Sacramento-area church wins summary judgment in property ownership lawsuit against presbytery
By Patrick Jean, Staff Writer The Layman Online, April 21, 2008
One down, one to go. That’s the feeling after a victory in court for one of two large churches in Sacramento Presbytery that are seeking to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) with their properties for the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
About the parties
Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church was chartered in 1952, but has roots dating back to 1903. It is Sacramento Presbytery’s largest church, with 2,286 members.
First Presbyterian Church in Roseville was founded in 1873. It is Sacramento Presbytery’s third-largest church, with 1,143 members.
Sacramento Presbytery has 43 congregations totaling more than 15,000 members.
The Synod of the Pacific comprises five presbyteries (Cascades, Redwoods, San Francisco, San Joaquin and San Jose) and two mission units (Sierra Mission Partnership, consisting of the Nevada, Sacramento and Stockton presbyteries; and Snake River Mission Area, consisting of the Boise, Eastern Oregon and Kendall presbyteries). Its central office is in Petaluma, Calif.
Westminster Presbyterian Church was founded in 1856. It has 478 members, according to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Web site. A judge ruled April 8 in favor of the motion for a summary judgment filed six months earlier by First Presbyterian Church in Roseville, Calif., which had been seeking quiet title to its property, as well as declaratory and injunctive relief, since March 2007. She also ruled against a competing motion for a summary judgment filed by the presbytery.
The rulings should have resolved the church’s 13-month-old complaint. But on April 15, the same judge – Placer County Superior Court Commissioner Margaret E. Wells – heard arguments for and against a request by the Synod of the Pacific to become a respondent in the civil actions by the Roseville church and Fair Oaks Presbyterian Church of Fair Oaks, Calif., which has its own 13-month-old complaint against the presbytery.
Wells tentatively ruled April 14 in favor of the synod, said the Roseville church’s senior pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jim Barstow. But he said the atmosphere seemed different at the April 15 hearing, which he attended.
Wells asked the synod’s lawyers several times whether the synod’s interest in the case was any different from that of the presbytery, and she was told no each time, Barstow said. She then asked whether the issues were different and was told no, “but our point of view is,” Barstow said. “And then she said, ‘How many times am I going to have to hear this issue?’
“One of their lawyers said, ‘We’re not bringing any different issues. We just want our day in court.’ Who knows what she’ll do with that?” Barstow said.
Wells did not indicate when she would issue her final written ruling on the synod’s request. It took 10 weeks from when she heard arguments for and against the Roseville church and Sacramento Presbytery’s competing motions for summary judgment to when she issued her final written ruling on those, Barstow said.
“If she doesn’t allow the synod to intervene, we’re done unless the presbytery appeals,” he said. “If she allows the synod, then we’ve answered one question in terms of the property: We know the presbytery doesn’t own it. The question now is, ‘Could the synod?’ And again, we would have to go to court to find out, ‘Could the synod own the property?’ ”
‘What’s next? The mother ship comes in?’
The synod claims its hand was forced by a complaint that Westminster Presbyterian Church in Sacramento, Calif., filed against Sacramento Presbytery. The complaint, among other things, asks that presbytery commissioners’ decision in December 2007 to dismiss the Roseville and Fair Oaks congregations with their properties from the PCUSA be declared “irregular and revoked.”
Links to previous stories
Two large Sacramento Presbytery churches request dismissal to EPC
Two churches leaving with properties, presbytery to get cash gifts; ownership lawsuits to be settled
Complaint to synod delays two large churches from leaving with their properties for the EPC The synod has granted Westminster Church’s request for a stay until its Permanent Judicial Commission addresses the complaint. The PJC has not said when it will do so.
“The synod claims that because of the Westminster remedial action, and because the synod has issued a stay regarding the presbytery’s authority to dismiss the two churches, that the synod is now the party with the authority to deal with the property question with respect to the two churches,” said David W. Tyra, a Sacramento attorney representing the Roseville and Fair Oaks churches. “We rather vigorously disagree with that position. … The question of real property ownership, entitlement to real property, is strictly a secular matter. And under the Book of Order, the authority and jurisdiction to impact property questions is given to the presbytery.”
“Our argument to the judge was, ‘Just simply because the argument is before the synod court doesn’t give them an interest in the property,’ ” Barstow said. “The same as it would be that, ‘Now that we are in a Placer County court, this particular court and judge doesn’t have an interest in our property.’ We tried to show her that it doesn’t work that way in the court system, then it shouldn’t work that way in the church system, so basically ignore that as an argument for why they should intervene. What it really comes down to: Whether she sees that the synod has anything different as a disputed owner of our property to bring into the fight.”
And the synod may not be the last opponent trying to get into the ring. Wells “asked the question, ‘So what’s next? The mother ship comes in?’ ” Barstow said. “We all laughed, but they said, ‘Yeah, I mean, the General Assembly could come in.’ Because the synod is interpreting that it can defend the trust clause, and the General Assembly itself can defend the trust clause.”
‘Now we’ve got to fight the synod’
Tyra and Barstow were both pleased with the summary judgment ruling April 8.
“Obviously, both the pastoral and lay leadership at the church is very gratified by this decision,” said Tyra, who is a member of the Roseville church. “It’s been their position (and) our position all along that the church owned its property, that that ownership was not subject to a trust, and that even if it was, that it was a trust which, under California law, could be revoked.
“If you saw from the decision of the court, under California law, trusts are presumptively revocable unless the trust instrument makes them expressly irrevocable,” he said. “And in the plain language, as we argued to the court, the plain language of the trust provision in the Book of Order does not use the term ‘irrevocable’ or speak in any way about irrevocability of the purported trust interest. And Roseville (stated) in several expressions, both in amended articles of incorporation, amended by-laws and in an express corporate resolution, that its session adopted clearly and unequivocally revoked any alleged trust interest in its property. And the court found that that was definitive, th
at that expression of revocation under California law meant that the presbytery and the denomination as a whole had no trust interest that it could enforce against Roseville’s property.”
The ruling was exactly what they sought – a summary adjudication of the church’s claims for declaratory relief and a quiet title in the name of the church corporation, Tyra said. But a third claim, seeking injunctive relief as a stop-gap measure against aggressive action by the presbytery such as forming an administrative commission, was never needed “to the Sacramento Presbytery’s great credit,” he said. “The Sacramento Presbytery never made any effort to go after the pastors or the session of either of the two churches. So there was no need at this point to ask the court to rule upon the injunctive relief claim.”
“It’s great to know that the presbytery doesn’t own our property,” Barstow said. “It’s not precedent for the state of California, but it does speak pretty clearly that a local Superior Court is ruling on the neutral principles. And the presbytery did not disagree with the use of neutral principles, which was, we thought, significant.”
Still, Barstow knows it’s not over. “I was thrilled until Monday – I mean, absolutely thrilled until she came back and said that she was tentatively ruling to allow the synod to intervene,” he said. “So I think it felt like, ‘OK, well, we won the presbytery. Now we got to fight the synod.’ And the pockets get deeper, and the legal weight thrown at us gets bigger. So it certainly tempered our response.”
Barstow was to announce the ruling, and the remaining legal fight ahead, to his congregation Sunday. When interviewed by The Layman Online, he was still working on what he was going to tell them.
“We’ve not celebrated,” he said. “We’ve not said, ‘It’s over.’ We are cautious at this point because it’s been such a roller coaster. … We won a big fight, but who knows what the synod will throw into it if she allows them to come in?
“… We were going from a full-out celebration – ‘We’ve won, hallelujah, we can leave whenever we want’ – to saying, ‘We won one battle, a significant battle. We’re still waiting to hear on another front whether or not we’ve got one more battle to go.’ It’s not the full-out victory we hoped to announce last week that we thought we had.”
Second motion, possible appeal ahead
There’s also the matter of Fair Oaks Church’s motion for a summary judgment.
Wells previously agreed to consolidate the Roseville and Fair Oaks cases, but because the summary judgment processes were set up before that decision, the court was required to hear them separately, Barstow said.
Wells will hear Fair Oaks’ motion May 20. Because her Roseville and Fair Oaks decisions will be hinged together in trial, Barstow thinks her Fair Oaks ruling is likely to duplicate her Roseville ruling.
The consolidated cases also mean that if the synod is allowed to intervene in the Roseville case, it would be allowed into the Fair Oaks case. “What would happen is that we would then have another summary judgment for the synod, but most likely Fair Oaks’ summary judgment would have both synod and presbytery involved,” Barstow said.
Then there’s the matter of whether Sacramento Presbytery will appeal the Roseville ruling. Under California’s “one final judgment” rule, the presbytery would not file an appeal until a written ruling is issued in the Fair Oaks case, Tyra said.
“Once that matter has been disposed of, if in fact the court rules favorably on the motion, then a final judgment would issue in the case,” he said. “And it would be from that that the presbytery would appeal if it so chooses.”
Sacramento Presbytery’s only response so far is a two-sentence statement on its Web site that reads, “The final ruling in the civil case of First Presbyterian Church, Roseville (FPC) vs. the Presbytery of Sacramento has been handed down. The corporate officers are currently in the process of discernment for proceeding with an appeal.” Beneath the statement is a link to a copy of the nine-page ruling.
Synod doesn’t ‘have a stick left’
Finally, there’s the matter of Westminster Church’s complaint against Sacramento Presbytery. While the Roseville and Fair Oaks churches aren’t parties to the complaint, the case is still relevant to Barstow.
“Even if the synod said, ‘No, you can’t dismiss them with property,’ the courts have already ruled that it’s ours,” he said. “So, to be crass about it, they don’t have a stick left to threaten us with. The property is legally ours. They can say it’s theirs, but it’s not legally theirs.
“So the synod case, for our perspective, would not be whether or not the presbytery could dismiss us with property,” Barstow said. “The question for us will be whether or not we could keep two of our pastors.”
Sacramento Presbytery let two Roseville Church pastors remain in the PCUSA, but labor outside of the denomination’s jurisdiction, he said. “Their (Westminster’s) feeling was that these pastors couldn’t stay here at FPC and continue to serve here while remaining in the PCUSA.”
The complaint before the synod Permanent Judicial Commission also hinges on whether the presbytery “can dismiss us with property without charging millions of dollars,” Barstow said. Under an agreement with the presbytery – a pact now held up by Westminster Church’s complaint – the Roseville and Fair Oaks would have made “irrevocable gifts” of cash to the presbytery in exchange for being dismissed from the PCUSA with their properties. Roseville Church would have paid $160,000 by Jan. 31, 2015, while Fair Oaks Church would have paid either $250,000 by Jan. 31, 2017, or a “discounted early payment option” totaling $180,000 by June 30, 2008.
“We have no plans beyond getting through the civil court,” Barstow said. “Once we’re through them faithfully, an appeal (from the presbytery) is not something that we could consider as an issue. We assume they’re going to appeal; that’s not a big deal. Once we get through the synod, then we will have to make some decisions as a church.”
While the synod’s Permanent Judicial Commission has not said when it will hear Westminster Church’s complaint, Barstow said he’s heard hints that it could be in May. “It’s been very, very tight-lipped,” he said. “As a church, we are very much out of the loop – not out of the loop; we’ve been cut off.
“… Now I understand that the charge is against the presbytery, not against the two churches,” Barstow said. “But you would think you would want some input from us.”
Despite the uncertainty, Barstow hasn’t lost his prayerful perspective – a perspective he shares with his congregation.
“At this point, what we have learned