therefore, the most important language in the Court’s opinion may well be in its final three sentences, directed to the trial court (emphasis added):

Other neutral principles of civil law may be relevant; and the governing documents of the diocese and the national church, to the extent those documents may establish trust relationships and limit or expand corporate powers. (See Episcopal Church Cases, supra, 45 Cal.4th at p. 485.) Thus, the trial court may be required to determine whether properties claimed by both plaintiffs and defendants were actually transferred by their legal owners under California law, and whether otherwise-valid transfers violated the provisions of a valid express or implied trust imposed on the property. But we emphasize that in resolution of, for example, trust issues, the court is required to determine the terms of the trust based on the applicable documents and the civil law, not on the basis of religious doctrine. (See Jones v. Wolf, supra, 443 U.S. at p. 604.)

Read it carefully and read it all.