What would you say of a trustee who spent $6.8 million of his trust fund’s money to recover just $1 million? Is that a healthy example of how a fiduciary should carry out his duties?
You probably already guessed before I tell you: the trustee in question is the Episcopal Church (USA); the trust fund is ECUSA’s endowment (some $366 million as of the end of 2016); the $6.8 million was loaned by ECUSA’s Executive Council to the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin to keep it propped up during its ten-year lawsuit to “recover church properties”; and the $1 million is all that the Diocese of San Joaquin is now able to repay after having been handed more than 25 properties by the crazy California courts.
And actually, those figures are not even half of the San Joaquin iceberg. For as I carefully estimated from all sources and after reviewing ECUSA’s budget for the current triennium, ECUSA’s litigation machine has spent a good $40 million on just legal expenses in the first six triennia of this century (it began its career of suing parishes and dioceses in 2000). Because the two longest-lasting cases to date have been in California, it would be fair to allocate, say, $8 million of that total to the legal expenses of ECUSA in connection with the San Joaquin lawsuit (recounted in considerable detail in these pages, since yours truly was a participant)….