EPISCOPAL DIOCESE
Former priest allowed to proceed with suit
A judge ruled Friday that a defamation and breach-of-contract lawsuit brought by a former Batavia priest against the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York can proceed.
State Supreme Court Justice John A. Michalek held that the Rev. Simon B. Howson, 42, the former rector of Batavia’s St. James Episcopal Church, “has raised triable fact issues” that can be decided in a state court by a jury.
Howson was suspended in October 2004. He sued the diocese a short time later, claiming that the bishop retaliated against him after Howson had accused another priest of sexual harassment.
Michalek’s ruling clears the way for the start of jury selection in Buffalo on Thursday. At the final pretrial hearing in Howson’s three-year-old lawsuit, Michalek rejected church arguments that the dispute could only be handled by a church ecclesiastical tribunal.
In October 2004 Howson was removed as head of the Batavia church by Bishop J. Michael Garrison.
Howson’s attorney, Andrew P. Fleming, said his client seeks full reinstatement as an Episcopal priest and back pay and benefits totaling about $300,000.
Howson, 42, now a hospital chaplain with limited religious duties in the Fresno, Calif., area, was not present for Friday’s court session. Court officials said Michalek, who will be presiding at the jury trial, is likely to begin calling witnesses to the stand before the end of this month.
Fleming on Friday said the job dispute involves attempts earlier this decade by an admitted homosexual Episcopalian priest now serving in Massachusetts, who used Howson as a spiritual adviser in Batavia, to have sex with Howson, who is heterosexual but unmarried.
Diocesan attorney Brendan P. Kelleher asked the judge to summarily dismiss Howson’s lawsuit on the claim that the dispute is a purely religious controversy to be handled only by church authorities. Fleming argued that Howson’s dispute involves the state Human Rights Law.
After the mid-morning hearing, Kelleher could not be reached to comment on a possible appeal of Michalek’s ruling.
Fleming said that while Howson seeks a verdict restoring his rights to practice as an Episcopalian priest, “he does not want to return to Western New York under this bishop [Garrison].”
Howson was suspended in October 2004 because of allegations about stealing church funds, forging church documents and misrepresenting himself. In August 2007, the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York announced that his priestly rights were revoked and he was removed from the priesthood. Thursday, Fleming stressed to Michalek that all the allegations the bishop lodged against Howson were “false” and called the bishop’s actions against Howson “crazy, outrageous and disingenuous.” Fleming told the judge he personally deposed the admittedly homosexual priest recently in Massachusetts and confirmed that priest’s “sexual harassment” of his client.
Fleming also told the judge that shortly before Howson was removed by the bishop, several senior members of his Batavia church had urged Howson to take his sexual harassment complaints about his fellow priest to the police.
