claim deed so that he could proceed with the sale; Rogers, instead, demanded the same of Smith on behalf of the Church. Smith insisted that if he were to issue a quit claim deed, it would only open up the church to lawsuits based on the provenance of the Huntley deed, and insisted that the only sensible remedy was for the church to bypass the line of ownership through Huntley and sue to reclaim its ownership as the successor to the original church. As a result, in 1878 Rogers filed suit in the Lake County Court of Common Pleas, requesting that the court conclude that the RLDS Church held legal title to the Kirtland Temple. Among others, the RLDS Church named Smith, Forscutt, and John Taylor, the president of the LDS Church, as defendants in the action. Taylor was named as a defendant because the RLDS Church anticipated that the LDS Church might claim ownership of the temple as successor to the original church. However, neither Taylor nor other members of the LDS Church were likely aware of the suit because notice of the suit was limited to publication in the Painesville Telegraph, a local newspaper published in Painesville, Ohio. Judgment In February 1880, Judge L. S. Sherman of the Court of Common Pleas dismissed the case, in that the RLDS Church did not have possession, but opining in its findings that the RLDS Church was the true successor and had the right to possess the properties of the original church. Kim L. Loving, an attorney and former president of the Eastern Great Lakes Mission Center of the Community of Christ in Kirtland, Ohio, explained why the case was dismissed: "Suffice it to say that, legally, the Court dismissed the default case of the plaintiff, the Reorganized Church, because it failed to allege or prove one of the essential elements of a statutory cause of action to quiet title in Ohio, that the plaintiff was in possession of the property. As such, the involuntary dismissal, or nonsuit, legally was not an adjudication on the merits of the truth or falsity of the plaintiff’s contentions. Findings of fact in such a case are not legally binding on anyone, least of all upon absent defendants. It could be inferred that E. L. Kelley should have known as much, but failed to broach or explore these ramifications with the leaders of the Church."