Will this second litigation against the authority of the Directors end in the same Fiasco as the first?

In the first instance, the Master rendered a decision in favor of the Trustees and against the Board of Directors on a trial of the legal facts involved.

When the lawyers for the Board of Directors heard of the Master’s decision, they had the friends of the Board of Directors call a mass meeting of the branches and told them the decision of the Master and advised the branches to immediately boycott the literature — including Mrs. Eddy’s writings which the trustees alone published — since the Board of Directors was under an injunction not to interfere with the Trustees in their prosecution of the case.

The branches immediately boycotted the literature and sent a bulletin to all the branches in the Field telling them of the decision and advising them to do likewise, so when the three judges of the Supreme Judicial Court made their decision, the field was told that they decided the case on the influence their decision would have upon the Cause and not on the merits of the case as found by the Master’s report. But this highly broadcast claim is not true.

“The conclusion (of the Massachusetts, Supreme Judicial Court) that the power of removal of a trustee is now vested in the (ecclesiastical) Board of Directors is contrary to that of the Master, but it is in substance and effect the application of different legal principles to the facts found by the Master. The facts found by him are accepted in their entirety. The result which has been stated follows in law from those facts.”

“The result is that the exceptions* of the Defendants’ (the Board of Directors) to the Master’s report . . . so far as they relate to his (the Master’s) ruling, that the Directors had no power under the Deed of January 25, 1891, to remove a trustee and that the removal of Mr. Rowlands was ineffectual, . . . are sustained.”

“Bill dismissed, November 23, 1921.”

*The exceptions that the court must sustain the decisions of the ruling body of a religious institution according to the First Article in Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.


In the present courtcase, the Court is not being asked to rule on any ecclesiastical "decisions of the ruling body of a religious institution" (meaning the Mother Church); it is being asked to rule on the validity of the Complaint according to the civilly recorded, foundational Deeds of Trust; it is a wholly non-religious, secular Complaint.