Quote:
Originally Posted by Tex
I'm no lawyer so this is all going to be in layman's understanding and terms, but I'm not sure that they legally represent anyone. Obviously they're coming from the ward, but are they really "agents" of the ward?
When I think of an agent, I think of someone with executive power, someone with the ability to make decisions and direct resources. A bishop, a stake president, maybe even an EQ or RS president, could be considered an agent. But a home teacher is just Joe Member coming over to say hi. If there's a problem or a need, the HTers are powerless to fix it on their own. They cannot leverage any church resources, but can only pass the message up the chain.
If we're going to call HTers agents, then we have to call VTers agents too. In that case, we have roughly a couple million "agents" running around the church, representing the church ... and to each other. What do we call it when HTers teach each other? A shareholder meeting?
I realize that it's not necessarily a legal distinction that will hold up in court, but then again, courts make a lot of really stupid decisions. I can't see how any clear thinking judge can really look at the home teaching program as a series of agents running around representing and acting on behalf of the church. It's just members making social calls.
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HT's do represent the ward, a subset of the local state Church. Just because their authority is limited, doesn't change the legal status.
However, being a limited scope agent shouldn't hold the principle liable for every outrageous action of the agent.
The principle needs to have some reasonable knowledge of the agent's propensities, and thereafter fail to act.
What happened from time to time in the eighties and even early nineties, somebody would complain to a local bishop about somebody "molesting" another member. Bishops at that time were not trained in how to handle it; they are much better trained. Should they have been? I find it incredulous that they should have been, but the legal cases guess otherwise.
So in many cases in days gone by, the bishops failed to act and apparently the victim suffered horribly because the bishop thought the perp was either not guilty or capable of repenting of the action.
That's what's weird about these cases. And in Oregon, one can look back to a great time period in the past.