Documents may include ‘donor lists, employee files’
Harvest Christian Fellowship in California, along with its founder and lead pastor, Greg Laurie, has accused the attorney for some 22 men and women, who allege they were sexually abused and trafficked as minors while living in Harvest-run homes in Romania, of acquiring more than 200,000 confidential Harvest documents from a former employee not authorized to have them.
Laurie and Harvest filed an ex parte application in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on April 1 against Jan Cervenka, the attorney from the law firm McAllister Olivarius who represents several plaintiffs alleging former Harvest Christian Fellowship pastor Paul Havsgaard abused them while running multiple children’s homes in Romania from 1998 until 2008.
The application sought to vacate an April 3 deadline for the church to file a motion to dismiss or move consolidated lawsuits from the alleged survivors to Romania until an ongoing dispute over how Cervenka acquired the trove of documents is settled. The request was granted on April 2.
The megachurch’s attorney, Howard M. Privette of the law firm Snell & Wilmer L.L.P., argued that they made several good-faith efforts to resolve the dispute over the documents but were unable to do so with Cervenka.
“Based on the highly limited information Plaintiffs’ counsel has provided to Harvest and to Magistrate Judge Pym, the materials in question include an unknown number of Harvest’s privileged and confidential documents (including, potentially, documents such as donor lists and employee records that may encompass information governed by individuals’ privacy rights, trade secrets, etc.),” Privette argued.
Privette also asked U.S. District Judge Sunshine S. Sykes, who granted the application in part, to preclude Cervenka from asserting that they waive any right to any relief they may seek regarding the confidential files if the deadline wasn’t extended.
“The dispute over Plaintiffs’ taking of Harvest’s records concerns more than 200,000 documents obtained surreptitiously and in an unauthorized fashion from a former Harvest employee who Plaintiffs’ counsel refuses to identify,” Privette argued. “Importantly, these documents were obtained outside of the discovery process; the Rule 26 conditions for making disclosures and for seeking discovery from any source have not yet occurred in this case.”
Cervenka said in an April 10 court filing, however, that Harvest’s claim is based on “unsupported arguments and mischaracterizations of the facts.”
“Harvest’s efforts to style itself as the aggrieved party and the documents at issue (‘Documents’) as ‘misappropriated’ distort reality beyond recognition. So does its abuse of ex parte procedures, based on manufactured urgency,” Cervenka claimed in the filing.
“If the Court elects to maintain the April 3, 2026, deadline, Harvest respectfully requests an order providing that Plaintiffs be precluded from asserting principles such as waiver or estoppel, or otherwise opposing any relief Harvest may seek with respect to the documents issue (including, potentially, to disqualify Plaintiffs’ counsel), on the basis of Harvest’s filing of the Forum Motion prior to seeking such relief.”
In Cervenka’s filing opposing Harvest and Laurie’s ex parte application, he claimed that the former Harvest employee who shared the documents with his firm in February was not a member of the church’s management team and did not sign a non-disclosure agreement, “or any confidential agreement on the termination of their employment with Harvest.”
He said his firm discovered a total of 16 potentially privileged communications but reviewed only two of them. Harvest, he stated, asserted privilege over the 16 documents, and they were returned to the church’s lawyers.
Cervenka accused Harvest’s attorneys of refusing to meet to resolve the dispute out of court until he obtained a court order forcing them to do so. In subsequent meetings, Harvest attorneys allegedly “made a blanket claim of ownership over all of the Documents, relying on Cal. Lab. Code § 2860.”
The law asserts that: “Everything which an employee acquires by virtue of his employment, except the compensation, which is due to him from his employer, belongs to the employer, whether acquired lawfully or unlawfully, or during or after the expiration of the term of his employment.”
Cervenka pushed back on the claim, noting that for decades the law has been applied “only to the employer’s confidential information and trade secrets.”
He has asked the court to deny Harvest’s ex parte application in its entirety and sanction their legal team for misconduct. He further requested that the court require the church to respond to letters from April 1, 7 and 8 by April 14. If they fail to settle the dispute, Cervenka asked the judge in the case to approve proceedings to resolve it in court.
The April 10 filing comes after the judge granted the request to vacate the April 3 forum motion deadline on April 2 but denied the request to preclude Cervenka from asserting waiver or estoppel in future arguments. Estoppel is a legal doctrine that prevents a person from contradicting their own previous actions, statements, or promises if another party relied on them to their detriment.
The Harvest children’s homes in Romania were reportedly shuttered some four years after suspicions of abuse were allegedly reported to former missions pastor Richard Schutte and investigated internally, but no employees or others reported the claims to authorities at the time.
In addition to Havsgaard, the lawsuit also names Harvest Christian Fellowship and accuses Laurie and Schutte of negligence for failing to prevent the abuse. The church has previously denied allegations that its leaders covered up abuse.
The plaintiffs in the case include: Marian-Liviu Mihaila, 38; Alexandra-Elena Langa, 28; Ioana Cosmina Pirvu, 32; Gheorghita-Bogdana Tici, 36; Maria Ghenciulescu, 37; Denis-Vasile Otcuparu, 32; Emilia-Mariana Tudosie, 38; Roxana-Maria Turuianu, 39; Cristina-Bianca Popescu, 33; and Alexandru Ioniță, 39; Marian Barbu, 33; Mihai-Constantin Petcu, 40; Cristian Aeroaiei, 36; Constantin-Alin Nitu, 36; Razvan-Georghe Nitu, 38; and George-Adrian Vasile, 33; Aurelian Busca, 37; his brother Alexandru-Cristian Busca, 38; Marian Dragne, 36; Bogdan Ionescu, 35; Alexandru Badaluta, 36; and Florin Cristian Caragea, 32.
Barbu is the lead plaintiff in the consolidated case, and the alleged victims all reside in Romania or other European countries.
In a Jan. 16 filing, attorneys for Laurie and Harvest Christian Fellowship told the judge that they have begun legal proceedings in Romania to determine whether the alleged survivors’ claims are “barred by the Romanian statute of limitations.”
“In each case, the plaintiff is a citizen of Romania who currently resides in Romania or in another country in Europe. None of them resides in the United States. In each case, the plaintiff purports to state claims based on allegations that the plaintiff suffered abuse in Romania at least 18 years ago,” the attorneys state in the federal court filing.
“Before these cases were filed in this Court, Defendant Harvest initiated civil proceedings in Romania seeking a determination of whether the plaintiffs’ claims are barred by the Romanian statute of limitations. Those proceedings are currently pending before the Romanian court in Bucharest,” they add.
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