Updated Feb. 5, 2019

As New Jersey personal injury lawyers, we are sometimes consulted by people who have been injured by employees of charitable organizations. Normally, a business has a non-delegable duty to do certain things that prevent their employees from intentionally harming people. For example, a company should not ignore signs that an employee is violent by nature, it should train employees properly, monitor them, etc. People who are injured, intentionally, by employees of facilities like nursing homes, rehabilitation centers, schools, etc. often assume that the company is probably responsible for the actions of their employees. However, this is not the case when the facility is actually a charitable organization. Recently, in the case of [i]Davis v. Devereux Foundation[/i], the New Jersey Supreme Court re-affirmed the rule that charitable organizations are immune, by law, from such legal claims. In the actual case, an employee purposely burned a difficult disabled man with hot water. The reasoning is that if the charities are held responsible for their employees abusing or assaulting the residents, then law suits may bankrupt the charities and deprive the public of essential services. Regardless of the reasoning, the general public should be aware of this and should know that the employers are not going to be held responsible for the employees intentionally injuring people. While a for-profit business might be extra careful to guard against such things under fear of a lawsuit, a charity might not be so careful. Therefore, if someone close to you may be injured while residing at a charitable institution, you may want to be extra vigilant.