Current Bible Answer Man Lawsuit Thrown Out of Court

For those who might be interested in the fact that Hanegraaff sued his brother in Christ, Bill Alnor, the following update from Bill explains the gist of it. I am delighted that the court felt the case was not even worth their time:


Dear Colleagues,

I am happy to announced that a three-judge panel just threw out
Christian Research Institute President Hank Hanegraaff's defamation
lawsuit against me.

This had to do with Hanegraaff's infamous EMERGENCY "The Post Office
Lost Our Mail and another company threw it out" fundraising plea of
January 2005 in which Hanegraaff alleged that the Post Office was
responsible for up to $200,000 in lost contributions.

In addition, in losing the case, which cannot be brought up again, CRI
and Hanegraaff are liable to pay for my legal fees (which presumably
may come from contributors' contributions), which included a spirited
defense by a national law firm and the ACLU. I personally did not expend any personal funds in my defense, nor will I see any profits from the repayment of our legal fees by CRI.

In the upcoming days I am going to put many of the court documents on
line, which seem to shows a pattern of false statements submitted to
try to buttress the outrageous law suit. Most important, *the documents we presented to the court did reveal that the United State Postal criminal investigators were "looking into Hanegraaff's unusual appeal," which is the very thing CRI/Hanegraaff denied.

In a USPS document submitted to the court that recounted a later postal
investigation of the case, only on *one day* was just *one tray* of CRI's mail accidentally delivered to a nearby company with a similar routing number, and that tray was *immediately returned to CRI.* There was never any three month diversion of CRI's mail to the OnTarget company, and no evidence was presented that any of it was thrown away.

There was apparently a drop off in CRI's contributions, but we have alleged the drop off was probably due to Hanegraaff's "Last Disciple"series of books that led to his products being removed from various bookstores from his traditional base.

There is also another matter that Christian leaders should be talking about,
especially in the wake of the dismissal of the Local Church
case, the law suit against me should have never been filed and
*I did not countersue.* Instead I filed a SLAPP motion that sought to throw the case out. (As a professor of media law, SLAPP means Stragegic Lawsuits against Participating Parties, which are often used by deep pocketed companies meant to silence their critics, which is against the law in many states, including California.)

CRI's case was clearly meant to silence me and bully me from reporting
the truth of this shameful fundraising attempt. I Corinthians 6 specifically
discussed matters like this. Paul says to not sue believers -- ever.

In a Christianity Today story, CRI's justification for the law suit
was something to the effect that my story exposing the alleged fraud
in the online Christian Sentinel amounted to behavior by me that was
not Christian. Therefore they could sue.

Never mind the fact that I sought CRI's response before publishing anything (they ignored me). Never mind my Christian books, hundreds of Christian articles, and numerous speaking engagements that have won many to Christ, and never mind my role as a former pastor and a man who has been deeply involved in Christian causes and evangelism for many years. And never mind that I had been on The Bible Answer Man broadcast on various occasions, have written for the CRI Journal and was the former news editor of The CRI Journal.

For my original story go to:

http://www.cultlink.com/news/CRIfraud.htm

I will say much more on this case later, but this is an update.

Respectfully

William M. Alnor, Ph.D.