FLDS trust wants to be dropped from child bride lawsuit
 
By Ben Winslow
Deseret News
 
A judge will decide if the Fundamentalist LDS Church's real-estate holdings arm should be on the hook in a former child bride's multimillion-dollar lawsuit.

During a hearing Friday in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court, lawyers representing the court-controlled United Effort Plan Trust asked to be dropped from Elissa Wall's lawsuit against the trust, the FLDS Church and its leader, Warren Jeffs.

They argued that the conduct of Jeffs in performing a 2001 marriage between Wall and her 19-year-old cousin is not the conduct of the UEP Trust, which was recently reformed by the courts.

"The fact that it happened doesn't make it doctrine," attorney Jeffrey L. Shields argued. "It doesn't mean the beneficiary class should be liable for the conduct of its trustees."

Shields argued that those who would ultimately lose are women and children who live in trust-controlled homes in the FLDS communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. He also claimed Wall's suit could lead to a flood of litigation.

"We're trying to protect minors. That's what this case is about," Wall's attorney, Roger Hoole, told the judge. "Elissa Wall wants no one to go through what she went through."

Hoole argued that the trust and the church are one and the same, and that as a leader in the FLDS Church, Jeffs was the alter-ego of the UEP. The trust was created to preserve and promote the doctrines of the FLDS Church, which he claimed included underage marriages.

In Wall's case, attorney Greg Hoole argued that the trust provided the home and the bed after she was married.

"Go after people who really are blame worthy here," trust lawyer Mark Callister said in his rebuttal.

The UEP Trust was taken over by the courts in 2005 over allegations that FLDS leaders mismanaged it, including defaulting on lawsuits. A judge reformed it, doing away with the communal property concept and paving the way for private property ownership.

Wall was the state's star witness in the case against Jeffs, who was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice. She recently authored a best-selling memoir of her life in the Utah-based polygamous sect. Jeffs is currently facing criminal charges in Arizona and Texas connected to underage marriages.

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
 
DeseretNews.com
Originally published Friday, Nov. 21, 2008
 
Back