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?<\/p>\n
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\u00a0all that the Diocese of San Joaquin is now able to repay<\/a>\u00a0after having been handed more than 25 properties by the crazy California courts.<\/p>\n And actually, those figures are not even half of the San Joaquin iceberg. For as I carefully estimated\u00a0from all sources and after reviewing ECUSA’s budget for the current triennium<\/a>, 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\u00a0in considerable detail in these pages<\/a>, since yours truly was a participant)….<\/p>\n