Kay Burningham
Attorney at Law

  Licensed in Utah and California.


July 1, 2025

Press Releases and Announcements


Announcement: Gaddy vs COP (LDS) - Case Status; Notice of Hearing
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The Announcement below is superceded by the Status Report of October 25 2021

Salt Lake City, UT | Friday, November 27, 2020

To all those interested in the Gaddy v. COP potential class action for fraud filed in US District Court for the District of Utah, August 2019:

This announcement is to correct misinformation about the case. You might have heard that the case was dismissed. This does not mean the case is over. Complaints in civil cases commonly go through a number of amended versions before the case progresses beyond the initial law and motion stage which refines the issues to be tried. While COP’s motion to dismiss the original case was granted, the Court also allowed us leave to file an amended complaint (AC), which we did. The AC alleges specific instances demonstrating that COP did not believe what it has historically taught about LDS origins.

We have received notice of a hearing date for argument on the Motion to Dismiss the AC. The date for the hearing is January 5, 2021 at 1:30 p.m., via Zoom. We have had many individuals ask whether they can listen during the hearing. If you would like to listen in, please contact the Court directly as instructed in the MEDIA AND PUBLIC ACCESS TO HEARINGS Section in the court rules click here. Chief Judge Robert J. Shelby presides over the Gaddy case.

Notice of the continued hearing can be found here: Notice of Hearing

You can read the Church’s Motion here. Our Opposition to that motion is here. The gist of our argument is that COP did not sincerely believe what it represented and therefore the practice of promulgating representations that are not sincerely believed is not entitled to First Amendment protection. Our request for judicial notice of the fact of COP’s seer stone reveal is here.

In addition to representing Laura Gaddy, we represent others who only discovered the fraud on or after August 4, 2015 and thereafter resigned from the Church. As alleged in the Amended Complaint, which can be found here, it was not until years after the initial essays acknowledging many of the facts about LDS origins previously characterized as anti-Mormon lies were published that COP began to openly acknowledge their existence. As further alleged in the AC, COP’s failure to openly acknowledge the essays’ existence was part of a campaign to “inoculate” its members.

We know that many of you discovered the fraud too early to be part of the class, and we are sorry that we cannot help you. Additionally, the case seeks only to represent those who have resigned from the church (or intend to resign after having discovered the fraud subsequent to the cutoff date above). If any of you fit within those categories and would like to see if you can participate, or would like information about the case, please contact me through our website: kayburningham.com and we will respond to your inquiry at our earliest opportunity.





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