“…as I was working on the immediately preceding post about the new federal case in South Carolina, my office forwarded the tentative ruling from the Fresno Superior Court on the motion for summary judgment which ECUSA and Bishop Lamb (now Bishop Talton) brought against Bishop John-David Schofield to recover all of the property of his Anglican Diocese.
The tentative ruling was to deny the motion — meaning that the case will have to go to trial before it can be finally decided. In short the court held that the plaintiffs failed to meet their burden on summary judgment: they failed to show, in effect, that a Diocese of the Church is prohibited from leaving it as a matter of law.
ECUSA had tried all of its usual “hierarchical” arguments, but the Court indicates it is not inclined to buy them…”