Churches can be sued for a variety of acts and omissions, and generally are not protected by any charitable immunities. Most charitable immunity laws have been eliminated with the widespread availability of insurance. Negligence is conduct that creates an unreasonable risk of foreseeable harm to another person or property, and that in fact results in the foreseeable harm. The important point to recognize is that negligence need not be intentional. For example, negligence may include conduct that is simply careless, heedless, or inadvertent.
Churches can be liable on the basis of negligence in two ways.
First, they can be liable for their own negligence. Examples include the negligent selection of church workers, or the negligent supervision of church activities. To illustrate, a church may be guilty of negligent selection if it hires a convicted child molester or uses a bus driver with numerous traffic violations. A church may be guilty of negligent supervision if it uses an inadequate number of qualified adults to supervise a church youth activity. Second, churches can be liable for the negligence of employees and volunteers occurring within the scope of their work.