It’s true: you can sue for anything…

Winning the lawsuit is another story.

The latest in our nation’s history of obnoxious and frivolous law suits is that of the Mormon suing his own church for injuries incurred while performing proxy baptisms in an LDS Temple.  He claims he was hurt because the people he was baptizing were too heavy.

The civil suit filed Wednesday in Salt Lake City‘s 3rd District Court claims Daniel Dastrup suffered severe back injuries, including a herniated disk, after performing about 200 baptisms at the LDS temple in Raleigh, N.C., on Aug. 25, 2007.

The lawsuit contends the church was negligent in failing to warn Dastrup that the repetitive nature of the proxy baptisms — bending, lifting and twisting — could result in physical injury.

“The church owed the plaintiffs a duty to exercise reasonable care to avoid injury to the plaintffs from the services they performed to the church,” the lawsuit states.

And when he complained, the person supervising the baptisms said he couldn’t stop. I am not making this up.

The lawsuit alleges Dastrup, then 25, complained about his injuries but a LDS temple officiator ordered him to continue and refused to let another worker relieve him.

If the officiator had told him to jump off a cliff, would he have done that, too?  Do you do everything you are told to do, Mr. Dastrup?  Is it so hard to say “no?”

And, yet again, Dastrup proves that: yes, you can sue for about anything, regardless of your own personal responsibility to say “no, I’m done.  My back hurts.”

UPDATE: Maybe this is why the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches perform infant baptism–it’s far easier on your back.

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