“A Utah woman has won $270,000 in damages against a fundamentalist church which promised her the Second Coming.

Kaziah Hancock was told she could meet Jesus in the flesh if she handed over land and water rights to the Salt Lake City church.

When he didn’t show up, she sued the church for breach of contract, fraud and emotional distress and won.”

Textbook contract law — which (blessedly?) protects idiots and dreamers with the same dispassion as it does the most cold-hearted pramatists.

Which raises the question: were I to make my way north to Milwaukee to see the Jesus tree — only to come away believing I’d traveled a couple thousand miles to gaze upon nothing more than a tangle of roots and some bark shadows — can I sue Wisconsin for loss of beer and gas monies…?

Wearing the, er, “wooden” expression of a diety somehow caught in the trunk of a rather large tree, Jesus Christ shows up in this Milwaukee neighborhood oak. Digitally enhanced photo from the Milwaukee Channel.

[link via Rand Simberg]

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