There have not been many religious litigation cases in California to date. While recently there has been considerable publicity surrounding cases involving abuses by priests in the Catholic churches, there has been little in the way of action against more visible and more controversial television evangelists.

While there is much to criticize about some of the more controversial television evangelists, part of the lack of litigation may be due to the lack of plaintiffs who first believed in such evangelists so strongly as to donate to their causes, and then who came to a different realization about the same religious preacher.

A second factor which could be limiting the amount of such litigation is the lack of facts coming to light about their accounting practices. While there have been some investigations by television shows, for the most part, such investigations have failed to penetrate even the first layers of security surrounding these television evangelists.

A third factor which appears to be limiting the litigation in this area would seem to be the lack of any meaningful governmental inquiries or investigations. There simply doesn’t seem to be any desire by the FBI, the FCC, the FTC, the IRS or any other governmental agency to investigate whether there are any scam artists in this field, at least while the current administration is in office.

In the event such a lawsuit is brought against a television evangelist alleging misuse of funds, it should be possible to subpoena the financial records of the evangelist and his or her organization and possibly the religious network as well if germane to the issues of the lawsuit. If such a lawsuit were to be brought against either a television evangelist or a religious television network, what type of action could be brought?

Certainly, a cause of action for fraud comes to mind. When a television evangelist tells a person that he is communicating with a higher being and is healing persons right now both in the audience where the service is being held and people watching at home, and when those people donate on the basis of that promise, and fail not only to be healed but there are no other persons confirmed to have been healed in the audience, a good cause of action would seem to exist for fraud. Where such claims cause elderly believers with serious medical problems to donate their limited resources and forego medical treatment and the result is injury or death, a further cause of action would seem to lie in negligence and perhaps for an intentional tort as well.

Private individuals can also bring RICO actions for their damages for religious and charitable deception. However to do so, such deception must rise to a level of racketeering. If it does, RICO affords an additional remedy for the individual litigant.

Since television evangelists make their appeals for donations literally to millions of people on the air, by cable and on the internet, a class action may afford a further way to redress the harm caused by any television evangelists who have ulterior motives for seeking donations besides helping the poor, and the sick.

Whether you believe in the sincerity of one television evangelist, all of them or none of them, no one wants a bad apple being allowed to tarnish those with well meaning motives or being allowed to take money out of the hands of those who need it most.

If you feel you’ve been defrauded by the claims of a television evangelist and have contributed money to the evangelist or to his or her organization or the religious network on which he appears, call your civil litigation lawyer.