NATIONAL CHURCH WILL SPEND OVER $1 MILLION IN LAWSUITS IN 2007
By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
12/11/2007
The National Church headquarters of The Episcopal Church is on a legal spending binge as dioceses and parishes exit the denomination.
Figures, VirtueOnline has received, reveal that prior to 2005 there did not appear to be any major expenditures on legal fees until after Mrs. Katharine Jefferts Schori, the new Presiding Bishop, took office.
Up until that time, former Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold appeared to have kept his attorney David Booth Beers seriously muzzled, but as soon as Mrs. Jefferts Schori took office that changed. She is the second woman (after Ellen Cooke) to break through the glass ceiling and, if the stories are true, wears pants with sterner stripes than Griswold.
In 2005 there was a line item for "Title IV investigations, trial and legal." The amount budgeted was $8333 a month, or $100,000 a year. The actual amount spent was $453,014 or $353,014 over budget.
In 2006, the same line item appeared with the same amount budgeted ($100,000/year) with the actual amount spent being $635,636 or $535,636 over budget.
In other words, for the years 2005 and 2006, some $200,000 was budgeted for "Title IV investigations, trial and legal." In point of fact, nearly $900,000 was actually spent. In addition, in 2006, some $430,648 was listed as being spent on legal fees.
There was no such line item for "Legal Assistance to Dioceses" in 2005 and it didn't appear until Oct. 2006 (Just after Jefferts Schori's election as Presiding Bishop).
In Oct. 2006, expenses for that item were $204,988. In Nov 2006, expenses for that item were $0 In Dec. 2006, expenses for that item were $238,531
Combined, the total spent on legal fees was $443,519 (almost half a million dollars in three months). At $510/hour, Beers' fee, ($600 less a 14% discount for the church) that's 870 hours worth of work for his law firm. With 64 actual work days during the period Oct. - Dec. that works out to 14 legal man hours per day, every day spent on Episcopal business (at $510/hour). One can only conclude that either Beers worked 14 hours a day, he had lots of people working on the case(s), or someone was getting "gouged."
In 2007, "Title IV, investigations, trials and legal," was still listed but the budgeted amount had been increased from $8,333.00 a month to $25,000 per month, a 300% increase!
In addition, listed under the Title IV item was another line item titled, "Property Protection for Missions - Legal costs." It is budgeted for $41,667 a month, or $500,000 for the fiscal year 2007.
If the two line items are for different operations, $300,000 has been budgeted for "Title VI, investigations, trials and legal." This is a 300% increase over last year alone.
If the new line item "Property Protection for Missions - Legal costs" is intended to fund legal costs for lawsuits, etc., this would mean that the TEC has budgeted a total of nearly $800,000 for that purpose.
In 2007, the item name was changed to "Property Protection for Mission - Legal expenses." The following charges were recorded:
2007 YTD (Oct. 2007) $470,521 2006 (total) $443,519 Total from Oct. 2006 - Oct. 2007 was $914,040 or an average of $76,170 dollars a month average on legal costs.
Monies spent on line item: "Title VI, investigations, trial and legal" is budgeted for another $25,000 a month. Together, both items are budgeted for a total of $76,000 a month.
By year's end that figure could swell to well over $1 million with major expenditures just in their infancy in Virginia.
Furthermore, this figure does not include additional costs TEC will incur from assuming mortgages from properties they might win.
When asked in pre-deposition hearings in the Virginia lawsuit case how much he and his law firm were getting in legal fees for defending the Episcopal Church, David Booth Beers refused to answer saying the matter was "private."
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GJ - Interested Lutherans will find the same opacity in the synodical budgets about expenditures for lawsuits.
