Before the holiday weekend could start, attorneys for the Jane Does and Scientology were in court this morning in Los Angeles, and the Bunker had a correspondent in the courtroom taking notes.
Judge Upinder Kalra indicated that he had read the pleadings about Scientology's motion to strike a large part of the Bixler lawsuit.
The Bixler lawsuit, you will remember, was filed in 2019 by Danny Masterson’s victims even before he was charged criminally. But the lawsuit has been on hold while Masterson went through two trials and was convicted of two counts of forcible rape on May 31. On September 7 he was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
The Bixler lawsuit was initially forced into Scientology's brand of "religious arbitration" until an appeals court reversed that ruling, saying that the Jane Does should not be held to contracts they signed as Scientologists when the harm they alleged — the stalking, hacking, and even poisoning of their pets — occurred after they had left the church.
Scientology has asked Judge Kalra to interpret that ruling by striking allegations from the lawsuit that refer to the time when the Jane Does were Scientologists, and also to remove references to Scientology's internal policies, in particular allegations about "Fair Game," the retaliation policy that Scientology claims no longer exists.
This morning, Judge Kalra said that he did not issue a tentative ruling based on those pleadings, and that he preferred to have a conversation about the issues.
He said he acknowledged the "blue line" of the appeals court ruling, the boundary marked by the time when the Jane Does left Scientology. He said it made it easy for the Court to see everything that Scientology wanted stricken.
But the conversation then turned on the concept that even if Judge Kalra were to strike allegations from the complaint today, it wouldn't prevent the plaintiffs from bringing those issues up in a later trial.
Scientology attorney Bill Forman said he acknowledged that, and said they weren't trying to limit what might come in at trial. But he said these were "explosive allegations" that he thinks should be stricken from the complaint.
He griped that it was a "sprawling" lawsuit that began with L. Ron Hubbard publishing Dianetics in 1950, and continuing to garbage cans being rummaged through in 2020.
But then Kalra pointed out something kind of amazing. One of the previous cases that has been referred to in this litigation is the famous Lawrence Wollersheim lawsuit which resulted in a massive jury award in the mid 1980s.
Judge Kalra pointed out that the Scientology attorneys actually defended the Fair Game policy in the Wollersheim case, but today Forman and his colleagues "are arguing that it's fictional."
D'oh!
Forman didn't seem fazed, and said that the Fair Game doctrine was a "matter of intense dispute" that could "never be resolved by this court."
Ouch!
Forman added that the inclusion of church policies was a "hornet's nest" and so it was better to strike those allegations from the lawsuit.
As for the idea that the material could be stricken now, but later come in at trial, plaintiffs attorney Brad Edwards pointed out that Judge Kalra would be setting up a potential problem in discovery.
When they're taking depositions, Edwards said, he could see the Scientology attorneys telling their witnesses not to answer questions about Fair Game and other things that had been stricken — even though the judge had said those issues could come in later.
(And yes, no doubt Edwards is absolutely correct about that. Of course Scientology's attorneys would do that.)
If that happens, Edwards said, it would force them to come to the judge and waste his time asking him to force the witnesses to answer those questions.
It's better to keep the material in the complaint, Edwards said, calling it "harmless."
Judge Kalra put it to Forman. Was Edwards correct? Would the Scientology attorneys tell their witnesses not to answer questions about the stricken material?
Forman said it wouldn't come from him.
So if the Scientology attorneys ended up doing that, Judge Kalra asked, they should expect sanctions?
Oooh.
Judge Kalra said he would take the matter under advisement and would issue a ruling later.
We can hardly wait.
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Sounds like this judge and/or his clerk(s) did their homework.
Does he own any pets...?(for those who don't know, that's an allusion to the "church's" practice
of hiring people to poison the pets of their "enemies")
This is a good hearing, I can’t say I’ve laughed out loud at many of the recent court hearings, this one had be roaring!