Jury trial for Johnny Hunt’s lawsuit against the Southern Baptist Convention canceled – at least for now
The jury trial for Johnny Hunt's lawsuit against the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), which was scheduled to begin on June 17, has been canceled.
Judge William L. Campbell Jr., who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee, announced the decision to cancel the jury trial was “due to the parties’ pending motions to reconsider,” the Baptist Press reported.
The judge previously issued a summary judgment dismissing all but one count of Hunt's lawsuit, which related to a social media post by former SBC President Bart Barber. The judge noted that the issues raised in the Guidepost Solutions report are of public concern and emphasized that Hunt did not provide adequate evidence for his claims of emotional and mental distress.
The case emerged from a Guidepost Solutions report investigating allegations of sexual abuse mishandling within the SBC. During this investigation, an incident involving Hunt was discovered, which led to significant claims against him, including a demand for more than $100 million in damages.
Hunt, former SBC president and a prominent pastor in the denomination, sued the SBC, the SBC Executive Committee, and Guidepost Solutions for defamation, claiming that Guidepost used Hunt as a “scapegoat” in a sexual abuse investigation conducted by the organization for the Executive Committee.
A May 2022 report from Guidepost’s investigation included allegations from an unidentified woman who claims Hunt sexually abused her in 2010, shortly after his two-year stint as SBC president. Hunt, who had served as senior vice president of evangelism at the North American Mission Board since 2018, resigned days before the Guidepost report became public, the Baptist Press reported.
The remaining count is related to then-SBC President Bart Barber’s Dec. 5, 2022, social media post in which Barber referred to Hunt’s actions as criminal.
“Hunt was the subject of a third-party investigation in response to allegations that he sexually assaulted a woman half his age in ways that would, to my knowledge, constitute a felony in any jurisdiction in the US,” Barber wrote in the post.
In September, the Executive Committee announced that it had spent more than $12.1 million on the 2021-2022 Guidepost Solutions investigation and subsequent legal expenses dating back to the 2021 fiscal year. The announcement was met with strong rebuke from at least one SBC reform advocate over the “gross mismanagement” by the Executive Committee.
The Executive Committee has announced the liquidation of long-held Southern Baptist assets, such as the SBC building in downtown Nashville, to pay for mounting legal expenses. Reportedly, $3 million has been spent defending the Executive Committee and Guidepost against the Hunt lawsuit. The contract with Guidepost during the initial investigation stipulated that Guidepost would have indemnity in any lawsuit resulting from the investigation, with the Executive Committee responsible for its legal bills, according to Baptist Press.
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