On December 4, 1978, two weeks after the deaths in Jonestown, Peoples Temple attorney Charles Garry filed a petition with the San Francisco Superior Court to dissolve the corporation. The petition sought to turn over Temple assets to the court “to recompense the families of the victims of the events in Guyana and to pay claims  against the corporation,” but asked to retain a sum of a million dollars for such functions as “payment of burial expenses.”

 

The decision to take the action was voluntary and by unanimous vote of “the surviving [members of the Board of] Directors in San Francisco,” because, as the petition noted, “[i]t is practically and morally impossible for the corporation to continued its existence.”

 

The petition noted that the Temple was the defendant in three pending lawsuits – Katsaris v. Peoples Temple, Cobb v. Peoples Temple, and Medlock v. Peoples Temple – and asked for guidance from the court on “how to proceed in those legal proceedings.”

 

            Petition for Dissolution of Peoples Temple

In January 1979, Superior Court Justice Ira Brown granted the petition and appointed attorney Robert Fabian as the Receiver of Temple assets. Judge Brown also ordered all claimants against the Temple to petition the court within four months. The number of claims grew to 709, seeking $1.8 billion against the organization.

 

Fourteen months later, Fabian presented a plan on disbursal of the six million dollars he had been able to recover. Most of the money went to settle wrongful death suits and to reimburse medical expenses of those people wounded at the Port Kaituma airstrip. He also allowed claims for burial expenses at the rate of $540 per decedent. The lawsuits mentioned in the petition for dissolution were dismissed without payments made to the plaintiffs.