COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) – A Christian group won’t be held liable for the death of a member who drowned during a 21st-century scavenger hunt.
That’s the ruling of Ohio’s Tenth Appellate District, which on Nov. 2 ruled for Xenos Christian Fellowship in a lawsuit over the death of Lawrence Cornish.
He had traveled to North Carolina in 2013 with other college-aged members of Xenos, which is based in Columbus. It consists of about 200 home churches.
Cornish joined a home church whose members decided to organize a geocaching event. One cache they were trying to find required a swim from Holden Beach to Sheep Island. Though Cornish said he could swim, he struggled in the water and drowned.
Cornish’s estate sued Xenos in July 2016, arguing negligence and negligent supervision/training. Xenos said it had owed no duty of care to Sample regarding the dangers of open water because they are open and obvious.
Cornish’s estate said the leader of the home church, Joshua LeVan, failed to provide accurate information about the swim across the inlet and that Xenos failed to train its leaders for events like this one.
But a Franklin County judge agreed with Xenos, as did the Tenth District.
“(T)he Estate has cited no evidence in the record reasonably indicating that Xenos should have known about any such incompetence. First, the Estate's reasoning assumes specialized training is necessary to establish competence in planning a group recreational activity like geocaching, which involves searching for a hidden container using GPS coordinates and clues,” Judge Betsy Luper Schuster wrote.
“In our view, however, evidence of Xenos not training its leaders in planning group recreational activities like geocaching does not reasonably establish its constructive knowledge of a group leader's incompetence in planning such an activity, including gathering and providing pertinent information to the group.
“Second, even though Xenos leaders, including LeVan, previously took groups geocaching, the Estate cites no evidence that any of the group leaders had demonstrated any incompetence as to that recreational activity prior to the Holden Beach trip.”