The System Works: Court Rejects Suit Against Catholic Bishops Seeking National Disclosure of Priest
Author(s): Scott M. Browning
Published: 03/17/2008
Many of the sex abuse cases against the Catholic Church across the country have been filed by a single law firm, Jeffery Anderson and Associates. In a sweeping litigation maneuver, the Anderson firm, representing a family referred to as the O’Connells, filed a class action in Wisconsin state court seeking an injunction compelling the disclosure of priest personnel files from every diocese in the United States. The suit named all 179 Catholic bishops, individually, as defendants. That suit was just thrown out of court.
The O’Connell suit was brought by various family members of a mortician, Dan O’Connell, who the O’Connells asserted was murdered by a rogue priest because Dan O’Connell threatened to expose the priest as an alleged child abuser. The priest subsequently committed suicide. The O’Connells did not sue the priest or his estate for the murder, but instead sued the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops and all 179 bishops in the United States, individually. According to the O’Connells, their relative’s death was the result of a nationwide conspiracy by these 179 bishops and their conference to keep personnel information about priests from law enforcement and the public.
On December 21 the trial court issued its written decision, which begins with this admonition:
Bold allegations vociferously pled are not substitutes for recognized causes of action under Wisconsin law. Sympathy for one’s cause or circumstance is not a factor in the calculus of legal analysis. O’Connell’s cause of action as pled has no foundation under Wisconsin law. Furthermore, to impose the remedy requires the court to interfere with the internal processes of the Catholic Church and infringes upon the proscriptions of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
As the court referenced in this preamble, it had a choice among various alternatives to end the suit. In addition to the First Amendment, defendants raised the defenses of "failure to state a claim" and lack of "standing." In simple terms, lack of standing means these plaintiffs have no right to bring the suit they have filed because they have not suffered an injury from the wrong they allege. The court carefully reviewed the state and federal law and determined that the suit violated all three principles.
On the most important question, application of the First Amendment, the court reviewed the plaintiffs’ demand for an injunction, which by definition compels performance of some affirmative action, and found it did not have jurisdiction to order the church to open its confidential files. After a thoughtful analysis, including reference to Thomas Jefferson’s 1808 letter to Reverend Samuel Miller (in which Jefferson explained that government is "interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline or exercises"), the court explained that plaintiffs’ request for review of all the church’s files violated the Free Exercise Clause. The court elaborated that such review would necessarily require an examination of the church’s personnel files and the professional conduct of the priests—a process that probes the fitness or competency of a person to serve as a Catholic priest. The court recognized that such analysis would require examination of the bishop/priest relationship, the communication process between parishioners and bishop, and how those religious relationships interface with civil tort law. This scrutiny by a civil judicial authority of these inherently religious communications and processes, the court recognized, is barred by the First Amendment under both Wisconsin Supreme Court and United States Supreme Court precedent. The conclusion: "The circuit courts of Wisconsin lack the legal competence to entertain this lawsuit and grant plaintiffs relief." In other words, this is sim ply not a suit a secular court can hear under the United States Constitution.
The alternative findings of failure to state a claim and lack of standing are just as strong. The court noted that, even assuming all of the allegations made in the plaintiffs’ 60-page complaint are true, there was a complete lack of connection between the plaintiffs’ harsh allegations of a supposed cover-up by the bishops and the alleged murder of Mr. O’Connell by a priest. (The court noted that Mr. O’Connell had not been sexually abused, so there was no logical reason why his relatives should be demanding the files of other priests to try to find allegations of sexual abuse.) In short, with all facts assumed to be true, the plaintiffs failed to state a claim of conspiracy. This same lack of connection underlies the court’s decision that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring their suit, because there was no logical connection between the alleged murder of one individual by one rogue priest and any actions by the 179 bishops and their conference.
At a fundamental level, courts are to resolve individual disputes between parties. Here, a family and its attorneys set out on a campaign to use an individual tragedy of a murder to achieve a wholly unrelated agenda of making public 179 dioceses’ priest personnel records. The secular law has well-defined mechanisms such as "failure to state a claim" and "standing" to stop such misuses of the judicial system, and the founders carefully framed the First Amendment to ensure there would be no abuse of civil authority to such an end. All of these principles were applied here to avoid a clear misuse of the judicial system.
Scott M. Browning is a partner in RJ&L’s Denver office. He is a trial attorney who has represented a broad range of religious and nonprofit organizations for more than 15 years. Scott serves as trial counsel to the Archdiocese of Denver. He can be reached at 303-628-9540 or by e-mail at sbrowning@rothgerber.com.