KANSAS CITY, Mo. (ABP) — The ongoing Baptist struggle over 1,300 acres
around a Missouri Baptist conference center on the Lake of the Ozarks
has moved to federal court.
On June 23, the Missouri Baptist Convention
filed a motion to send its legal action in Camden County against
Windermere Baptist Conference Center to the U.S. District Court for the
Western District of Missouri. A federal judge will decide whether the case will remain in federal jurisdiction or be returned to Camden County.
The MBC is seeking the return of the property, which includes 943 acres Windermere transferred to National City Bank of the Midwest in late 2005 as part of a debt-restructuring plan. The bank sold the property to Windermere Development Co. Inc., owned by the late William R. Jester of Springfield, Mo.
Camden County Circuit Court Judge Kenneth Hayden dismissed the case against the conference center, its attorneys, several financial institutions and Jester in April last year. At that time, the judge determined the issues in the Camden County case mirrored legal action the MBC took in Cole County against Windermere, the Missouri Baptist Foundation, Missouri Baptist University, the Word & Way newspaper and The Baptist Home retirement-home system in 2002.
The convention filed the Cole County case against the five in an effort to rescind changes in each entity’s articles of incorporation that allowed each organization's board to elect its own members rather than having the convention — over which conservatives had cemented control in 2001 — do so. In 2008, Cole County Judge Richard Callahan ruled Windermere had acted legally. The Missouri Western District appeals court upheld that ruling in 2009.
In the separate Camden County lawsuit, the MBC acknowledged the Cole County ruling but claimed it still has a right to the land, charging that Windermere and former MBC executive director Jim Hill had acquired title to the land through fraud. The convention appealed the case on June 30, 2009.
The appellate court returned the case to Camden County on April 30, noting Judge Hayden had failed to indicate whether his ruling was final and that former MBC executive director Jim Hill and his firm, RDI Inc., had not been included in the dismissal.
The development company’s land currently is under bankruptcy protection. Windermere Development filed for bankruptcy on Jan. 14 to halt a foreclosure sale.
Jester, who passed away June 2, had filed a $15-million counterclaim against the convention, charging malicious prosecution, interfering with business, negligence, and false and misleading communications that kept other companies from doing business with him.
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Vicki Brown is associate editor of Word & Way, which partners with Associated Baptist Press in the New Voice Media network.