Greetings to all who are interested in the case against the LDS Church for fraud.
To our knowledge, Gaddy is the only putative (potential) class action fraud case against the LDS Church that remains active. We are still fighting at the law and motion stage but have not been dismissed with prejudice. Instead, we have been allowed to amend the original and the first amended complaints.
We now have alleged evidence in support of our claims that wasn’t discovered or known to us at the time we filed our original complaint in August 2019. We have also added disclosures by Defendant which had not happened at the time we filed either the original or the First Amended Complaint, for example, President Nelson’s May 2020 stone-in-the-hat video demonstration. This evidence provides additional support for our original arguments.
We filed a Request to Submit for Decision to the Court regarding the Church’s Motion to Dismiss the Second Amended Complaint on March 16, 2022.
No doubt the Court is carefully reviewing both sides’ briefs at the present time. We will notify you soon after we have any ruling or notice of oral argument.
Note that due to the number of persons interested in the case, and because we need to protect our legal strategy, we cannot answer specific questions from the many individuals who contact us daily about the case status. The best way to keep informed is to remain on our email list.
If you are not receiving our emails, please check your spam and junk folders and whitelist any email address from kayburningham.com, i.e., staff@kayburningham.com or postman@kayburningham.com.
Finally, the ExMormon Foundation is accepting donations to fund the Gaddy case. You will find it on their landing page, just go to: www.exmormonfoundation.org. The Exmormon Foundation is a 501(c)(3) foundation.
Assuming we prevail at the trial court or on appeal, we anticipate that the case will eventually benefit two types of former Mormons:
1) Those who did not discover the fraud related to Mormon history until after August 4, 2015. If our arguments prevail on the religious facts v. belief, distinction, including the leaders’ lack of a sincere religious belief in key correlated material (e.g. Smith translating from open pates, no stone in sight), this group would arguably be entitled to a refund of all their tithing, as well as emotional distress damages for fraud;
and,
2) Those who relied on LDS agents’ representations that no tithing was used for City Creek Mall and/or that tithing is used for religious purposes (as opposed to commercial development and investment) in paying tithing for any dates after 1998 (after Ensign Peak Advisors was created). This group need only have paid tithing at any time from 1998 to 2019. Their resignation need not have been after August 4, 2015, but could have been any time from 1998 through 2019. This second group was made a part of our 2nd Amended Complaint and is based on a theory that the Church had a duty to disclose that a significant portion of annual tithing receipts were being used for commercial purposes, as opposed to the religious purposes specifically represented by the Church in tithing payment forms and its multiple statements and representations about the three or four fold purposes of the church.
Arguably, the second group would be entitled to a partial refund of their tithing, but only that part that was used for non-religious purposes. In the Huntsman case, this amount was identified as approximately $1 billion per year out of approximately $7 billion in annual tithing receipts.