Article February 19, 1996 Issue

Legal update

On January 22 the United States Supreme Court declined to review the case of Lundman v. McKown. This means that the high court will not hear the appeal of the four remaining defendants in the case, namely, the mother and stepfather of eleven-year-old Ian Lundman, who died in 1989, and the Christian Science practitioner and the Christian Science nurse who cared for him during his illness.

Last year's decision by the Minnesota Court of Appeals, therefore, is now final—a decision that upheld a jury's award of $1.5 million in compensatory damages against these four defendants. As previously reported, the Court of Appeals overturned the jury's award of compensatory damages against The Mother Church, the Christian Science Committee on Publication for Minnesota, and a Christian Science nursing facility, as well as the jury's $9 million punitive damage award against the Church.

The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a request by the plaintiff that the Court consider reinstating these damage awards against The Mother Church. The Court must have recognized, as did the Minnesota Court of Appeals, that imposing such liability on a church, essentially for communicating and promoting its teachings, is prohibited by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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