The Garcias won’t go down without a fight: Filing appeal of Scientology’s ‘arbitration’ farce

 
The Garcias aren’t letting well enough alone. More than five years after they first filed a lawsuit against the Church of Scientology, and after three years wrestling against a ruling by Tampa federal Judge James Whittemore that forced them into Scientology’s internal arbitration, Luis and Rocio Garcia have filed a notice that they are appealing Whittemore’s latest ruling that they would have to live with the results of that arbitration.

We have to admit we were taken somewhat by surprise by this news. The Garcias have already been fighting against an uncooperative court for years, and Whittemore’s latest ruling was a punch to the gut. Appealing it was not an automatic decision — the Garcias can look forward to a year or more of additional court filings and broadsides from Scientology without a guarantee that the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals will see things differently than Whittemore did.

From the beginning of their legal odyssey, the Garcias argued that they were lied to and defrauded by Scientology when the church hit them up for more than a million dollars of donations over their years as members. They were convinced, for example, to “pay for” an expensive cross on top of the Flag Building in Clearwater, but then learned that other couples had been hit up to pay for the same thing.

But the Garcias never got to present that evidence in court. Judge Whittemore decided that because the Garcias had signed membership contracts promising to take all grievances to internal arbitration, the California couple was required to do so. Whittemore explained that because Scientology was a church, he couldn’t insert himself into that contractual disagreement without violating Scientology’s First Amendment religious rights.

The Garcias presented testimony by former top Scientology officials Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun that the membership contracts had been purposely written to confound Scientologists from getting refunds, and that there was no actual “arbitration” procedure in the church — and the church admitted in court that it had never, in fact, performed an arbitration in its 60-year history.

Scientology might call itself a church, but when it set up sham contracts to entrap members, held out an arbitration scheme that didn’t actually exist, and committed fraudulent means of taking money from people like the Garcias, why should the First Amendment keep a court from looking into those allegations? But Whittemore was adamant, and he put the lawsuit on hold as he directed the Garcias to submit themselves to the arbitration process. And after that process ended up in an impasse, Whittemore took charge of it and personally selected a board of three arbitrators.

The Garcias complained that the two-day arbitration hearing in Los Angeles last October was a kangaroo court, and they told Whittemore that he’d been lied to about how it would go down. But once again Whittemore refused to hear their evidence, and instead ordered them to abide by the arbitration’s result. (The arbitrators decided to refund $18,000 of the million-plus the Garcias were asking for. The Garcias refused the payment.)

Attorney Scott Pilutik earlier told us that if Whittemore’s decision was vulnerable to appeal, it was because the judge had inserted himself so directly in the arbitration itself, finding the arbitrators after the two sides were unable to agree on anything…

Whittemore even helped set the parameters of this newfound religious arbitration despite having already decided that he couldn’t rule on the underlying merits out of First Amendment concerns. That’s like saying you can’t stay and eat and then wind up cooking the meal yourself. I think Whittemore’s activities here may render this vulnerable to appeal.

Will the Eleventh Circuit see it that way? We’ll have considerable time to find out.

 
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Scientology’s history in Colombia

Jeffrey Augustine talks with former Scientologist Adrian Venegas about growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, working on staff at the Scientology org there, seeing the first attempts by the church to reach out to the nation’s military in the 1990s, and how a comedian named Andrés López has been Scientology’s major conduit in the country in recent years. It’s fascinating stuff as the scandal in Colombia rolls on.

 
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MEANWHILE, AT FACEBOOK…

 
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Posted by Tony Ortega on August 17, 2018 at 07:00

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