We’ve just got our hands on the Church of Scientology’s response to the federal fraud lawsuit filed by Luis and Rocio Garcia.
As we expected, Scientology is asking federal judge James Whittemore to compel the Garcias to accept Scientology’s own internal arbitration system to resolve this dispute, and throw it out of federal court.
As in previous cases, Scientology will be trying to convince Whittemore that the Garcias signed various agreements that they would resolve matters through Scentology’s own “ethics” system. And any attempt for a civil court to intervene would be a violation of the church’s First Amendment rights. After the jump, we have the 25-page document.
We’re looking forward to analysis by our excellent commenting community, several of whom are attorneys.
One early observation: Judge Whittemore was pretty adamant about Scientology keeping its response to 25 pages, including signature page. (The church had requested permission to file a 45-page brief and the judge denied it.)
But with exhibits, the church just filed a brief of about 350 PAGES. (In fact, we’re debating whether to upload them all here. They’re repetitive and may suck up a lot of bandwidth — and you know the state of our server.)
We would have to guess that Whittemore is going to ignore the exhibits.
Here’s the 25-page response…
Cos Motion to Compel (Response to Garcia) by
Exhibit 1: Declaration of Peter Mansell
Mansell Declaration (Garcia Fed Lawsuit) by Tony Ortega
 :
Exhibit 2 (Part 1): Declaration of Anne Cox
Cox Declaration (Scientology Ex 2) by
Exhibit 3: Declaration of Kenneth Weber
Weber Declaration (Scientology Ex 3) by
Exhibit 4: Declaration of Monique Yingling
Yingling Declaration (Scientology Ex 4) by
Exhibit 5: Declaration of Kenneth Long
Long Declaration (Scientology Ex 5) by
(Exhibit 6 is a copy of the Garcias’ lawsuit that they filed in state court before they dismissed it in favor of their federal fraud lawsuit.)
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Posted by Tony Ortega on March 6, 2013 at 16:00
