A judge has granted a motion by a woman suing the Church of Scientology for sexual assault and battery and negligence to conduct limited discovery to obtain information her lawyers say she needs to thwart a church motion to send the case before an internal church arbitrator.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert B. Broadbelt heard arguments on plaintiff Jane Doe's motion on Wednesday, took the case under submission and ruled in her favor on Thursday evening. On Oct. 27, Broadbelt placed a stay on discovery pending a hearing on the church's arbitration motion.
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In their court papers, Doe's lawyers stated they want to do "limited discovery related to issues surrounding the signing of the arbitration agreement with which defendants seek to force plaintiff to comply.
"In the present case, nowhere did plaintiff represent that her recollections of the events surrounding the signing of the arbitration agreement are fully comprehensive," the plaintiff's lawyers argued in their court papers while also adding that Doe does not already have documents that could show she was experiencing duress, undue influence or fraud when she signed the alleged arbitration agreement.
In their rebuttal, church attorneys stated in their court papers that Doe did not identify a single discovery request that she wished to put forward.
"In short, plaintiff does nothing to show why or how discovery is necessary to meet her burden of asserting a defense to enforcement of the agreement, the church lawyers argued in their court papers.
The Scientology attorneys also maintained Doe made two other requests to do discovery and that she was now doing so again in the face of the judge's stay.
Doe, a self-professed former friend of the late Lisa Marie Presley, also is suing Scientology leader David Miscavige and the Religious Technology Center. The RTC was founded in 1982 by the church to control and oversee the use of all of Scientology trademarks and symbols as well as Scientology and Dianetics texts.
"The court hereby stays the case in its entirety," a minute order written by the judge's clerk stated.
In their court papers, Scientology attorneys maintain that Doe's own writings show she loved and "enthusiastically" married her husband and that she did not make claims of non-consensual sex against him until she filed her lawsuit.
Doe was 27 when in 2002 she signed an agreement stating that any dispute she may have with any Scientology organization was subject to binding religious arbitration, the church lawyers further maintain in their court papers.
In her suit filed last Dec. 29, Doe says she was a Scientology member from birth and that she was recruited in 1989 at age 14 into the faith's Sea Organization, which is responsible for advancing the faith's research and operations.
A Sea Organization recruiter 10 years older than Doe supervised her and allegedly sexually assaulted her repeatedly while she was still a minor, the suit states.
Doe was "devastated" by the alleged abuses, but Scientology policies forbade her from going to the police, the suit alleges.
Doe and her supervisor were reprimanded by the church and told to either marry or be sent to Scientology's labor camp as punishment, according to Doe's suit, which further states she and the man were wed in Las Vegas when she was 17 years old.
After the alleged forced marriage, Doe was "coerced and compelled" to have repeated sexual intercourse with the man, became pregnant at age 19 and divorced her husband in 1997, the suit states.
In 2002, Doe, along with her 7-year-old daughter, accompanied her "good friend" and fellow Scientologist, Lisa Marie Presley, to FLAG, a Scientology spiritual and training center in Clearwater, Florida, and to Disney World for a birthday celebration, the suit states.
FLAG is Scientology's primary training center and visits to it usually required both advance permission as well as the transfer of auditing files from the Scientology member's home base -- Los Angeles in Doe's case -- so that the visitor can partake in FLAG activities, Doe says in a sworn declaration.
"Because Lisa Marie was a celebrity, the FLAG visitation requirements were overlooked for her, and initially for me," Doe says. "However, after I had been at FLAG for several weeks, I was told I had to sign a FLAG agreement or be banned from the base."
Doe further states she did not know that a FLAG agreement she felt coerced to sign contained an alleged arbitration agreement.
"It is the policy of Scientology to force signatures on documents without review by the signer, much less a lawyer," Doe says.
"I knew review was not allowed because I had been forced to sign documents previously before I was allowed to read them."
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