Rev. Wendell Griffen of the National Baptist Convention Says that Suit Filed by Former Disgraced National Baptist President, Henry Lyons, Was Dismissed

The National Baptist Convention USA has settled one lawsuit with a disgraced former president who sued after losing a re-election bid in 2009, the convention's parliamentarian and general counsel told state convention presidents attending an annual convention in Kansas City, Mo., Sept. 6.

Wendell Griffen, a former judge on the Arkansas Court of Appeals and pastor of New Millennium Church, a year-old congregation dually aligned with National Baptists and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, informed the state president's board meeting that a judge in Washington, D.C., dismissed former president Henry Lyons' lawsuit alleging breach of contract and fiduciary duty claims and fraud in May. Another lawsuit is pending, according to a convention news release.

According to an online transcript of a May 13 hearing in the civil division of Superior Court of the District of Columbia, Associate Judge Judith Bartnoff said she was satisfied that Lyons believed his landslide loss at last year's convention wasn't conducted properly but that he faced "significant legal barriers" in seeking to have the vote invalidated.

"The first is the general First Amendment principle that courts don't get involved in the internal workings of religious societies," she opined.

Even more significant, the judge ruled, is a provision in the convention's constitution that says all disputes about leadership, rights and procedures of the body will be resolved by vote of the convention and not subject to litigation in civil courts.

The judge said courts normally don't get involved in internal governance of churches unless property rights are involved and that he didn't recall every seeing a case where an religious body's constitution explicitly denied members the right to sue in secular courts.

Lyons, a former rising star in the denomination forced to resign in 1999 for admitted fiscal and moral improprieties, served nearly five years in prison for swindling nearly $5 million from the convention's corporate partners. After his release from prison in 2003, Lyons claimed to be a changed man and ran for the presidency a second time in 2009.

He sued unsuccessfully to block last year's election, claiming that changes to convention bylaws setting voting privileges violated the constitution. After gaining about 18 percent of the vote in his loss to current president Julius Scruggs, Lyons filed a second lawsuit claiming he was denied due process in appealing the vote.