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the receivership could be stayed (rendered inactive) IF a $1 million
dollar bond were posted within 48 hours. In essence, if this condition
were met the receiver would be unable to take control while the Church
appeals his appointment. Title could not prevent the Church from
exercising its legal right of appeal, but he probably didn't think the
Church could deliver the cash on such short notice as required by his
order. If we had not been able to post a bond, the receiver could yet
have come in even during the appeal period.
So this time we were concerned about keeping the dapper Mr. Ray
from
trying to press himself into service (reportedly at $200 an hour). As
it turned out, the receiver did call Mr. Rader about Thursday noon to
say that he was coming! After a heated exchange between them on the
telephone, it was decided that two of our attorneys would confer with
him at a place off campus.
(If he had come to the campus, he could
have started charging for his time on assignment and in subsequent court
appearances -- an expensive proposition.) Word about the receiver's
threatened takeover Thursday afternoon electrified the Hall of Adminis
tration, and everyone began to brace themselves for another possible
confrontation with a receiver.
Casting for Bonds
The Church's attorneys put all our "lines into the water" in order to
explore every possibility of obtaining a bond. Bondsmen, like other
lenders, vary with their rates and amounts of collateral (in cash or
assets} the Church would be required to put up for the million dollar
bond. They wanted 33%, then 50% and finally 100% collateral. But for
unexplained reasons, the bondsmen, who are licensed by the State of
California, let us know they could not provide us with a bond.
Meanwhile the call went out to the brethren worldwide for a special
offering in case a technicality forced us to use a money bond. Now that
a surety bond has been posted, the special offering is necessary just
in case we must acquire a bond should, for some far out reason, the
court finds the sureties unacceptable after all.
"Surety Bond" the Inunediate Solution
The special offerings began coming in, but not to the extent needed to
cover the bond. Along the way our lawyers became aware of a perfectly
legal and sound way of providing the bond coverage in short order.
The
brethren in California were asked if they would like to volunteer to put
up surety pledges for whatever amount they felt they could afford. (Only
residents of California are eligible.) Mr. Rader asked only for amounts
within our means, and certainly not our homes, to bridge the crisis.
The result was a whopping total of $3,749,689 in individual sureties
as of this writing!
The question still remained: Would Judge Title accept this kind of bond?
A visit to court Thursday by lawyers from both sides indicated that he
would, but it had to be two million dollars instead of the one million
originally required, since he said some of the sureties might not be
acceptable for one reason or another. Our brethren easily met the need
with $2,374,307 worth of sureties! On Friday the Attorney General argued
in court that the amount of the surety bond was too low, and then he
argued that it should be in cash and not in surety pledges. But the
judge did not accept either of those two objections, stating that the
sureties were legal. It remains that the attorney general has ten days
,