Article: Ten Legal Risks Facing Churches and Church Leaders, by Richard Hammar

by AndersonsInfo 14 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse

  • frankiespeakin
    frankiespeakin

    Met,

    Not really:

    https://www.bc.edu/dam/files/schools/law/lawreviews/journals/bclawr/44_4/07_FMS.htm

    For religious organizations there is another concern: that they might be held responsible for the conduct of a member, employee, or agent, or even the conduct of another related group or its members, employees, or agents, including volunteers. Religious organizations are sometimes very complex organisms. The largest consist of relations among tens of thousands of local churches, hundreds of regional judicatories, and millions of adherents bound together not by a contract of law but the bonds of a common commitment in faith. They relate to each other and to national and international religious bodies according to the dictates of religious principles and doctrines, sometimes millennia old. It is most certainly not General Motors or IBM. Even the smallest church bodies, a single church structure governed by a group chosen by the faithful, who call a pastor and follow what they hear as the Lord’s voice, is not analogous to a neighborhood business. Indeed, analogies to the corporate world fail to capture the nature of religious institutions in the United States. Yet, the dawn of the twenty-first century witnesses the continuation of the litigation explosion of the last century, an explosion in which religious institutions have routinely been made defendants in various actions. The difficulty comes in identifying which entity properly is the defendant and on what bases claims might lie against it......

  • metatron
    metatron

    An interesting article but I note under "Accident Cases" - "The verdict against the regional body cannot be sustained by any analysis......"

    So, at best, the local congregation gets sued ........ Maybe that changes someday.

    metatron

  • mind blown
  • Hortensia
    Hortensia

    Thanks for sharing this article. Very interesting.

  • jgnat
    jgnat

    I think elders should carry liability insurance.

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