Author: churchlitigationupdate

CHURCH SIGN WARS

Church signs are still important although their usefulness is quickly fading in the shadow of social media and GPS.  Often a motorist that passes a church sign often enough will develop a relationship with the church just by reading the sign often enough.  Whether that relationship translates into visitation or attendance is someone else’s study to do.  Church signs sometimes annoy the neighbors and sometimes are overly regulated.

A Kansas City sign ordinance prohibited digital signs on church property in residential zones.  Needless to say, the church in this story had a legacy “monumental” sign, typically with changeable letters that could become airborne in the right weather, and decided to upgrade it to celebrate entry into the 21st Century by adding a digital display to the monument sign at a cost of $11,000.  The church did not obtain a permit from the city and apparently did not know one might be required.  An anonymous neighbor complained about a year after the digital display was installed on the existing sign causing the Kansas City authorities to awaken to enforce the city code.  The church responded and filed an application for a variance.  The variance was denied, the digital display was ordered removed, but the church appealed to the court system.  The court ordered the variance be entered by the City.  The City appealed to the appellate court.  See, Antioch Community Church v Board of Zoning Adjustment, Slip Op. 2016.

The appellate court affirmed the trial court and the variance was issued.  The court noted the location of the church as near commercial zones on a busy street, noted that the display was put on an existing sign that no one argued was out of compliance, and that the digital display was superior to alternatives.  The court also noted that the digital display on the monument sign did not imperil the character of the neighborhood.

There are two morals to this saga:  make sure new construction has a permit, a qualified contractor will bid the job including the price, and in the application and at every other stage document how the sign will fit into the existing environment.  Also, while trying to work amicably with everyone, if push comes to shove involve legal counsel.  On an upgrade of an existing sign, be sure to preserve the former appearance of the old sign by use of the modern invention of photography.

THE CHICKEN DID IT

A church sometimes will be held to the same standard as a profit making commercial property in bodily injury claims.  This is somewhat unfair because a church is typically led by a group of volunteers and one or only a few professionals, all of the latter of which are pastoral in training and outlook.

 

 In Vasilenko v Grace Family Church, Cal. App., Slip. Op., 2016, the court concluded there were triable issues, meaning that the church could not win on a motion but had to go to trial, because the overflow parking lot selected by the church was divided from the church property by a busy five lane street, because there was no safe crossing provided at the parking lot to the church (even though there may have been at the nearest but distant intersection), because the overflow parking lot attendants had no training about warning about the dangers of crossing the street and the procedure for doing so safely, and because the parking lot attendants were volunteers.  In other words, the chicken had to be taught how to cross the road.

 

 Of course, the failure to grant a motion for summary judgment is not surprising in a bodily injury case.  There are almost always fact questions to be answered in a trial in a bodily injury case.  Also, the Plaintiff in such a case would likely be confronted with the open and obvious defense, such as which of the five lanes of fast moving traffic did the Plaintiff fail to see, and questions about whether the Plaintiff’s inattention caused the Plaintiff to be unable to cross the road safely unlike the proverbial chicken that crossed the road.  Finally, the driver that struck the Plaintiff was a third party over whom the church had no control and might have been the primary person at fault.  In most places, pedestrians have the right of way.  In most places, a driver has a duty to drive so as to be able to stop in the assured clear distance ahead, meaning the driver cannot hit the pedestrian.  The third party driver of the car must not be inattentive.  The plethora of such issues is typically explored in discovery and the case settled reflecting a litigation discount based on the perceived weight of each argument.

 

 Most likely, the church had liability insurance for such a claim.  Be that as it may, if the bodily injuries were sufficiently catastrophic the sufficiency of the coverage might be tested if a jury with a lottery mentality decided the case.

The point is:  even selecting an overflow parking lot can require a risk assessment, even by a church.

 

Street Brawls

Things got so heated that the court issued several injunctions in favor of the Church terminating the Pastor, reinstating certain members that had been removed, readmitting certain church members that had been expelled, and prohibiting certain members from various activities, including later, a 500 foot non-entry zone around the church for those members and the former Pastor.  The trial court seems to have used the church foundational documents to identify election procedures that were mandated by the documents and identify the persons elected to leadership.

At least one prior injunction had been affirmed on appeal in 2013.  Finally, the trial court entered an award of attorney fees to enforce the injunctions.  The second appeal was memorialized in Saints’ Rest Missionary Baptist Church, Inc. v Anderson, Cal. App., Slip. Op. 2016 (unpublished).  The award of attorney fees was affirmed.

For a California court to enter multiple injunctions to enforce or even decide internal church control disputes implies that the “church split” reached extraordinary levels of hostility.  That these injunctions were appealed twice is indicative of a willingness by the losing faction to fund extraordinary legal fees to continue the fight.

Court intervention by injunction in church splits is rare because usually the disputants will, once a court orders or threatens to order the foundational documents of the church or denomination be followed, calm down and allow the process to conclude the dispute.

THE CHURCH AND THE INTERNET

Many churches post information about their services, their pastors, and their members.  Some post worship bulletins and newsletters.  Some of these contain information such as announcements of events.  Most churches would not think it represented any sort of risk because most churches consider themselves open to the public and events are open to the public.  Churches that have thought about it one way or the other would consider their routine internet postings cloaked in First Amendment free speech protection regardless of the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, although a few would consider that applicable as well.  Because the web posting was intended for members and other interested persons, most churches would not consider that their posting might be read by villains.

In Doe v The First Presbyterian Church USA of Tulsa, 2017 OK 15, www.oscn.net, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that public announcement on the internet of a baptism was protected under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine (aka “church autonomy doctrine”).  The majority opinion reviewed the development in Oklahoma of “church autonomy doctrine.”  However, because in the last twenty years there have only been a couple of cases in the Oklahoma state level appellate court, the majority also had to canvass a few of the numerous federal court decisions.

The Plaintiff Doe was a Syrian by birth that immigrated to the United States and submitted to baptism in a public worship service at a Presbyterian church.  There is a suggestion in the dissenting opinion the church did not televise the baptism, as it did other parts of its worship service, in recognition that Doe’s “conversion” from Islam to Christianity as evidenced in baptism would make his return to Syria problematic or unsafe.

Doe sued claiming he was captured upon return to Syria, tortured, threatened with execution, and that he escaped by shedding his bonds, grabbing a firearm, and shooting his paternal uncle.  He apparently alleged that he was stabbed when he returned to the United States by another relative in retaliation for shooting the uncle.

Neither the majority nor the dissent seemed to view the allegations of the Plaintiff in the broader First Amendment light of freedom of speech.  The dissent tried to build an argument that there might have been a privacy expectation that was tortuously violated because the court viewed the baptism as “unusual.”  However, the dissent went on to note that historically baptism records were important public records even if in the modern era that is not true outside of church practice.  The sub silento point was that baptismal records have always been part of the public record and no rule has ever been enacted that would attempt to limit a church’s’ right to publish its own records.  With that point in hand, the dissent did not reach the seemingly obvious conclusion that posting on the internet of a public church record does not infringe on a privacy expectation because there is no such expectation in such records.