Anaheim-Based Church Wins $11.9-Million Libel Judgment

The Anaheim-based Local Church was awarded $11.9 million Thursday in a libel ruling against the authors and publisher of a book deemed defamatory toward the church, but a church leader said he expects to collect no more than $35,000 from the defendants.

Judge Leon Seyranian of the Superior Court in Alameda County found the book, “The God-Men,” to be “in all major respects false, defamatory and unprivileged, and therefore libelous.”

The Local Church has about 9,000 members in 95 loosely affiliated churches around the country, according to spokesman Dan Towles. Members believe each community should have only one Christian church, so each church is named for the community it represents.

The plaintiffs in the libel action were The Church in Anaheim and Witness Lee, 80, the leader and prophet of the Local Church.

“The God-Men” charged the Local Church and Lee with using deceptive recruiting practices and exercising rigid control over members’ lives.

Book Published in Europe

The book was written by Neil Duddy and the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, a Berkeley-based evangelical organization. It was published in Europe by Schwengeler-Verlag of Switzerland. All three were defendants in the lawsuit, filed in December, 1980.

None of the defendants appeared at the five-day trial. Seyranian based his ruling on the testimony of witnesses called by the plaintiffs and depositions from the defendants.

Duddy has left the Berkeley group and now lives in Denmark. Schwengeler-Verlag did not answer the charges, and Spiritual Counterfeits Project filed for Chapter 11 financial reorganization in March.

Charles O. Morgan, the San Francisco-based attorney who represented The Church in Anaheim, said it would be almost impossible to force either Schwengeler-Verlag or Duddy to pay the judgment without beginning litigation in Switzerland and Denmark, respectively. He added that Spiritual Counterfeits Project’s Chapter 11 proceeding would not be decided until some time in July.

Partial Payment Expected

After the bankruptcy proceedings conclude, the Berkeley group would probably wind up paying a percentage of the value of its remaining assets, Local Church spokesman Towles said. He estimated that the payment will be between $25,000 and $35,000.

But Towles said this prospect did not take away from the church’s victory in court. “From the beginning we were not out for money, but for the truth to be finally made known about the church. The verdict is symbolic,” he said.

Church leaders “hope the verdict will rectify people’s understanding of the church . . . (and correct) damage caused by the untruths published in the book,” Towles said.