Rick Garnett was quoted in NPR article "ACLU Sues, Claiming Catholic Hospitals Put Women At Risk" by Julie Rovner.

"Yeah, this is a novel case," says , a law professor at the University of Notre Dame.

While there's nothing new about suing doctors or hospitals, Catholic or not, Garnett says, "to sort of claim that it is negligence for the bishops to be issuing directives reminding Catholic hospitals what the church's teachings are with respect to things like abortion and sterilization are, that is a stretch."

And he wonders what future if any such lawsuits against the church may have.

"That seems to me to be adopting a strange notion of tort responsibility — that religious teachings become legal negligence," he said.