great good morning counsel and we do apologize that we're late we that is one problem with the arguments of this nature is it just requires more time generally but more importantly we had a rather lengthy argument and many many questions so thank you for your patience and we will now begin and if i mispronounced names they do apologize capacity to say they did not submit an affidavit showing that the defendants or excuse me the plaintiffs did not exist they did not present any evidence that the plaintiffs  to nd in their arguments to the circuit court and then their arguments to this court i p l p constantly conflates foundational objections as to the admissibility of evidence jury facts which they did not preserve with a contention that the allegations in the complaint and the allegations in our affidavit were conclusory evidentiary facts are facts which are admissible in evidence and especially facts which can be directly perceive a party has to lay a proper foundation hand are factual inferences or questions of ultimate fact which would require a logical step to reach the question to reach the factual determination applications of law to facts and pure profit fissions of law in this case you have to david contains evidentiary facts to support the ultimate facts and we did not have to produce anything because the burden of proof is on them so even if the plaintiffs complaint was entirely based on conclusions and the affidavit submitted to the court was entirely conclusory which it was not that still would not be a basis to dismiss the complaint with prejudice the only basis to dismiss the complaint would be based upon section t and because causes of action exist in this type of case the circuit court would have been justified only in striking the complaint and wiring amendment instead the claiming that the dispute is not just issue of all as it is a dispute among the religious organizations or among religious believers within an organization and that is untrue under illinois law because this dispute can p decided to a legal principles which we pleaded including an association of principles including property as william gothard directed and therefore under this record the dispute is just issued a nd they moving forward unincorporated association there is no need or these types of associations to be registered in illinois and therefore for religious organization religious associations to be registered in their own way and therefore that it's not a basis for dismissal and even if the organisations had to have been registered in illinois under appellate precedent the right the remedy contrary to their arguments we pleaded the existence of an association with they argue that there is no written association agreement and the of the circuit court seemed to accept that argument however that's not true under illinois law and under both supreme court precedent and statutory law the civil practice act does not require a written agreement and under the supreme court's precedent in all that is necessary to establish an association is a group of people or or or entities working together for a common purpose by mutual consent and all of that can be in for through conduct and if that is the situation then an implied agreement is in place and once the association relationship is established it creates contractual and  among the various entities and at that point though these are enforceable obligations there is also we also pleaded an implied trust which creates which the a supreme court specifically recognized as a cause of action and in those searches in that case that would create the do shiri duties as well and even if there were not a contractual agreement there is also promissory estoppel which we pleaded as well as unjustice richmond which did not require contractual among the parties and i have thirty seconds left which i guess the only d other issue would be that we were denied the plaintiffs were denied leave to amend and because this is the st attempt to amend and the complaint was the case was not very old it is reversible error not to defer to him and at this point i guess i would take questions all right thank you counsel just do you have any questions yes i do  well for two reasons one we can prove our case based upon a neutral legal principles a religious association is governed by the same rules as a nonprofit association and under the under the arrangements that these parties had the neutral legal principles which apply to all associations would apply to this association a religious association and there are given especially that there are no doctrinal disputes here on this record and i b l p did not challenge this point in the circuit dispute as to how this property is to be used when it was promised to be used for these various ministries and is not being used for these streets and not being used the property is not being maintained as it was promised to be there as usual nuke neutral legal principle there's also the issue of wm gothard yes the founder of this organization and the person who wrote all of the doctrine for this organization all of the religious doctrine who created the theological understanding or this organisation is the person who can d being egypt and then he left that war mo position to go to my sinai to get the ten commandments when he came back he would be able to say no the original purpose of our religion was not to  organised this religious organisation william gother has the ability to opine as to what entity is carrying out the original purpose of the organization and whether the property of this organization is being properly used so those are the two reasons and i would point out that in this case the just just  uniquely able to make a determination of the founder of this organization as to whether the i b l p is using properly according to the original followers and a guide for the various ministries which are carrying out his work and we argue that i p l p the non for profit corporation is simply a holding not for profit corporation does not mean that he does not not still the head of the broader i p l association and in tell you versus riverside boulevard church there was a similar argument made and in that case the appellate court specifically held an unincorporated religious body  correct plaintiffs however it was misnamed in the complaint there was a misnomer and i believe that that should be corrected on an amended complaint and this is not a basis to dismiss not necessarily i believe what you do need is a a party donating money or donating property to another and have the property  in the other the trustees names in order to and that creates an equitable or resulting trust i believe that is one basis of a result correct yes yes and it was donated that's why we think it was donated to the association more generally and then later it was placed into the holding company  stamp it has aspects of a constructive trust a resulting trust or a just a more general implied trust and there is a point where in a case where the courts say look the chancellor makes this determination on opponent puts great weight on it that there was never an offer and accepted therefore there was never a contract in the cake you are indicating could go either way other than a contract what is your position associations are governed by contractual principals and there is no and since there can be an implied contract in fact which does not require an offer or a relationship with the do sharing duties to one another just a circle be an implied joint venture or an implied partnership or an implied contract in fact in none of these does or have to be a formal offer and acceptance or the se exist so an association can be implied through conduct and because of that at that point when it is implied through conduct then the association relationship is governed by contractual princip that there was no offer except as they all of them talked about no consideration where's the consideration for this agreement a change in the legal relationship is sufficient consideration so therefore by just as by entering into a joint venture each party changes their legal relationship and that is sufficient consideration to support such a contract and similarly when you enter into an association you change your legal relationship and that is sufficient consideration to support p agreeing to hold the property for the benefit of all the other ministries and each of the ministries agreeing to take actions to spread  understanding of the bible and understanding of biblical concepts to everyday life that is those agreements the agreement to do those actions constitutes consideration as well as the change of legal relationship entry into the association what is the relationship between these parties look the various plane of silk the defendant is a a holding company for the various ministries and it holds the property and the the the cash for these various ministries and then supports these ministries through financial support and use of the property and then the ministry use the individuals in the various ministries  then teach the seminars and teach dr gothard understanding of how biblical principles affect everyday life and how biblical belief in these biblical any religious overtones and also simply a a box into which property was deposited as a corporation i d do not believe that and we contend that the i b l p board of directors are not religious authorities of the i p l p association they are simply custodians of property and the the i b l p has an obligation under its by law to support the various ministries and educational entities and that would be the only true religious overtones associated with i p o proper it it holds this property for the benefit of these various minist it wasn't written but whether it was verbal or by conduct and it is that as that agreement that gives rise to all of the other relationships that basically the thrust of your argument yeah i think that the motion to dismiss will not ranted leaving aside the question of whether you should have had an opportunity to lead but would that be correct if the agreement was improper wh if if there were not enough facts to allege and an agreement then the circuit court would have been justified in striking the  and although if i could just add on one quote here chicago green trimmers association versus murphy seems to have been a less stringent standard than a pure agreement to create an association so some of the counts for an association would maybe survive even without an agreement under chicago green trimmers association versus murphy and lp to these various ministries and i would argue the implied trust very well could be that could be a stablished s if i have not alleged the conduct sufficiently then yes the complaint would fail rate in my ears what you the minimum threshold or allegations of fact that would create an association with a minimum threshold well i think there would have to be facts which show that people are right cities are working together for a common purpose by mutual consent so there would have to be facts of of people or as it sees working together which i think we  corporate resolutions by a p l p as well as the people working together using the seminars and using the same doctrine as dr dobson so the common purpose is a pretty large umbrella here because you've said that the defendant here is is merely a holding company to facilitate the use of the properties of finances and the use of actually the the building property for conducting seminars etc but it is the plaintiffs that actually did the ministry yes yes that's true dad so your common purpose is not only those the pla actually doing the ministry but the defendant who's who creates i guess the structure to allow that to go forward and that's a lot more to get and finances the structure to right it does have religious or charitable but religious would be our more significant issue in this case overtones i b o p exists to  we've already agreed that usually the the existence of an entity is a question of fact and it is generally left for the trier of fact is it a proper place to determine if two thousand six hundred and fifteen a proper place to determine this it all before any discovery or anything of that nature has been accomplished well other to six th capacity to sue all of that is with in the purview of the defendant in presenting their affirmative defense since that wasn't the case here i would say it is  construed closely construed or are we to take the allegations as alleged and strew the facts in the complaint are to be taken as true all inferences which could be drawn from those facts have to be drawn in favor of the plaintiff and dismissal with prejudice is only proper if there is no set of facts for which a plaintive could prove his or her case and therefore if the complaint is missing some facts then the remedy for the trial court is to strike the pleading and require amendments pleadings are to be liberally construed to do justice between the parties and case i cite in my sob versus smith says that as long as the defendant understands the allegations against that that is a sufficient reading under illinois law and the issues standing or capacity to sue for the existence of the parties are questions that could be determined later on on summary judgment or a trial how long have the case been pending when the motion to were december of one teen i believe both physical look and complied with i can check that too but i was just i wanted to verify that fact so between the filing date and this dismissal date had there been asked you know significant court date so were you know what was what was going on well there was just a briefing schedule i heard on the motion to dismiss ok and then there was oral argument on on a motion to dismiss the st complaints and and that was that the circuit court then dismissed the complaint with prejudice well my question may be a bit premature here but what what is the actual goal of this particular litigation as it's planned the goal to be placed in a either a some type of equitable trust to support the various ministries properly or to obtain a damages awar d regard against i p l team for the property and financing that was supposed to have occurred with one small exception the one exception is the complaint for the reinstatement of william gothard and that would only be proper if the trial court church can replace a priest in a given parish so we would argue for this one small exception for the reinstatement of william's gothard he would have the ability to as the see is not one of the plaintiffs because that's not consistent with some of the other goals of the litigation well he's the one of the plaintiffs because the ministries have the right to direct as association members d have the right to this property so as he is not a part of this litigation because he individually doesn't have the right to do so the ministries have the right to appoint the director of i p l for a director of peace but doesn't he have any personal space in terms of money in embassy and the i take that back no life purpose power team test the stake in money because life purpose power teams the corporation right yet the teen who has been providing the financial support for embassy university when i saw so if you had a chance to possibly go back to the trial court and do some answers you will have an opportunity to respond after council going forward if you so choose that can your out of out council i'm going to do the same thing with you can you say your name seems for me because i'm struggling with ak i represent the institute in basic life principles d it's referred to as i p l p in the briefing i i think st what i'd like to start with is this this argument that coun made in his papers and again that he should have been given an opportunity to replace it he says it's reversible error the judge fullarton to not allow him the chance to replete but that's actually not what judge fullerton ruled judge fullerton very clearly ruled that the the council had a right to file an amended plaiting naming different planets that that was the ruling  the reason why he ruled that way is the complaint well it was clear that there was only really two entities that were at issue on the plaintiff side of the v one was embassy university there are a couple accounts that are on point saying that embassy university was you know they believed was supposed to be financially and spiritually and morally supported by ideal p and that wasn't happening so d and this he university was claiming they were a member of this claimed association and that they were wrong and injured and there were attempts made to spell out who they were and why they had a cause of action with regard to embassy we filed a motion to dismiss and used public filings public records that the court took judicial notice of which were also conceded by opposing counsel that embassy university was played as an illinois not for profit corporation but in fact it was dissolved in two thousand and fourteen it didn't exist  until counsel agreed in his papers and this came up during the oral argument in fact it just came up again now that you have a real entity isn't a duly formed entity called life purpose judge fullerton asked him during oral argument where's life purpose plaintiffs that this could have been brought in i suppose although i argued strenuously as i could that the whole case should be thrown out because these were not causes of action but judge fullerton clearly said in the argument you know the claim the so she a she was not a plaintiff in the case and during the argument judge fullerton and i'm looking at the transcript is asking him you know him multiple times for example on page twelve of the transcript so you're asking for relief on behalf of the ip o p s socialisation answer yes so mr celko allege that there was an association and the claims were on behalf nine of the association but they were not a plaintiff to the case these other plaintiff these other claims plaintiff there was nothing said about them there's nothing said about them in the complaint why they were harmed who they are in my church at bashed i think you'd call these missionaries maybe there was an affidavit that said well they could be or they are believers volunteers i don't people in other countries who mr gothard claimed i guess were missionaries but there but the actual people who could have claimed to harm what it was it was embassy and the association judge fortune was clear on that although i disagreed with the decision but that they could replayed and name the new plants about a week later and i didn't know this until i read the transcript apparently counsel or someone from his law firm went into court and asked judge fullerton to change the order so that it also applied to the dismiss prejudice as to life purpose but judge fullerton correctly wouldn't do that he said life purpose is not a plaintiff was not a plaintiff the order does not apply to them and so you got the final order of the case which is the plaintiff's counsel saying there are no new plaintiffs and that was his decision and that's why there's the final decision of why we're up on appeal judge fullerton absolutely said they could replete and name like purpose mr gothard i reckon if he has a cause of action or the association and he gave them that right and they chose not to and they entered a foreign order that counsel said there are no other plaintiffs so that's respectfully not a criticism of judge fullerton that's on plaintiff and appellant so that's what happened with the replating and that's why that argument i think fails but  also and i'll be very brief because i have short time but you know i argued strenuously i as i could in the lower court that these were not causes of action for several reasons number one all of the claims all of their claims depend upon finding that there is this association the implied contract is based upon an association agreement the fiduciary duty is  claim that members of an association always there for to share a duty they're all depending on a finding of an association and i've been studying up on this since this case and doing this appeal there is no case anywhere ever and they cite cases even from maryland where anybody is a claim is asserted against anyone who says i'm not part of your association i don't have mutual assent i don't agree i'm not part of  any unified position of different entities i'm not in a court of saying too bad all of your assets your real property all have to be placed in trust the requisite element and counsel just said it again the requisite elves element for an association to exist and each of their cases is i'm looking for it the mutual consent and that they act together here judge fulton asked me in the record is there an association situated i said no and the reason i can say that with such confidence is because they pled that at least beginning in two thousand and fourteen i p l p does not agree to any of this ideal p is run by a board of directors and they absolutely do not agree to further the teachings of bill gothard ib lp does not agree to sell bill gothard books as as they are alleging we have to do i b l p does not agree to bring back agreement to act in common purpose and then they plead that i b o p does not agree in my mind that's akin to saying i'm showing you for an oral contract and here's my pleading number one there's no mutual there's no meeting of the min and there's no consideration but then you somehow conclude yeah there's an oral contract where you pled that elements necessary for your claim don't exist and here they pled that there's no agreement there's no case law where anyone is pulled in and held to an association where they're saying i'm not part of it there's no case law and nothing they cite that says well even if this association never existed that it's in perpetuity and one could never get out is  that what they're claiming the laws none of their cases support any of that and further i guess just a quick way touch on this point by the way i b l p is a ministry it's a stand alone ministry even in their pleading  it's been in existence and since the sixty's these other the other purported mit ministry embassy was founded years like decades and decades later it's not it's not correct based on their own pleading to say i ministry it's a it's a religious organization it's very conservative they're furthering the teachings of jesus christ the book is the bible not mr gothard didn't write it god did and that's what they're furthering what the claim or the claims the eleven claims is tell ib lpn their board of directors what ministries they should support financially and spiritually they're looking for a court order how does support ministries spiritually and morally and whether they can ever stop supporting missions there is no claim there's no case none of their association cases finally i guess just to highlight what is actually going on here and this is in the papers it's unfortunate it's actually quite sad it's an example of a religious leader who led to the church to ministry for decades and he left it's unfortunate he voluntarily resigned voluntarily resigned amid bad allegations he wants back in the i p l people or does not want to back and it's no different than other examples that we see in the papers there's a church in south barrington will create some people said that that pastor did some bad things he says he didn't in rolling meadows harvest bible some people say he's doing some bad things he says i absolutely didn't this would this is never been done before but this is an attempt at a cause of action to say yeah i'm out i'm the pastor who's out but because when i was in i sort of ran things as i'll call it an association so therefore get me back in control make them sell my books they have to support my ministry i get control over the real property take the deed of the church and put it into an association all  this is my opinion respectfully dangerous ground because this is never been done but that is what is happening or what is attempting to happen here is the ousted pastor trying to gain control of the ministry that the board says i'm sorry we want nothing to do with you after those allegations and after by the way you voluntarily resign so with that any questions that you have for me just shostak do you have any need to plead or did the plaintiff need to plead foundational fact in their complaint well the court doesn't need to accept conclusions and the whole case was based on the pleading allegation that there was an association and they pled that there was no mutual agreement that i b l p did not agree to be in the association so not only was it a conclusion but it was contradicted by their own pleading now you write  you write in your briefs here that there was no jurisdiction the lower court had no jurisdiction that there are limitations on that court below but never raised that below if you so i actually did  people make his decisions as a board of director that the deed is in the name of id opi that i p o peas a standalone ministry and their board of directors does not want bill gothard back and does not want to shell his books does not want to support his ministry the ideal p should be able to make those decisions free from the court that a court should never direct a ministry or a church to do those things that that's you know that's barred by the doctor there before correct no that's incorrect i b o p is a standalone ministry it has been and i went through some name changes but it was originally organized by you know according to the complaint mr got to risk putting this together in the late a it's if you're familiar with the church it's no different than that concept of you know harvest bible rolling meadows is you know is the believers that people come to donations and this example is one i think it originally they had a different name and then they came up with the name i b l p even later than that but that was another glaring weakness in the case you know like life purpose or if it was embassy wasn't for no until after two thousand and five so you know it was it's it's wrong for a lot of reasons respectfully i would say but the there's the association the the other plaintiff wasn't  around for forty years how can they be part of an association when the property is given when i b l p is formed it's really sixty's and of course none of this is written down there's not a piece of paper that was emitted an argument  in association does not need a written agreement i have no further question thank you thank you justice justice justice dragons and do you pastor by a ministry later who's put out a mint very serious allegations to come back again and so what what the what the complaint alleges is that in the mind of mr gothard while he was running the organization he was at the top of the organization that in his mind he alleges it was for some common purpose but that was all before he left in two thousand and fourteen he goes on to allege that in tw and fourteen that i would know i mean i know that there is no mutual consent when i b l p is formed or when the property is donated because the other entities don't exist at the time so there is no association if it's only ideal p for the st you know thirty years or thirty five years that your that's your position never ever was there an agreement among all these there certainly is no written agreement no the question is was there any agreement now whether it was written oral or conduct was there any agreement prior to two thousand and fourteen oral agreement that i don't know ok i have nothing else thanks to the act in two thousand and fourteen other then the resignation of dr gothard what what happened was there a leather a communication or some indication from this stand alone ministry that we no longer hear about what you're doing we're not going to we're not on the same page what happened well what happened was in two thousand and fourteen there was a web site that started by a bunch of women who claimed for for decades that they were being sexually assaulted and i know that what does id i'm sorry i keep saying it wrong but what does your client do or say to the rest of these men a mission that had the same initials in different countries of the world what did they say that said we don't know you anymore answer your question directly there was a statement made on the web site because this was all very big news and very well publicized that you know the connection with dr gothard is is severed and you know he's even admitted to some wrongdoing and so dr gothard is no longer part of the ministry that was done in two thousand and fourteen when he resigned and then shortly after was the massive lawsuits filed in two thousand and fifteen well how then did your client become a stand alone ministry it's filed documents with the state did it do something to say we are now we are this entity but we are we are stand alone and we have our own teachings yes well that's that's was always the case what i'm saying is that this what what is saying is it's a holding company and that they are always in association that's something i'm just telling you that is not accurate ideal p has always been a standalone entity ib lp holds the deed to the real estate ideal  has its corporate charters this was part of the lower court record because it was attached to the motions showing that they were always a standalone entity and there's no mention in any of their corporate records of being part of an association nor is it on the deed it was it's just a thing that was manufactured after dr gothard chose to try to get back in to say well wait a minute no this was actually always an association that's how i get control before that it wasn't it wasn't even a thing he left and there was a statement made that he no longer part of the ministry there was nothing we had to do or needed to be done to say that there is a change with the corporate structure because a corporate structure is always been ideal ministry a how does the distribution or resolution of a property agreement or a property disagreement involve the because they're asking to take the deed to the property and place it into trust to further the teachings of dr gosar to use that dr gothard was a party here and i was told no and that i suppose he could be but he isn't so how at this stage of these proceedings is is this distribution of alleging that the real estate and the finances had to be used for this claimed association and for the further into bill gothard ministry they used that term a lot in the plaiting that it's to further the teachings of bill gothard ok but and and if this is and what the church and what i p o p would say is that we're furthering the teachings of jesus christ and should not be directed by a court to is the significant factual dispute between your client and the plaintiffs and maybe some additional parties who may be named how can bat issue be decided on a two complaint to clean the stuff up to add the association to add life purpose and maybe add mr gothard and they were given that chance to do that and they told the court there are no additional plaintiffs all right for you go on let me say that is still not resolving this even if they played facts and you pled facts or denied facts we still have a factual disagreement which is not something  of the parties and they were giving a chance and they chose to forgo that but i also think that the the as i said their entire claim rush on this association argument that there has to be an association and they have pled that the ideal p does not mutually consent which is a requisite element so i think they and there's not a single case there is not a single precedent and there's no case that they can point to to say in this case that party was saying i don't agree i'm not part of your claimed association but the court said otherwise or you can't get out of an association or you are part of an association there is no analysis in any case there's no precedent that someone says i'm not in an association and a court says yes you are and so on the two thousand six hundred and fifteen grounds with them saying that i feel peace specifically says they're not part of this that that is something that can be decided with prejudice it will counsel and if there were cases in precedent we would not be in a position to have to make decisions all of us would be working on another case at this point in time but the fact remains there are facts here that we're not taking evidence on we're not we haven't been discovery on we haven't done things about a fly in the face of the purpose in motion thank you counsel for your argument and answering our questions and i'm now go back to mr plaintiffs and  we can bring under univer under the union of technical engineers versus law should notice each member of an association can bring a claim on behalf of the broader association in equity so there is standing and we brought this to judge forward finn's attention for the four for the each member of the association which is each point of to bring equitable claims on behalf of the association nd by entering into the association relationship each of the various so these were the right plaintiffs to bring these actions in that we we had to bring we were allowed to bring equitable claims on behalf of the because those claims were held individually by each association member so by giving a leave part without telling us who those parties were or how their claims would be different from those of the existing plaintiffs that doesn't help us in any way and the problem the problem was we had no ba what plaintiffs could possibly be or out there second just generally listening to mr council's argument all of this is argument none of it was supported by evidence and therefore it had to have been denied at this point that those the motions to dismiss the present that there was no use he presents all these arguments but he doesn't support any of them with an affidavit there's just daddio will be presented a great many arguments to present to the trier of fact that he didn't provide the provide support or evidence for those facts and therefore we have and a half we should we need an opportunity to bring those cla you i do have one mr spillikins admitting if you did today that life purpose was probably a proper plaintiff why didn't you take the judge up on his offer to find out with additional and i simply misnamed it as embassy university i moved in i went to mr garcia claims that he didn't know about this that this was a set status and one of my colleagues had to come in and we tried to get clarification on that but since embassy university was life purpose power teams i did not feel it to file an amended complaint because life purpose power teams was embassy university it was a simple miss no and we pointed that out to the judge and he didn't clarify his rule but the reason why i didn't file the amended complaint was i believe it would have been frivolous to add life purpose power teams with the same allegations when the judge dismissed embassy university which was a name for life purpose power tools and the judge thank you very much and thank you counsel both for your participation this morning we will take this matter under advisement and we will issue a decision in due course and at this point we will leave the meeting thank you thank you thank you for