When is a priest not a priest? When he's molesting a child, diocese says in defense of lawsuit
Source: NJ.com/The Star Ledger
By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger
on June 02, 2014 at 6:31 AM, updated June 02, 2014 at 12:12 PM
Chris Naples says something snapped inside him that January day.
The Burlington County man sat in the gallery of the Delaware Supreme Court, watching as a lawyer for the Diocese of Trenton told the justices that the Rev. Terence McAlinden was not "on duty" — or serving in his capacity as a priest — when he allegedly molested Naples on trips to Delaware in the 1980s.
McAlinden, who once headed the diocese’s youth group, had introduced himself to Naples at a church-sponsored leadership retreat in Keyport. He’d heard his confession, included him in private Masses and discussed matters of spirituality with him.
Yet McAlinden wasn’t officially a priest when he took a teenage Naples to Delaware, the lawyer argued.
-snip-
Read more: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2014/06/when_is_a_priest_not_a_priest_when_hes_molesting_a_child_diocese_says_in_defense_of_lawsuit.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
...the priest was punching his time card at exactly 4 pm, as he did on all his regular rape days. So clearly The Church is only responsible for his sins from 8 to 4. After that time frame, ''sins become crimes'' in which case it becomes the jurisdiction of the proper authorities, which ain't us.
- I'm sure Francis knows nothing of this obvious case of shirking of one's debts and responsibilities that he's said he won't permit. So I'm sure the lawyers will be getting their marching orders from him to clean up their act any day now.
Yep, any day now......
K&R
First some extra "Facts" based on reading between the lines. This involved a teenager in the 1980s living in New Jersey, who attended Catholic Church in New Jersey. Burlington and Mercer Counties are counties within New Jersey:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trenton,_New_Jersey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_County,_New_Jersey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_County,_New_Jersey
The first question is why is this case in Delaware as opposed to New Jersey? It appears that such suits are time barred under Statute of Limitation in New Jersey. New Jersey seems to adopt the general rule that such harm to people under 18, can only be filed till that person is age 22, thus when this case was filed in
Reading between the lines in the article, it appears the Victim won a Judgement against the Priest who molested him, but the Trial court had kicked out the claim against the Church itself on the grounds any action in Delaware was outside the Employer-Employee (Master-Servant) relationship.
It also appears that New Jersey law has ruled that it has been to long to bring the action in New Jersey for any abuse that occurred in New Jersey. That would be 1995 for in 1995 it appears is when the Victim turned 22 (please note, the victim admits to having had sex with the Priest as late as 1997, when the victim was 24). Thus it appears bring the action in New Jersey was time barred for the Victim did not approach law enforcement till 2007, when he was 34.
Thus the only action is based on the Priest taking the victim to Delaware in the 1980s, it appears such lawsuits are NOT time barred in Delaware.
It appears that sometime after 2007 the Victim sued both the Priest who molested him AND the Trenton New Jersey Diocese in Delaware State court. Since Delaware can NOT hear about crimes or torts that occurred in New Jersey (that is reserved for New Jersey courts to handle), the only issue for the Delaware Courts is any sexual abuse that occurred in Delaware. Given the Priest and his victim was only in Delaware on trips, the nature of those trips come into play when it comes to Employer's liability for the torts of the Employer's employees. This is called the "Master-Servant" rule.
http://definitions.uslegal.com/m/master-and-servant-law/
The classic example is a truck driving driving a truck for his employer. The Truck driver hits someone. The person he hit can not only sue the truck driver but his employer on the grounds the Truck Driver (the "Servant"
was acting under the authority of his employer (The "Master" and what the Truck Driver/Servant was doing was to the betterment of his Employer/Master. Along with any gain in such a relationship to a "Master" comes any Liability tied in with the actions of the "Servant".
The big issue is when is the Employee/Servant no longer acting in the interest of his Employer/Master? It is clear if the Employer told his Employee to make a delivery, then the Master-Servant rule kicks in, even if the accident occurred as the Employee makes a side trip to take lunch in an out of the way place.
On the other hand, what if the accident occurred as the Employee drove his employee's truck miles out of the way, so the Employee could drop off a private package? If dropping off the package is not that far out of the way, the Courts will tend to rule that the Master-Servant rule still applies, even if the Employer/Master has an explicit rule against such side jobs. On the other hand, if it is to far out of the way, the Employer/Master will held NO liable for the Servant/Employee was no longer acting in the best interest of the Employer/Master and thus outside the Master-Servant (Employer-Employee) relationship.
Who gets to decide what is to far or not to far? That is a factual finding up to juries. Thus in such cases large companies do they best to keep their name out of the litigation (and often just pays up, it is cheaper, even if they have a good chance of winning, for juries do not like big companies).
Several years ago, in a Pennsylvania Case, The courts had to rule on this Relationship in a Pedophile case. Do to when the case was filed the only relavent sexual abuse occurred when the Priest and the Victim meet in a Hotel. The issue became was the priest being in the Hotel Room under the control of the Priest's employer? This issue involves revolved around the Restatement of Torts Section 317, as to Masters liability for acts of their Servants.
The "Restatements" was an attempt to make the Common Law rules more uniform, then they were in reality. The Restatements have been adopted by many states as a source of the Common Law mostly in areas of the law State Legislators had NOT made any changes to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restatement_of_Torts,_Second
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restatements_of_the_Law
The case in question was Hutchinson, Hutchinson v Luddy. In that case the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania applied Restatement (Second) of Torts §?317 (Restatement Section 317) to a case involving a Priest and Pedophilia
A master is under a duty to exercise reasonable care so to control his servant while acting outside the scope of his employment as to prevent him from intentionally harming others or from so conducting himself as to create an unreasonable risk of bodily harm to them, if
(a) the servant
(i)?is upon the premises in possession of the master or upon which the servant is privileged to enter only as his servant, or
(ii)?is using a chattel of the master, and
(b)?the master
(i)?knows or has reason to know that he has the ability to control his servant, and
(ii)?knows or should know of the necessity and opportunity for exercising such control.
- See more at: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/pa-supreme-court/1225056.html#sthash.b2JvaDUY.dpuf
The Trial Court had informed the Jury of the above rule and the Jury ruled against the Parish, the Diocese, the Bishop and Luddy (the Priest, who was defrocked and is, last reports, living in Arizona isolated in a monastery since the Trial).
Superior Court reversed the finding of the Jury on the grounds that the only incidents in litigation was when Luddy met the victims in a hotel room and had sex with them. Since the Hotel Room was NOT within the property of the Diocese and was NOT a normal place for a Priest to meet a parishioner it was outside Lubby's duty as priest and this outside the control of his employer, the Diocese.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the Ruling of Superior Court on the narrow grounds that when a Jury makes a decision, any dispute over that decision must be made in favor of the Verdict winner, in this case the Victims. Thus the Jury could have found that Luddy was within the control of his employer when he went to that hotel room. Since the Jury could have made that finding of fact, that is the finding of fact and the Court must defer to the finder of fact as to such facts.
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/pa-supreme-court/1225056.html
To go back to my truck driving case, it is as if a jury held the employer liable, even when the jury made no factual findings as to how much control the employer had over the employee when the accident occurred, but since the jury found the Employer liable, the jury must have found the Employer had the control over his employee as set forth in the Restatement of Torts Section 317.
This is the argument the Lawyers for the Catholic Church is making in this case, that the Catholic Church is NOT liable when a Priests acts outside his Priestly duties and that the pedophilia in the case (in a different state then where the Priest and victim actually lived) being argued was outside those duties.
