Religion News Service
PORTLAND, OREGON, December 8, 2005: Ore. (HPI note: Hindu temples in the US should take note of this case, as the precedent set here could impact future law suits against religious organizations.)
After hearing more than three hours of sometimes heated debate, a U.S. bankruptcy judge will decide who owns the pews that Catholics in Western Oregon sit in each Sunday. The issue argued before Judge Elizabeth Perris on Tuesday (Dec. 6) is whether parish property belongs to individual parishes or to the Archdiocese of Portland, which encompasses 124 parishes, three high schools and about 400,000 parishioners. The ruling will be closely watched nationally for the precedent it could establish for all religions regarding church property disputes. In Portland, the issue is whether the parishes’ estimated US$500 million in real estate, cash and investments is available to pay millions of dollars in child sexual-abuse claims. Perris has set no timetable, although she is expected to rule within the next several weeks. It’s also possible that she will skip a ruling and order a trial instead. A trial would enable her to consider factual evidence, in addition to the purely legal arguments that lawyers have presented so far. Sexual-abuse plaintiffs first posed the property ownership question to Perris in August 2004. That was one month after the Archdiocese of Portland became the nation’s first Roman Catholic diocese to file for Chapter 11 protection in the wake of multimillion-dollar sex-abuse lawsuits. The bankruptcy came the same day that the archdiocese was scheduled to go to trial in a $135 million sex-abuse lawsuit involving the late Rev. Maurice Grammond. The archdiocese had already made settlements totaling $53 million for more than 130 previous claims. The bankruptcy froze dozens more claims seeking hundreds of millions more in damages. Tuesday’s hearing covered ground from obscure real estate law to broad constitutional questions of religious freedom.