I don't believe this has come for some time, particularly in this context.
In 1953 the President of the WTBTS, along with officers who would later constitute the governing board, travelled to Scotland to testify in court in behalf of a ministerial servant Douglas Walsh who was pleading for exemption from national service. The court records, similar to those for the Contin case, are available on line. Affixed to the PDF I located ( 99 megabytes) is an excerpt from the 1954 Yearbook, beginning on page 133, describing the intent of the appearance of the officers. Beginning on page 133:
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MORE ACTION ON THE LEGAL FRONT
In 1953 it was determined that a test case should be prepared to establish whether the Society was a religious organization and whether it regular ministers. The purpose was to meet the unfair situation whereby the conscription laws providing exemption for regular ministers of religion were being construed in such a manner as to deny Jehovah's witnesses the benefit of such laws. The man selected had to meet many qualifications, personal, ministerial, official, narrow age limit, and, of course, he had to be one who had been called upon to register for national sevice. Douglas Walsh of Dunbarton, Scotland, was eventually chosen, he being both a pioneer and a congregation overseer. By the close of 1953 plans were completed and strategy laid for the test case in Scotland. The aim was to determine legally whether Jehovah's witnesses were a religious organization and whether pioneer and congregation overseer Douglas Walsh was a regular minister. In January 1954, a preliminary hearing in Edinburgh detrminate that Walsh had a relevant case and Lord Strachan ordered it to go to proof. The case was set down for November 23, 1954.
The Watch Tower Society's vice president, F. W. Franz, from the Brooklyn Headquarters was first ot go into the witness box. He outlined from the Bible the beliefs of Jehovah's witneses, especially those that differed from orthodox religions. Then Hayden Covington dealt with the organization, ceremonies and practices. Grant Suiter, secretary-treasurer of the Society, covered the finances of the Society and showed that contributions from the literature distribution did not meet the cost of the worldwide missionary work and that voluntary contributions of Jehovah's witnesses themselves made up the difference. ... Douglas Walsh described his work as a pioneer and congregation overseer. The whole of the evidence took seven days to present and covered 762 pages of manuscript.
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The situation here reminds me of an incident in a local hospital several years ago. A man who was admitted as a patient was put under sedation for mania. While still under the effect of either his mania or the prescription, he confronts the staff on the floor where he is interned and demands to be released. The head of the staff tells him he can not be released until a doctor signs a release form. The patient become angry and violent. He is restrained by two orderlies - and somehow they fall down an elevator shaft killing the staffworkers.
The hospital sues the patient.
In this case, the WT in a foreign court several decades back develops an elaborate case to equate their ministerial staffs as the equivalent of other religious clergies. The court in Scotland examines the claims and find them insufficient in the face of the stipulations they placed on national service (vs. those in the United States). The court concedes that WTBTS represents a legitimate religion, but will not give an exemption from national service that will cover the bulk of the congregations of kingdom halls.
Flash forward to the present day and tables are turned. In the US, the claims of the WTS are taken more seriously by the state and prior to the case appearing before the jury, no effort has been made to diminish the WTS claims about ministerial servant equivalency. Believe me, I have got that much correspondence from the students.
Now we have a situation equivalent to the patient and the orderlies falling down the elevator shaft and the counsel for defense begins to claim that there never were any of those ministers around here anyway, just rank and file people.
Now would the history of ministerial appointment be a significant matter to contemplate as responsibility to notify the state is examined?
