Valeska Paris asks court: Declare Scientology leader David Miscavige served, finally

In April, Valeska Paris and two other former Sea Org workers, Gawain and Laura Baxter, filed a major new lawsuit against Scientology in Tampa, Florida, alleging that they had been trafficked as children and adults, forced to do labor and treated horribly on Scientology’s floating cathedral, the cruise ship Freewinds.

Since then, we have been following developments as Scientology has attempted to derail the lawsuit the way it usually does in this kind of litigation, by arguing that contracts these former Scientologists signed while they were members obliged them not to sue but to take their grievances to Scientology’s own brand of “religious arbitration.”

A hearing on that question was held on November 17, and we are awaiting a ruling from federal Judge Thomas Barber, who at the hearing seemed to indicate some skepticism about Scientology’s claims.

In the meantime, Valeska and the Baxters have struggled to get Scientology leader David Miscavige officially named a defendant in the case, and they have made numerous filings alleging that Miscavige is purposely evading service. The other defendants, institutional Scientology subsidiaries, all accepted service and are fighting the lawsuit with a high-priced army of lawyers. But Miscavige has not had any attorneys appear for him, and even Judge Barber, at the November 17, hearing, expressed that he’d never seen anything quite like it.

In their previous filings, Valeska’s attorneys laid out the multiple attempts they have made to try and serve Miscavige at addresses in California and Florida, and the efforts their investigators have made trying to establish where Miscavige actually lives. In a previous filing, attorney Neil Glazer made the case that Miscavige actually lives at the Hacienda Gardens, an apartment complex not far from the Flag Land Base in Clearwater, Florida.

Now, Glazer has submitted an 18-page motion, reiterating that claim and several supporting documents showing that the plaintiffs have done all they can to find Miscavige, and that it’s now time for the court to declare Miscavige served.

Plaintiffs have engaged in diligent efforts to locate Miscavige for personal service, and to ascertain a mailing address for him at which waiver requests and notices may be sent. This includes public records searches, review of court dockets in other cases in which service has been attempted, inquiries of former Sea Org members, and searches of public information on the Internet. In addition, Plaintiffs requested that Defendants provide either Miscavige’s location or at least his mailing address, but Defendants declined to provide any information.

Glazer says that the only sort of “official” address for Miscavige has long been the building at 6331 Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, the Hollywood Guaranty Building, which houses the L. Ron Hubbard Life Exhibition on the ground floor, and has offices for the Religious Technology Center on its top floor. (RTC nominally runs Scientology overall, and its chairman is Miscavige, hence the name he’s known by in Scientology, “C.O.B.” for chairman of the board.)

Glazer points out that even when Miscavige was cited for speeding a couple of times in Florida in the 1990s, his address was still given as 6331 Hollywood Boulevard. (And we also noted earlier the fun detail that his traffic tickets listed Miscavige as a six footer. The truth is a bit different.)

Glazer also describes the painstaking process they have been through, serving Miscavige through the Florida Secretary of State’s office after getting permission from the court, and sending notices to every single possible address associated with the Scientology leader, including the Hacienda Gardens location. All ten packets that were mailed, however, were returned to sender.

At this point, Glazer says, they have proved beyond a doubt that Miscavige is simply hiding from them, and deserves to be declared served.

There is more than enough evidence to demonstrate that he has intentionally concealed his location and erected obstacles to evade personal service of process. According to Michael Rinder, the former head of Defendant’s Office of Special Affairs, who was responsible for overseeing all legal matters for Defendants, Miscavige’s evasion of service of process is systematic and routine: pursuant to Miscavige’s direction, measures are taken to shield him from service of process, including directing security guards to refuse entry to anyone seeking to serve him and to refuse to divulge any information about his whereabouts or to answer any question with anything other than “I don’t know, please leave.” This is precisely what Plaintiffs’ process servers encountered in this action, and affidavits of service filed in other civil actions show that process servers have encountered similar obstacles.

Plaintiffs submit that further efforts are not required and would be fruitless. For decades, Miscavige has both resided and worked in properties owned by Defendants. There are no publicly available records associating Miscavige with any address other than a Scientology-owned location. Although the corporate Defendants are clearly in the best position to know, their respective counsel informed Plaintiffs Counsel that their clients declined to provide a mailing address for Miscavige.

However, while Miscavige and the Defendants have made it virtually impossible to deliver any papers to him, there is no room to doubt that he is aware of this action and the fact that he is named as a defendant in it. This is a high-profile civil action against the Church of Scientology International and four of its most significant operating entities, and its leader, David Miscavige. Plaintiffs allege that Miscavige and the corporate Defendants committed serious federal crimes that caused the Plaintiffs to suffer serious injuries. The case has been widely reported in the media, and the Defendants have issued public statements in response.

Furthermore, Miscavige closely monitors and directly involves himself in legal proceedings involving Scientology. As former OSA head Michael Rinder attests, Miscavige not only is directly involved in the management of Defendants’ operations, but he oversees their legal matters. According to declarations from several top-level Scientology officials who report directly to him, Miscavige has long been involved in directing Defendants’ legal strategy. As far back as 1986, Miscavige handled legal strategy for lawsuits against Scientology.

A senior RTC officer, Anna Joasem, explained that “having worked for Chairman of the Board [Miscavige] for 22 years, I know first-hand that Mr. Miscavige has always been working relentlessly to end all legal battles for the Church so that he could concentrate his time and energy on the expansion of the Scientology Religion.” Miscavige’s direct involvement in litigation against Defendants includes directing settlement negotiations “of all legal cases.” He has even removed from their duties subordinates responsible for direct supervision of litigation and stepped into that role himself, going so far as to “spen[d] all of 1999 and again large portions of 2000 through to 2003” living in Clearwater to directly supervise litigation, while continuing “to also put on and hold many major international events each of those years, all of which were associated with dissemination and expansion campaigns and properties.”

“Mr. Miscavige is Scientology.” “And just as Mr. Hubbard was no armchair philosopher, Mr. Miscavige is always hands-on in getting the job at hand done.” It beggars belief that Miscavige could be anything but fully informed of every detail of this case, let alone the basic information required to put him on notice so he can appear and defend himself against Plaintiffs’ claims.

Miscavige cannot be permitted to continue his gamesmanship. Plaintiffs have complied with the requirements of Florida Statute 48.161. The parcel containing the notice mailed to Miscavige at his last known address was returned to sender on November 12, 2022. Every other parcel was refused and returned. Miscavige has been served and he has “failed to plead or otherwise defend[.]” Fed. R. Civ. P. 55(A). Accordingly, the Court should declare Miscavige to be in default.

In other lawsuits, similar fruitless attempts have been made to serve Miscavige, but we’ve never seen a team expend so much effort to complete the task. And based on Judge Barber’s reaction at the November 17 hearing, we suspect that he’s going to grant this motion and declare Miscavige an official defendant.

But will it matter? As we’ve pointed out numerous times, there’s an onerous precedent hanging over Judge Barber’s courtroom: It was in that very location that the Garcia case was forced into arbitration and then upheld by the Eleventh Circuit. Even with Judge Barber’s apparent skepticism, will he go against that precedent and reject Scientology’s motion to force the case into arbitration?

We continue to wait for his ruling on that. But in the meantime, it would be awfully fun to see Dave get officially served.

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