It’s amazing the damages that people try to claim in lawsuits. In Albany, three women tried to sue the Catholic diocese for “forcing” them to walk down a hallway lined with photos of priests went they to the diocese to report sexual abuse by a priest. The judge threw the case out for a “lack of cause of action.” Basically, they had no legal basis to sue. It’s not like the diocese forced them to walk down the hallway or that a reasonable person would be expected to be traumatized by it, especially since they weren’t claiming that their abuser’s picture was on the wall.
What if the person had claimed that a black man had abused her and she had to walk down a hallway with pictures of Martin Luther King, Jr., or Booker T. Washington? Would it be reasonable for people to assume that any image of a black man would cause pain or would that be considered racism on the victim’s part.
I think the judge did the right thing here.
I think there’s a growing belief in our society that whenever we experience pain or suffering or any sort of trouble it is always someone else’s fault and that someone, somewhere, somehow has got to pay.
If someone trips and falls on a sidewalk, their first thought is, “Who can I sue?” And if they’re made uncomfortable by seeing a particular image, it’s the same thing.
The reason I brought up the race angle is because if that were to happen I think you’d get two warring liberal impulses: “Someone else must feel my pain” versus “Lumping someone into a group because of their ethnicity is bad (unless they do it themselves).”