Chronicling the high cost of our legal system
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A stretch? The security chief for Missouri-based Joyce Meyer Ministries has been charged with the murder of his wife and family, and lawyers pursuing a wrongful-death case now say they want to include the financially successful ministry as a defendant. [ABA Journal, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, UPI]
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Updating our August 21 item: The Health Department in Middletown, Connecticut issued a “citation against St. Vincent DePaul Place on Tuesday for accepting some donated food from unlicensed kitchens. 
The department has asked the nonprofit group, which runs a soup kitchen, to comply with the health code by accepting food that comes only from licensed kitchens.” [Middletown Eye] The state’s attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, is asking the legislature to loosen rules for charitable kitchens. [Hartford Courant] We covered the Connecticut pie menace nearly ten years ago [Dec. 13, 1999] and have since noted legal crimps put on cookies for troops, church potlucks, and much more.
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The Wikipedia entry on that topic makes one list of the ten best Wikipedia entries. We covered the Ernie Chambers lawsuit here, here, and here. Law Is Cool points out that the entry for “Lawsuits Against the Devil” deserves a look as well. More: Advocates’ Studio (noting that “no pocket is deeper” than the Almighty’s).
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The Rev. Jeremiah Cummings, who sued the makers of the film “Religulous” for allegedly portraying him as money-hungry and a charlatan (clip), has himself been sued by two former followers who claim Cummings prevailed on them through a “scheme of deception and lies” to hand over several hundred thousand dollars in donations and investments which he then turned to personal use. [OnPoint News, Courthouse News with PDF link to complaint]
The zoning and use-permit woes of Bible study groups [Sullum, Reason "Hit and Run"; San Diego 10 News] Update: County backs down [San Diego Union-Tribune via Common Room]
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Upholding a $40,000 jury award, the Michigan Court of Appeals has “said a church was liable for the fall of a woman who was ’slain in the spirit’ during an altar call” (see Jun. 21, 2007) [On Point News] And per the same site, a new Oregon case presents a somewhat different fact pattern: Shin Lim Kim was allegedly acting as a “catcher” at the Portland Onnuri Church in Beaverton, but suffered a fractured spinal vertebra when fellow congregant Hyun Joo Hoon fell on her:
The church was negligent, the complaint says, in not providing multiple catchers; failing to discuss “safe catching strategy” with congregants; selecting Kim — “a small and not particularly strong person” — as a catcher; and failing to instruct congregants on “the correct procedures to fall, so that they would not injure themselves and injure the person assisting and/or catching them.”
More coverage of this genre of suits: June 8, 2008.
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Just posted at Musings from a Catholic Bookstore:
We currently have received certification from one vendor (about 10 products) which means that we have been forced to discontinue 1ooo products that we currently don’t have in stock to avoid breaking the law after February 10th. We currently have about 600 different kid’s items in stock that are discounted and won’t be available after February 10th unless we get more certificates from vendors.
The upshot of this? The First Communion season (February – May) is usually the second busiest season of the year for Catholic retailers. This year, unless our vendors get their acts together, it will be the worst season ever because there won’t be any First Communion dresses, kid’s missals, kid’s rosaries, etc. available for purchase.
I wonder how many Catholic retailers that are currently on the edge this will put over into failure? Knowing our industry it is quite likely that many, in spite of our contacting them, will continue operating as if the law doesn’t exist. At least until they get fined out of existence.
Anyway, stock up on First Communion and other kid’s items now because they may not be available next month.
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The plaintiff alleges she gave in to the defendant priest’s sexual advances after confessing her marital difficulties to him. She alleges the priest assured her the sex was “ordained by God” so she thereafter engaged in intercourse with him. This, of course, is all due to the negligence of the local Catholic diocese according to her suit and not her own poor judgment in falling for such a lame pickup line. (“Confession Obsession?”, The Smoking Gun, Oct. 29).
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The flight attendant sought a whopping $405K for the alleged assault. This demand seemed unreasonable based on the description of the injuries, even if they occurred as alleged (“Jury says no assault, agrees with Osteen’s wife”, MSNBC, Aug. 14, earlier).
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We express no opinion as to exactly how badly Victoria Osteen, wife of a celebrated evangelical minister, may have behaved on that Continental Airlines flight in 2005; “The Federal Aviation Administration fined [her] $3,000 for interfering with a crew member.” Readers keep writing in, however, to call our attention to the financial demands that flight attendant Sharon Brown is making in her lawsuit, which just went to trial. It seems Brown wants compensation not only for such things as hemorrhoids and damage to her religious faith but also, by way of punishment, “10 percent of Victoria Osteen’s net worth”. Wouldn’t we all! (”Joel Osteen’s Wife on Trial in Flight Attendant Assault”, AP/FoxNews.com, Aug. 7).
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Another story in a genre we’ve covered before, namely the lawsuit against a church whose congregants commonly faint or swoon during worship, the grounds being that more or better assigned “catchers” would have helped avert injury. This one was filed by Matthew Lincoln against Lakewind Church in Tennessee (Smoking Gun, Jun. 5; Childs, Jun. 5). Our earlier coverage has included the Michigan woman who successfully sued her Pentecostal church on similar grounds, and an Australian plaintiff who lost.
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In order to enhance diversity, it was necessary to suppress it, cont’d: The GuideOne Mutual insurance company offers, in 19 states at last report, what it calls a “FaithGuard” policy rider with features it believes are valued by some churchgoers. In particular, to quote its critics, the rider
waives insurance deductibles if there is a loss to personal property while it is in the “care, custody and control” of the insured’s church; pays church tithes or donations if the insured suffers a loss of income from a disability; and doubles medical limits for an injury received while sponsoring an activity conducted on behalf of the church.
All three provisions might make a family feel more confident about pledging material support or volunteer time to its church, by limiting the potential financial downside in case of accidents or misadventure. But now GuideOne is on the receiving end of a lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, on the grounds that the rider discriminates against non-churchgoers — which is to say, by providing benefits they would have no interest in purchasing. In particular, complains NFHA,
The benefits of FaithGuard are not available to persons who suffer a covered loss or disability while engaged in similar activities but who are not religious, who do not belong to a church, or who do not attend church or participate in religious activities.
Of course people in these latter categories would never be inclined to purchase FaithGuard in the first place, any more than people who never step on airplanes would go out of their way to buy flight insurance. Instead, if they worry about the financial risk of accidents, they would select one of the innumerable insurance products readily available with no particular religious component. But to achieve religious nondiscrimination in the eyes of NFHA, it’s apparently crucial not just that we non-churchgoers have access to every sort of risk coverage we might take a notion to buy, but that FaithGuard’s customers not have access to one they might like. Will the result of this lawsuit if successful be more diversity? Or, again, less? (earlier). More: Rick Armon, “Akron suit claims insurance for churchgoers discriminates”, Akron Beacon Journal, Nov. 27; Religion Clause (Howard M. Friedman), Nov. 28.
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The brutalist-modern Third Church of Christ Scientist is one of the most widely disliked buildings in Washington, D.C., not least by its own congregation, which groans at the impracticalities of maintaining the concrete monstrosity: “According to one church official, you’ve got to build scaffolding just to reach some of the [light] bulbs [to change them].” But Washington’s local architectural-preservation authorities forbid the congregants from replacing the building, which dates all the way back to 1971. (Charles Paul Freund, “A Brutalist Bargain”, American Spectator, Dec. 18).
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In both of which cases the hospital is being targeted for blame:
About a year ago, Linda Long was attending the East London Holiness Church in London, Ky. That’s one of a handful of churches in the country that practice snake handling, which is exactly what it sounds like it is — congregation members handle venomous snakes in the belief that the faithful will not be harmed.Long was bitten in the cheek by a rattlesnake and died — and now her family is suing the hospital where she was brought for treatment.
In a suit filed earlier this month, Long’s family alleges employees of a London, Ky. hospital ridiculed Long when she was brought there after the attack and failed to treat her in a timely manner. She later was airlifted to the University of Kentucky Medical Center, where she died.
(”Family of ’snake handling’ victim sues hospital”, USA Today “On Deadline” blog, Nov. 9; Michelle Cottle, New Republic “The Plank”, Nov. 11).
Meanwhile, in Britain, Anthony Gough, 24, says he is considering legal action in the death of his wife, Emma, following the birth of twins at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. The Goughs are members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses sect which opposes blood transfusions on religious grounds and Emma had refused such a transfusion; doctors had in vain urged Gough to override his wife’s wishes. Gough says a machine would have permitted self-transfusion of his wife’s blood but that hospital staff did not know how to use it. (Andrew Parker, “Jehovah hubby: I blame doctors”, The Sun (U.K.), Nov. 7)
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Point of Law Volokh