Judge rules temporary dismissal in Calvary Chapel fraud lawsuit, plaintiff’s attorney says they will refile.
HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - One Love Ministries and the Calvary Chapel Central Oahu are two of the five churches accused of shorting schools more than $5.6 million in rent and fees. Today those two churches asked for the case to be dismissed. The judge agreed but gave plaintiffs 45 days rewrite their complaint and add more specifics proving fraud.
“We’re happy that the court did dismiss the complaint. If the plaintiffs do come back again and re-file we’ll ask for it to be dismissed again,” said Erik Stanley, Alliance Defending Freedom Attorney, representing the two churches.
“If you think about it, what has been the result here? We are just going to put more detail into the public record. How that advances the churches cause I’m not sure,” said Jim Bickerton, Attorney for Plaintiff’s Mitch Kahle and Holly Huber.
The crux of the case comes down to “use.” The accusation is churches will hold their Sunday service but they’ll set up and take down for hours before and after and not pay for that time even though no one else can use the facilities. The court wants more detail proving those claims.
“One of the problems is that we alleged that the churches as a group were all doing this which they are but we didn’t specify which church was doing what. We listed all the things they were doing, we listed all the churches that were doing it, and the judge wants us to connect that so each church is connected to a particular activity and to a particular false statement so it’s very clear who is on first and who’s on second,” said Bickerton. “The focus of our case is you put down two hours but you were there for five or seven hours. That’s the guts of the case.”
Full article here: http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/24267875/lawsuit-accusing-churches-of-fraud-temporarily-dismissed?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter