Indiana diocese ordered to pay $1.95M in IVF-dismissal case [CWN]

[otjm]

The mishandling of this teacher’s case meant that she was not fired a year earlier than she was. How is that worth nearly $2 million in damages, or even the reduced verdict of more than a half million? Mrs Herx’s claim for emotional distress stems from being told her behavior was intrinsically evil. It is the same old story that when the Church proclaims the truth it is guilty of hate speech. The case has been widely reported as the teacher who was fired for wanting another baby.

This is absolutely a challenge to freedom of religion, and as expected the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend is appealing the verdict.

As I said in a prior post, I feel that verdicts in general are too big. that is a general statement, but applies here.

The same question can be asked as to sexual abuse cases; I have absolutely no doubt that some people who have been sexually abused by priests have been damaged, and that damage is not a temporary thing; it follows them through their life. Others, depending on the person and the degree of abuse, not so much.

Having said that, if cases had come down $50,000 here, $100,000 there, then dioceses would not have been basically brought to their knees, having to face the reality of both the sexual abuse by priests, and the ongoing damage it has created. And many times, bishops acted out of a true lack of evidence of the harm sexual abuse can create, coupled with evidence from trusted advisors which said that priests could be “cured”, and a real, although misplaced strong desire to avoid public scandal (and the public has been truly scandalized as these cases have come forward, although in part the scandal is based on perceptions).

We can all agree that what she requested is outside the realm of Catholic moral theology. I suspect strongly still, that the substance of this case is facts which would indicate a violation of proper HR procedures. and factually, these are the judgments which come down when you make serious HR mistakes.

The short of it is that if nothing else, it serves as a learning experience for dioceses. If you are going to enter into contractual terms, you had better clearly understand the proper procedures if you start to dismiss someone for cause under the contract. dot the i’s, cross the t’s, get legal advice immediately and follow it.

Not said in all of this is the possibility that the diocese has insurance to cover this. There simply are not enough facts to know if the diocese’ actions are covered. If they are, the diocese will pay both with any deductible and a likely increase in premiums.

that is a long answer; the short answer is that it is highly likely that most people rarely, if ever, hear about the size of judgments handed down each well in jurisdictions across the country in cases like this. While it may have exceeded guidelines and was reduced, it does not appear to be completely out of the realm of reality.

It has been said that we have a terrible system of justice it is just that it is better than anything else out there. When it is your ox which has been gored, you are going to understand the verdict completely differently than if it is someone else’s. Money is the primary way that damages are assessed, whether we like it or not, and one of the very real world aspects of verdicts is that they send a message not only to the one doing the damage, but also to others who potentially can do the same thing in a different case. You may consider it wrong, but that is how our system works.

I assisted on a case, civil litigation, between a bank and a manufacturing company, and part of the judgment (apparently unlike this case0 involved punitive damages against the bank; it was the largest judgment against the bank in the jurisdiction, ever to that point. That was clearly designed to send a message not only to that bank but to all others in the area. Again, that involved punitive damages and this case does not, but that does not mean that civil cases without punitive damages are not, in part, designed to send the same message.

And as a final note, whether her actions were moral or not, the jury is not set to decide the morality. However, undoubtedly part of the issue of emotional distress is the fact that this was not the first go around, and the first one either ignored the issue or tacitly approved of it.

All of which is another way of saying that in HR, you don’t get to change horses in the middle of the stream. The jury could well look at the issue as her being effectively set up, then having the props pulled out from underneath her - which gets back to my contention; stupid handling of HR.

All the facts seem to indicate that this is not a first amendment case; it is not about freedom of religion; it is about HR.