Kirtland Temple. Disputed legacy Though the court dismissed the case, the publication of the findings of fact filed by the attorney representing the RLDS Church in the Painesville Telegraph effectively gave the false impression that the Kirtland Temple Suit had been won. The March 15, 1880, issue of the RLDS Church organ Saints' Herald also omitted the last two sentences which stated that the case was dismissed. Therefore, the case has been celebrated within the RLDS Church for its determination that the RLDS Church—and not the LDS Church—was the lawful successor to Joseph Smith's original organization. The legal meaning of the dismissal—whether it strengthened or overturned RLDS Church claims to the temple—is contested amongst historians and others to this day. In 1942, E. Guy Hammond, an Akron, Ohio attorney, wrote to RLDS Church leader Israel A. Smith: "From your letter I get the impression that you still cling to the notion that Judge Sherman's decision in Common Pleas at Painesville might be relied on. For my part, I cannot see, as explained before, that this decision can have the least effect, other than to dismiss the case, and to deny the relief prayed for. And if we should rely on it in any respect, in the first instance, it would but give the adversary opportunity to make us ridiculous." As late as 1986, historian Roger D. Launius, however, still upheld that "[i]t would be quibbling to suggest that the outcome of the Kirtland Temple Suit did not give the Reorganized church legal ownership of the property." In 2004, Loving countered: "These polemical proclamations of victory may have carried some weight in the court of public opinion .... The only difficulty, at least from today's perspective, was that the Reorganization's polemical proclamations of judicially determined legitimacy actually had no legal basis whatsoever. In fact, the legal result of the lawsuit was that the title stood exactly as it had before the case was filed; legally, nothing had been accomplished. This finding goes to the very essence of the matter and can hardly be dismissed as mere 'quibbling'." See also Temple Lot Case Notes Mormonism and law Kirtland, Ohio Community of Christ Ohio state case law Mormonism-related controversies Latter Day Saint movement in Ohio 1880 in United States case law Latter Day Saint temples 1880 in Christianity 1880 in Ohio 19th-century Mormonism Christianity and law in the 19th century Law articles needing