TV Station’s Founder Drops Lawsuit Against Trinity : Litigation: The Tustin-based Christian network had been accused of a ‘hostile takeover.’ The agreement precludes any future legal action.

The plaintiff in a bitter, long-running suit against Tustin-based Trinity Broadcasting Network dropped the civil action in a New York court on Wednesday.

Keith A. Houser, who had charged in court documents that the Christian television station he founded in Fishkill, N.Y., a town in Dutchess County near Poughkeepsie, was the subject of a “hostile takeover” by Trinity founder and president Paul Crouch, gave no reason for the court action, a one-paragraph agreement that precludes any future litigation.

“I’m pretty well gagged,” Houser said from his home in DeSoto, Tex.

Crouch did not appear in court and did not return a phone call to his office at KTBN-Channel 40--Trinity’s flagship station--in Tustin. Trinity had denied all of Houser’s accusations.

Houser founded the Fishkill station, Channel 54, in 1981, showing mostly reruns of old series like “Rin Tin Tin” and “The Lone Ranger.” He claimed that Trinity agreed to pay about $3.5 million for the station in 1982, but paid only $3.2 million. Trinity disputed those claims. The suit, filed in 1982, asked for $300,000 in damages for breach of contract and $3 million in punitive and exemplary damages.

Trinity Broadcasting, a 200-station, 24-hour-a-day Christian programming service and network, has been involved in extensive civil litigation, including more than a dozen suits in Orange County and at least one in Texas. None of these suits have ever gone to trial, and in numerous cases the settlement agreements have been sealed. According to documents submitted to the Internal Revenue Service in 1989, Trinity has a net worth of just under $100 million.

Neither side in the dispute would comment on whether any other action to settle the dispute was contemplated.

However, at least three times in the past Houser, the National Religious Broadcasters and the Rev. Jack Hayford, pastor of the Church on the Way and a regular on Trinity, have urged Crouch to settle the matter through “Christian arbitration.” In each case, Crouch has refused.

In 1987, Richard G. Gay, who represented Trinity in the Poughkeepsie suit, wrote Houser that Crouch was refusing because “ ‘Christian’ arbitration often turned out to be neither equitable nor Christian.”

Gay, who signed Wednesday’s agreement on Trinity’s behalf, could not be reached for comment. Another of Trinity’s attorneys, Colby May, said the possibility of any subsequent action outside of court in New York would be “speculation.”

In 1989, after an exhaustive inquiry into complaints against Trinity by Houser and others, the National Religious Broadcasters Ethics Committee said it would “strongly recommend” that Houser and Crouch consider Christian arbitration of their dispute. Houser agreed, but Crouch did not, ultimately withdrawing Trinity from the NRB, a voluntary organization of Christian broadcasters.

Last February, Crouch dismissed Channel 54’s station manager Campbell Thompson and Thompson’s wife, who was also on the staff, as part of a cost-cutting program. Crouch wrote Thompson that the station “has been a continual struggle financially and (in) every other way,” with Trinity investing about $7 million in the station since the purchase.

Crouch also wrote that he was considering selling the station or reducing its power, but May, his Washington attorney, said there are no plans to sell the station. Over the past two years, Trinity offered to sell other, less profitable stations in smaller markets.

Kent Gibbons, a staff writer for the Poughkeepsie Journal, contributed to this report from New York.