Eagle1993

I'm actually ok with BSA being aggressive publicly against the TCC. I think it is a fair debate if the current plan could be the best one overall for all survivors. BSA's mistake is now having to defend saying they will fully pay all abuse survivors. In the disclosure statement, they didn't make that claim. I think that allowed BSA to say ... this is the best plan for you and we could never fully pay off all of the victims. It allowed some flexibility and to appropriately set expectations. However, now, in a court filing, they state " Survivors of Abuse Will Be Paid in Full Under the Debtors’ Plan." Q: Mr. Mosby ... do you think $7,000 is full payment for a child who was raped at a scout camp multiple times? A: Well, you know, um, it was by a volunteer ... so it doesn't count. It was really the parents fault for trusting us. Anyways, Friends of Troop 100 is really the one responsible. I wish BSA could go backwards and remove that document from the docket. What's done is done. I think they probably need to make a statement that they can never fully compensate victims and perhaps portions of the analysis could have been better worded.

100% agree with this statement. The court filing states (and bold is in the filing): Great! In fact, if BSA's law firm is so confident, perhaps they would insure the trust that if the trust ends up running out of $, Bates White will guarantee making up the difference! Or, if that doesn't work, I'm sure an insurance company would take a small payment to provide the insurance given how many degrees Dr. Bates has, I'm sure his analysis is spot on! I think they would get 100% of the vote, TCC on board, BSA, LCs and COs out of this mess! I go back to my prior comments ... I think this was a dumb move to make this public. This is a document you negotiate with. This is not something you want to get started where all survivors now expect to be fully compensated. We are now seeing the results of this bad move hit the media and BSA will have to figure out how to tell abuse survivors they think $38K, on average, if full payment. Good luck with that narrative. BSA was much better off stating that no one has enough money to compensate abuse survivors. I'll just add this to the giant pile of dumb that comes out of the national side of this organization. I would like them publicly to state if they agree with their own court filing ... that survivors will be paid in full!

Split off the discussion about rechartering.

We are also stuck with the money issue. One issue is the online system is going to charge adults in multiple units multiple times. We are just going to pay and then get refunds later. A bit of a mess.

I know in my district, about 20% of units haven't even started the rechartering process as of Jan 1. I would guess more than half haven't completed including payment. Normal years, DEs spend most of December and January chasing down these charter documents/payments. May be more of a mess this year with some COs balking.

In some parts of the world, the only bankruptcy is essentially CH7. You can't pay your bills, fine, appoint a trustee, sell off everything and pay your creditors. 1) It probably makes you a bit more careful about taking on excess debt ... something I think US non profits and businesses seem to ignore. 2) Not much money to be made by lawyers. Watching this, I tend to think those other countries have it right.

What I find interesting is that TCC, long ago, argued that they should go to district court to calculate damages and determine what claimants are owed. BSA pushed back hard, said there wasn't time, there is no need (as this is bankruptcy so they wouldn't have enough anyway), etc. I AM SHOCKED that BSA is now apparently claiming the opposite. I don't have experience here ... but if I were the TCC I would say this is now a critical decision that must be decided in district court. BSA may have exposed their flank. This reminds me once when I responded to a European regulator with a 30 page document, going point by point where they were wrong. They response... ok great, we can go to court, I can come back and audit you again in an area where you are weak or you can agree to my initial points. We ended up agreeing on the auditor's initial points. If BSA makes this a fight of claims valuation, TCC may say thank you, lets debate this in court. I thought BSA was better off saying we don't have enough to pay.

This is exactly what BSA was doing up until yesterday. BSA has now changed tactics. They are arguing that there is now enough money to pay everyone in full. Why does that matter? They are saying there is no need to look at chartered organizations, local council finances or insurance companies as the settlement trust is already set to the value that pays 100% of claims in full. So, they are attempting to price tag this type of victimization and the price tag they place on it is about $36K per claim. I have a hard time seeing this path as a winning one.

Very long document, but I'll try to simplify. 1) Most of the claimants are older. Older people don't get big settlements in sex abuse cases. 2) Most of the accused are only accused once. Bigger settlements come in when there are accused with multiple victims. Why? Because BSA liability would be less and more liability would be on the victim's parents, others, etc. So ... when adjusting for these factors, the analysis shows the average value of each claim times number of claims leave them at the settlement amount.

Boy Scouts Says Abuse Claims Likely to Be Paid in Full, With Lowered Liability Estimates - WSJ Prof. Jacoby says there are two issues with BSA's statement: 1) Valuation ... is BSA correct in their valuation? 2) Trust administration ... even with a $3B trust (if it hits that number) there are trust admin fees and costs that means that $3B will not all go to claimants.

This is a very good point. Will the TCC be allowed to release all of their data by council? TCC has held that back, I think due to mediation privilege. Also, is the detailed Claro assessment on the docket? I haven't seen that either. I found it odd that BSA would publicly release this analysis. I had a chance to read most of it last night and mentioned where I think it falls apart when they use prior settlements. However, I do agree that it presents the insurance side of the equation. Perhaps making all of this public to non mediation parties may be fine. Generally, I fully support transparency. However, this back and forth doesn't look healthy and BSA lawyers seemed to go all in on this plan. I was very hopeful last week but now am concerned they are planning on spending months in limbo land. BSA has already raised fees substantially, it is getting to the point where it will hurt recruiting. It is likely any plan will drive the organization deeper into debt and take more money from councils. I really hope White & Case know what they are doing. I am still hopeful that we are just seeing a part of the back and forth as right now as from what I see, I don't see these sides agreeing on what to order for lunch let alone a multibillion dollar settlement.

I don't think BSA cares; however, here is what they put in the plan. Why? Green is well connected to BSA's law firm. The Coalition is clearly the group trying to get the plan passed.

When I read this I see it as having several audiences. First is Judge LSS as a real attempt to keep the current plan/vote alive. I don’t know how feasible that attempt is (it feels a bit like a Hail Mary at halftime of a football game). It probably won’t work but doesn’t hurt. However, I also see this document as a negotiation tactic to set a starting point for the next round of negotiations. It balances out comments from the TCC to ensure BSA’s position is known publicly. My main problem with the analysis is there has never been an organization that went to court to defend 80,000+ sex abuse cases. To try and discount case after case because the victims are now older or the accused are volunteers would be difficult to argue with 84,000 claims. At some point, a jury could say that there are major systemic issues that the organization should have been aware of and thus give BSA and related entities most of the fault and big payouts to survivors. Bates cannot simply look at each individual cases anymore. Now I grew up in the 80s/90s and understand those who argue many of these cases occurred in a different time and it was a societal problem, but the reality is a jury today would likely crush the organization with this many claims. There is a chance that next week the judge will say while the vote wasn’t a home run it was good enough and let’s go to confirmation. Perhaps she is doubtful the trust can grow, believes Purdue ruling is garbage, and sees this plan as the only path for BSA survival. On the flip side, would she want to be the court that sets a low bar for allowing 40,000 non debtor releases over the objections of the TCC and DOJ? Would she want to have this case kicked back to her due to issues found in appeal? Someone mentioned tea leaves. I think the tea leaves are her ignoring requests by the DOJ to restart voting due to plan changes and allowing the confirmation schedule to be delayed. I’ve seen in the past where she ignored some major concern as she knew it didn’t matter based on how she was going to rule. So, in this case, if she thinks this plan in its current form is doomed, keep the vote on schedule, ignore the DOJ objections (as it doesn’t matter) delay confirmation (as it doesn’t matter) and send the sides back. Just a guess…

I believe many COs filed claims and fall under Class 9. It could be a ballot to vote.

What a great story! If only we had invention merit badge still ... I tend to think he could be one of the few to earn it.

Sorry to hear the news but your attitude is great! I hope you do find a unit to help out as any unit would greatly benefit from your support!

To me, good call by the judge to hold a hearing right after the final vote tally. Note that I don't believe this is good news for the current plan. If there were no issues, the judge would likely have skipped the meeting and let confirmation to go ahead as planned. I do think this is good news for all sides that the judge will not let something fester without stepping in and providing some sort of guidance.

Status hearing set. 1 day after the final vote to be tallied. 9d224c6c-9bc1-4eec-98e9-c99d2f8ce961_8250.pdf (omniagentsolutions.com)

During the RSA hearing, this was one of the items the judge threw out as not acceptable. BSA put it back in anyways and said further arguments during the confirmation hearing. I would be shocked if it stayed in based on JSS's initial comments. For the BSA, I doubt they care if the Coalition is paid off in the end. It was the offer that was needed.

Just to clarify how big this document is .... BSA's law firm initially said that claims are worth up to $7.1B ... now BSA's law firm is saying <$3.6B. It is meant to counter the TCC's expert witness who is saying claims are worth $24 - $30B ... on the low end. There is a major disconnect on the value of the claims. If this is now becoming a bottom's up exercise (vs an ability to pay exercise) then I would think some non bankruptcy court may need to decide the answer. BSA has initially been focused on top down allocation ... this is the max National can pay. This is the max LCs can pay. Etc. This document has seemed to change their argument completely. Now they are saying ... this is the max claims are worth in total. Note that I know they had a spread in the past ... but the mean and upper end of that spread exceeded their ability to pay (even when including LC assets). Now it doesn't when including LC assets.

To me, if JSS has major issues with the voting results, she needs to provide feedback next week. If she believes the voting result is sufficient to confirm, then I support her in letting the confirmation process go forward. She is far more experienced in this than any of us, she knows the law and she should be able to make a decision next week if the vote was sufficient. What I would not want to see is JSS making a ruling in March that the vote was not sufficient to confirm the plan. Now, if she is ok with the vote but has issues with the plan, that should come up during the confirmation hearings.

I've seen this on both sides and it is annoying. These are high paid and experienced law firms, so I expect they believe it does have some impact, but I expect JSS is pretty good at ignoring those parts of the filings.

That is exactly what I saw; however, I wasn't able to read the whole document yet. Also, when they were 60% liable .. many times COs were the other liable party but they never included that value in the settlement. However, in this case, they are including CO coverage. So that is part of the reason I question the valuation they are using. Personally, I think they are much better off arguing that $2.9M is the most they can pay. Arguing $2.9M is full compensation for 82,500 victims of child sex abuse is a much, much harder pill to swallow and one that will likely make it tougher to get people on board a plan. They purchased the coalition support by offering them $10M + $900K/month plus running the settlement trust.

The official Omni eballot or coalition's? What is odd to me is that the coalition created an eballot but yet all of their votes are direct? It just seems odd. Probably a good question is if the coalition discussed use of master vs eballot with BSA at all. If the coalition collected votes through their own eBallot then submitted them as individual ballots ... that is no different than a master ballot as both are coming from the law firm, not directly from claimants. Note that this is fine and acceptable, but if BSA or TCC questions master ballots they should also question firms that submitted direct ballots for their claimants. I agree that there could be legitimate questions about the master ballots from anti plan firms. Why am I not shocked that voting once again comes up as a mess when discussing the BSA?

BSA went hard after master ballots. I think it will be interesting when Omni responses to discovery about what they listed as master vs direct ballots. I wonder if the direct ballots all came directly from individuals ... or did coalition law firms send them directly as individual ballots to try and allow BSA to reject master ballots? To me, a direct ballot was one where an individual either mailed directly or went to Omni's site and filled out the form directly. If a lawfirm was involved in either (by a lawyer filling out the ballot or sending an individual ballot on behalf of a claimant) ... then there is no difference with a master ballot. It looks like BSA is going to try and disqualify reject votes by disqualifying some of the master ballots.