After Leah Remini filed her lawsuit against Scientology on August 2, it was assigned to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William F. Fahey.
We told you on Friday that Leah’s legal team filed a peremptory challenge to remove Judge Fahey from the case, something they can do without needing to provide a reason. We had heard that he might be less than ideal, and he had some history of dismissing claims against the LAPD, something we figured might concern Leah.
Yesterday, City News Service reported that Judge Fahey had been replaced with Judge Barbara Scheper.
Was this an upgrade for Leah? We turned to a couple of reporters who cover the LA courts, and they seemed to think that it was.
They thought it was interesting that Judge Scheper has a background in challenging the LAPD.
She was appointed to the bench by Governor Gray Davis in 2001 after she had served as an attorney in the Los Angeles US Attorney’s Office and as an assistant inspector general for the LA Police Commissioner’s Office of the Inspector General.
“I bet Scientology challenges her,” one reporter told us.
At this point, there are no future hearings scheduled in Leah’s lawsuit after a hearing scheduled by Judge Fahey was taken off the docket.
Meanwhile, Leah’s legal team also submitted proof that they had served the lawsuit on the Church of Scientology International and the Religious Technology Center.
RTC is Scientology’s nominally controlling organization, and David Miscavige is chairman of it, which is why Scientologists refer to him as “C.O.B.,” for chairman of the board.
We say “nominally” because power in Scientology actually rests in the Sea Organization, the inner elite that is made up of hard core Scientologists who literally sign billion-year contracts, promising to serve the Sea Org from lifetime to lifetime.
Miscavige is the captain of the Sea Org, which is what makes him the sole leader of the entire movement, even though the Sea Org has no legal status as an organization of its own. Only Sea Org executives can hold positions in Scientology subsidiaries like RTC.
As for serving Miscavige the lawsuit, we assume Leah’s team is going to have the same trouble experienced by other former Scientologists who have filed lawsuits against him in recent years.
Miscavige’s only official address is at 6331 Hollywood Blvd, the Hollywood Guaranty Building. But Scientology’s own publications suggest that Miscavige has been living in Clearwater, Florida in recent years.
A Tampa federal court found in February that Miscavige was purposely evading service of a lawsuit there and named him a defendant after the plaintiffs went through an exhausting process of showing that they had tried to find him in numerous locations in California and Florida.
We’re afraid that Leah’s team is going to have to go through a similar protracted experience in order to get Miscavige served.
Meanwhile, in the Baxter/Paris trafficking case in Tampa, David Miscavige’s attorney William Schifino has indicated that the Scientology leader is sitting out the lawsuit’s current appeal at the Eleventh Circuit.
As we said, Miscavige was found by the court in that case to have been evading process servers, and he was named an official defendant in the lawsuit filed by Valeska Paris and Gawain and Laura Baxter, who allege that they were trafficked as Sea Org workers on Scientology’s cruise ship, the Freewinds.
However, even as Miscavige was named a defendant in the case, federal Judge Thomas Barber granted Scientology’s motion forcing the case into the church’s internal “religious arbitration.” But then Judge Barber granted a petition by Valeska and the Baxters to be allowed to make an interlocutory appeal of his ruling to the Eleventh Circuit.
Each party involved was supposed to fill out a web notification in the appeal, and when Miscavige didn’t, Valeska’s attorneys asked Schifino about it and he said his client was not going to participate. So Dave is sitting out the appeal. How ecclesiastical of him.
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It seems that, unlike Scientology, Inc., Leah’s team has learned from past efforts to hold them accountable in the legal arena. The cult has one playbook and a diminishing handful of legal minds, but Team Wog has the dual advantage of adaptation and truth.
Leah’s lawsuit helps keep the pressure on Miscavige. The stakes are high and there is ample damning proof that will force Scientology to settle rather than go through a jury trial that will bring out so much information regarding the organizations fair game policy’s and dirty tricks. Leah’s team can afford to be relentless because the payoff will be big. The end result is more bad publicity for the tiny tyrant and his organization.