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South Carolina Rump Group Files Frivolous Appeal
South Carolina Rump Group Files Frivolous Appeal
By A.S. HALEY
THE ANGLICAN CURMUDGEON
http://accurmudgeon.blogspot.com/
June 27, 2014
In its latest bid to delay the start of the trial scheduled for July 7, the rump group that calls itself “the Episcopal Church in South Carolina” (ECSC) has filed a Notice of Appeal from an interlocutory order of the trial court that denied its “motion to reconsider” for a fourth time a ruling that refused to allow it to add additional individual parties to the case. As such, the appeal is purely a stalling tactic, and is thus frivolous in the extreme.
As Judge Goodstein's June 6 order (attached to the Notice of Appeal) explains, ECSC on three prior occasions in the case sought the court's leave to add additional parties and assert additional claims against them. She first denied a motion to add 23 individuals to the case last October 1. In November, ECSC asked her to reconsider that ruling, and also filed a new motion to add just four (of the 23 it had sought to add earlier) individuals to the case: Bishop Mark Lawrence; his canon to the ordinary, the Rev. Jim Lewis; and two additional clergy who formerly served on the Diocese's Standing Committee.
Judge Goodstein denied the motion to reconsider at a hearing on December 30, 2013, and ECSC did not appeal that order. (Instead, it appealed another order entered after that same hearing that denied ECSC's motion to reconsider a different ruling — a refusal of ECSC's request that Bishop Lawrence produce all of his communications with his attorneys. In May of this year, that appeal was finally resolved in Bishop Lawrence's favor by the South Carolina Supreme Court.)< ![CDATA[
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Source: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=19101
