Judge removes some allegations from lawsuit by Danny Masterson victims

Yesterday we told you about the hearing in Judge Upinder Kalra’s courtroom that featured a pretty entertaining argument over Scientology ‘Fair Game,’ and ended with Judge Kalra saying that he was going to take Scientology’s request to strike material from the Bixler lawsuit under advisement.

We just noticed that late in the afternoon, Judge Kalra did issue his ruling and did strike some paragraphs from the Bixler lawsuit, as well as some prayers for relief.

Scientology was asking that he remove whole sections of the lawsuit that referred to when the Jane Doe victims were Scientologists, and also that referred to Scientology’s practice of ‘Fair Game.’ He didn’t do that, but he did remove some specific language that sought punitive and treble damages. Here are the paragraphs that he removed…

Paragraphs 273, 279, 285, 293, which all say the same thing, and “the portions of Paragraphs 274, 280, 286, 294, 297, that seek exemplary or punitive damages.” Here are paragraphs 273 and 274 (which reflect the other pairs as well)…

273. These acts constituted malicious conduct which was carried on by said Defendants with willful and conscious disregard for Plaintiffs' rights with the intention of willfully concealing information that could have prevented sexual assaults against Plaintiffs Chrissie Bixler, Marie Riales, Jane Doe #1, Jane Doe #2, or others yet unknown, as well as harassing and silencing the Plaintiffs. The conduct at issue was and continues to be despicable and has and continues to subject Plaintiffs to a cruel and unjust hardship and justifies an award of exemplary and punitive damages. Accordingly, punitive damages should be awarded against Defendants to punish them and deter them and other such persons from committing such wrongful and malicious acts in the future.

274. Wherefore, Plaintiffs pray for judgment against Defendants in the form of all general and special damages in a sum to be proven at trial, and exemplary and punitive damages as allowed by law and in a sum to be proven at trial.

Also, Judge Kalra removed these prayers for relief…

4. For punitive/exemplary damages according to proof and pursuant to Civil Code 1708.5(3)(b) and 1782(2);

5. For attorneys' fees and/or penalties pursuant to Civil Code 1708.5(3)(b) and 1782(2) and Civil Code 51.7, 51, and 52.4, and Code of Civil Procedure 1021.5;

6. For treble damages pursuant to California Penal Code 236.1 and California Civil Code 52.5;

Like we said, we just noticed that the judge made his ruling late yesterday afternoon, and we will be seeking help from our attorney sources to get some sense of how damaging they think the removal of these paragraphs from the lawsuit may be at this point in time.

UPDATE: We got a reaction from our attorney, Scott Pilutik, who has this to say about the changes Judge Kalra made to the lawsuit…

“It is damaging because the possible settlement range drops if punitive damages are taken off the menu. Scientology risks less by going to trial, so the number they'd be willing to settle for drops as well.“

Now, back to what we had planned to publish on this Thanksgiving morning…

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After leaving Scientology, what are you thankful for as we once again pass the Source!

It’s going to be a sunny day here in New York and here in the Underground Bunker we’re preparing a nice feast to celebrate Thanksgiving. Our foreign readers are no doubt familiar with the concept, and we like to invite everyone to join in.

As in, we’d like to hear from the ex-Scientologists in our audience about the things they are especially grateful for about leaving this controlling, totalitarian organization, and adapting once again to a non-Hubbard world.

So please let us know. We’d really like to hear how you’ve been doing.

And to help celebrate the occasion, we’re going to bring back one of our favorite Thanksgiving articles and once again, pass the Source!

…

In this 1960 lecture, “Create and Confront,” Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard (known as “Source” to Scientologists) tells a cold-blooded and factual account of where we all were some 20 to 40 thousand years ago. That is, we were all living in something called the Marcab Confederacy, headquartered on a planet orbiting the star Alkaid, which makes up the end of the Big Dipper’s handle!

You don’t remember it? Well, you will. At least if you get some Scientology auditing and start exploring your “whole track” of existence. You see, Scientology teaches that we are each immortal beings called “thetans” which are trillions of years old, but something called the “reactive mind” prevents us from remembering the countless previous lives we’ve led in various parts of the universe. Only L. Ron Hubbard’s counseling “technology” can help you remember who you were and where you’ve been. And as his counselors do that work, Hubbard says that people tend to recover certain memories over and over again.

“You’ll remember this sooner or later,” he says in this lecture, informing you that you were once part of a civilization so advanced, its medical doctors could replace just about any part of you that wore out until you were more or less a cyborg. In fact, they were so good at it, you had to make an effort to end your life.

And one way that people in the Marcab Confederacy did that was by racing cars on a race track booby-trapped with atomic bombs.

Hubbard remembers that he himself set speed records numerous times at the racetrack between 19 and 40 thousand years ago. And the funniest thing was that as he came back in successive lives, he wouldn’t realize that the records he was breaking were his own.

How’s that for a holiday knee-slapper! Anyway, we thought you could use a laugh before your relatives come over.

Just try to not to think too hard about the fact that people who actually heard this lecture still gave this organization their life savings and their children for safekeeping.

And before someone tries to claim that this is obsolete material that Scientologists no longer consider “scripture,” this lecture is still available for sale and something that Scientologists must take seriously as coming from Hubbard. So buckle your seat belts and prepare to take a spin around the track.

Here’s the transcript…

This business of running into the repeating identity is, of course, one of the more amusing phenomena. It’s a phenomenon of – that’s broke more hearts.

You keep trying to beat your own record, you know? I was mentioning this racetrack. It was about nineteen thousand years ago, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, forty thousand, In the Marcab Confederacy they had a race-track. And you were probably there. And you either have attended its races or had something to do with it, because you find it on most cases.

There’s one 1216 B.C, that shows up on any case – the Brotherhood of the Snake. 1216 B.C. It shows up on any case. Well, evidently, this other one is the same breed of cat. Almost anybody going through Marcab Confederacy sooner or later got mixed up with the racetracks.

They had turbine-generated cars that went about 275 miles an hour. They ran with a high whine. I notice they’ve just now invented the motor again. And they had tracks that were booby-trapped with atom bombs, and they had side bypasses. The tracks were mined, and the grandstands were leaded-paned. And the audience – it got to be kind of a “no audience.” You never could see the audience.

And oh, they had loose-sand sections and they had slick-oil asphalt and they had ice sections and loose gravel. Any kind of hazards you could think of. A mountain that you went up to the top of and fell off; you know?

And just – there were just more drivers killed. There was more blood pouring on that track, you see, all the time. I mean it was always goofed up. Ten, twelve thousand years, this was the favorite sport of the Marcab Confederacy, apparently.

If I’m restimulating you, OK. It’s not done intentionally. You’ll run into this sooner or later. You’ll wonder… You’ve probably often wondered what that needle-like pinging was in the back of your neck. Well, you probably wound up on the track some time or another as a driver or something of the sort.

Because nearly everybody, when he wanted to go to the devil, went to this track and became some part of its operating personnel, because it was the fastest ticket out in a society which absolutely insisted that you live!

The Marcab Confederacy’s medicine was so excellent that an individual just couldn’t die out of it. That was all. They would drag you back and fit an arm on, fit a leg on, fit a nose on, fit an eye in. They could give you artificial voices and artificial vision and artificial digestion and artificial everything else. The next thing you know, there wasn’t even an original part left including you, you see?

But there was always a road out, you know. You could… If there was too much peace, and you couldn’t go to war and get yourself killed, you could always get involved with something like the racetrack, you see? That was a sure ticket out.

Well, one of these things of a repeating identity – this happened to me over a course of quite a while: I’d be doing something constructive, and so forth, and I’d go play hooky. Or I’d get tired of that particular body setup. I’d go play hooky, wind up down at the racetrack driving a car, you know? Just hooky, you know? This is a rough thing to do on people because it was awful hard on their equipment.

And just go in there and be the Silver Streak, you know? The Silver Streak. You know, so many laps in so many seconds, you know? Track record! Track record. I’d get bored with it and do what I went down there to do anyhow. Work it out in such a way that it really wasn’t my fault for knocking myself off, you see? And take one of these cars and wham it into the grandstand or some such place, see, and that’d be the end of that body. And nobody could argue with it, see? Medical science could do nothing after that. Go pick up another body or a doll or something like that and go on about my business and carry out the mission.

But after a while this got rather bad because – come down the track and I’d be the Red Comet, see, driving around. Get to walking in and out of the lobby, and I’d see this picture here of the Silver Streak. And I’d look at this, “Track record so-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so. Aaah, who’s this guy,” you know?

And so before I used the track for the purpose it was intended, which was knocking off a mock-up, why, I’d get in there and, urrrr-rrooorn! you know, and managed to take a minute off of that time, you see? Manage to take this many laps off as the total endurance record, and.. Oh, they had races there that’d go for two weeks. You’d be driving for two weeks. They’d just keep doping you up. Needles hitting you in the back of your neck, you know, giving you new jolts. This is space opera. This is what this planet is in for. I mean, boy. And knock it off, you know?

I remember I got tired one time. Did have one overt act on the track – it was real bad – is I got tired of wondering whether or not there really was an audience back of those leaded panes. Took one of those tracks – cars, turned it at right angles, and threw it through one of the windows. There was an audience there.

So anyhow, a few lifetimes later, why, things would be going along pretty good, and the mock-up would be all patched up, and I’d think I was due for a new issue or something like that, and I’d wind up down at the racetrack. Total nom de plume identity – my own identity totally masked, you know, and go in there as the – the Green Rocket!

And as the Green Rocket, you know, be going errrr-vrooom! you know, that sort of thing. And one day walking through the lobby, “The Red Comet. The Silver Streak. Nyah, who are these bums? Track record so-and-so and so-and-so and leaped six cars. Six cars.”

And the Green Rocket, of course, would get a picture, posthumously: “One of the great drivers of all time who had leaped seven cars and had taken eight minutes off the track record,” you see?

I think in the course of about twenty-five hundred years there were an awful lot of pictures in there, but I had about sixteen of them.

I’d just keep going back and beating my own record, see? And I finally would just be exhausted, you know? You know, the Green Rocket. The Red Comet. The Silver Streak. You know? The Gold Bomb, you know? Oh! Whoo! How in the name – ’cause, you see, the equipment for eleven-twelve thousand years never changed one iota. Nothing was ever bettered. It was just ability, you see? It’d be pure, raw ability. As a matter of fact, the equipment was getting a little bit worse. And always beating your own record. You get down to a point finally where it isn’t possible. You just have to give up. Well, who defeated you?

Ah, the only reason I’m telling you this rather humorous anecdote is just to pound it home to you a little bit that you’re basically in competition with you.

[L. Ron Hubbard in 1960]

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Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:

Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history

Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea

Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time

Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology

Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain

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