TWO REPLIES TO TEC LAWYERS' RETURN

There have been two replies to the TEC lawyers' Return.

1-

One of the seven parishes with open petitions for rehearing before the South Carolina Supreme Court filed a reply to the Episcopal lawyers' Return of June 20. Attorneys for Holy Comforter, in Sumter, submitted to the SCSC today, "Reply of Church of the Holy Comforter."

In the six-page paper, the attorneys argued that 1-Holy Comforter acceded to the Episcopal Church and the diocese in 1968, years before the Dennis Canon appeared (1979). 2-the parish did not accede to the Dennis Canon after 1979, and had no intent to create a trust for the national church. 3-the All Saints decision (2009) set the standard for creating a trust. 

The lawyers for the Episcopal side had argued in their Return of June 20 that all of the seven parishes in question had affirmed their accession to or adoption of the Dennis Canon after its creation in 1979. 

As for the standard of the All Saints decision, that was set aside by the SC Supreme Court in its Aug. 2, 2017 opinion. Four of the five justices agreed that All Saints was not relevant to the present case. At any rate, the SCSC ruled in favor of the local parish of All Saints, Pawleys Island, in 2009, because the diocese had granted a quit claim deed to the parish in 1903 and thereby relinquished any claim it might have had in a trust. No such argument is being made now---that the parishes had gained quit claim deeds before the Dennis Canon appeared.

2-

Alan Runyan and other lawyers filed a Reply for the rest of the six parishes with open petitions for rehearing. They also submitted their 14-page paper on June 27.

Here is this layman's interpretation of the main arguments in this Reply:

---the trust was revocable.

---the parishes had no intent to create trusts for the national church.

---the parishes did not accede to or adopt the Dennis Canon.

---the parishes could revoke trusts after 2006.

---the diocese revoked its version of the Dennis Canon, made in 1987, in 2010 when it revoked its accession to the canons of the Episcopal Church.

All of these are old points. There is nothing new here. All of this has been settled in the SC Supreme Court decisions of 2017 and 2022. The court has ruled that the parishes in question acceded to the Dennis Canon and that they did not revoke these accessions. In fact, the SCSC has ruled twice that these six parishes are property of the Episcopal Church because of their accessions to or adoptions of the Dennis Canon.