EGN NEWS DESK
Court-ordered mediation between a former Southern Baptist Convention president and legal professionals for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination failed final week — that means the dispute between the 2 events is probably going headed to a trial in November.
Johnny Hunt, a former Georgia megachurch pastor and denominational official who served as SBC president from 2008 to 2010, sued the denomination in 2023, alleging defamation. Hunt was named within the Guidepost report on abuse within the SBC — for allegedly sexually assaulting one other pastor’s spouse. He initially denied the incident and has since stated it was consensual.
Lawyers for Hunt have claimed the previous SBC president’s misconduct was a non-public matter and the SBC ruined his fame by making it public.
On September 19, the 2 sides met for a court-ordered mediation, which resulted in an deadlock, in keeping with a report filed Tuesday with the U.S. District Court of the Middle District of Tennessee.
The lawsuit has price the SBC’s Executive Committee about $3 million in authorized charges to date. Those authorized charges, together with about $9 million in charges associated to the Guidepost report, led the Executive Committee to place its Nashville, Tennessee, workplace constructing available on the market.
Last week, present SBC President Clint Pressley tweeted that no settlement had been reached. The risk of a settlement was raised throughout a current Executive Committee assembly.
“Despite what it’s possible you’ll be listening to, there isn’t a settlement with Dr Johnny Hunt,” Pressley tweeted on Thursday, the identical day because the mediation.
The trial for the lawsuit is ready to start November 12 in Nashville. Hunt’s lawyer lately petitioned the court docket to dam the SBC from calling a number of witnesses, together with Kevin Ezell, the president of the denomination’s North American Mission Board, on the trial. After stepping down as pastor of First Baptist Church in Woodstock, Georgia, Hunt served as a vice chairman at NAMB. His resignation from NAMB was introduced following the discharge of the Guidepost report in 2022.
No particulars of the settlement discussions had been made public. However, earlier this yr, legal professionals for Hunt claimed greater than $75 million price of damages.
Those damages, in keeping with court docket paperwork filed within the case, embody a lack of $610,000 in annual earnings and advantages, a lack of $360,000 a yr in e-book gross sales, a lack of $350,000 in talking charges and a further $80,000 in different misplaced earnings, for a complete of $1.4 million a yr. The legal professionals additionally declare that Hunt meant to work for 11 years — or till he was 80 — when the Guidepost report was revealed—for a complete alleged lack of $15.4 million. No supporting paperwork had been included to substantiate these claimed losses.
The court docket submitting additionally claims at the least $30 million in reputational hurt and at the least $30 million in emotional misery.
© Religion News Service
