L.A. Court Blocks Mahony Deposition

A judge ruled Wednesday that Cardinal Roger M. Mahony may not be deposed in a clergy sex-abuse case at this time, ending an effort by plaintiffs’ lawyers to have the archbishop held in contempt of court for failing to appear for a deposition.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charles W. “Tim” McCoy held that attorneys for a man who said he had been raped by a Roman Catholic priest in the 1970s did not demonstrate “an urgent need” to immediately take Mahony’s sworn testimony.

McCoy automatically halted all litigation, including pretrial depositions, three days before Mahony was scheduled to testify on April 22, when he ordered as many as 94 civil suits against the Catholic Church in Northern California to be funneled to one judge.

A day later, Mahony’s lawyers called off the deposition when their demands for ground rules -- such as moving the proceeding to their offices or church property for safety reasons -- were rejected by counsel for the alleged victim.

In response, attorneys John Manly and Venus Soltan, who subpoenaed the cardinal to testify at the deposition, filed a motion to lift the stay so they could ask the judge to order a contempt hearing for Mahony or compel his testimony.

“The judge denied the motion in one sentence,” said attorney Donald F. Woods Jr., who represents Mahony. “No further comment is necessary.”

Manly said he still planned to question Mahony once the Northern California cases were coordinated and back on track. The cardinal “will be deposed sooner or later,” he said.

Woods argued that the alleged abuse had ended seven years before Mahony became bishop of Stockton in 1980 and that the cardinal had “testified exhaustively on four different occasions concerning his minimal knowledge of Father Oliver O’Grady, the alleged offender.”

Mahony became the first cardinal in the United States to be deposed in a clergy sex-abuse case when he testified under oath in another O’Grady case in 1998. That case resulted in a $30-million jury verdict against the Diocese of Stockton.