Eagle1993

Yes; however, they are only covered Jan 1, 1976 and later (per current plan). Pre 1976 they are not covered. Depending on state, they could be sued directly unless they offer payment that all parties accept. LDS offered $250M for coverage of about 3,000 or so claims (not sure fully which of those are pre 1976). The Coalition and BSA said this is now a framework for other COs; however, I have a hard time seeing the Methodist Church coming up with >$200M. Perhaps they will.

Kosnoff's letter to AIS claimants: Kosnoff Letter to 15,0000 Abused in Scouting Clients Advising them To Vote NO to the BSA Plan (yumpu.com)

If a TCC plan is released today, we will create a Part 7 on this topic. Will it be named the Force Awakens? Probably not, but who knows.

I would recommend saving all corespondents with ER. He may be building up a nice malpractice case if he is putting stuff out through AIS (as I thought AIS was a shell of 3 combined firms. You might get more from his law firm and their insurance than BSA.

Those are different classes. Each class must approve by 2/3. The sex abuse claimants are their own class and must approve by 2/3 for BSA and likely 75 to 90%+ if LCs and COs are included. One addition wrinkle. There is a debate if those that select $3500 immediate payout are the same class as the other CSA claimants. There are others that are arguing those outside SOL are a different class. Those decisions will be made later.

What was your reply?

Has anyone seen an article with actual sex abuse survivors saying to vote for this plan? Between twitter, Facebook, this forum and news articles .... every single claimant I can find wants to reject this plan. Note I still expect a large number of yes votes. I think a lot of people will just listen to their attorneys and the coalition is telling them to vote yes. Plus, all who signed over power of attorney to coalition lawyers will be yes votes (unless they take back that power of attorney). However, the public facing claimants seem to be consistently rejecting the deal. So, if it passes, would the judge consider that as part of her ruling on the plan?

We have the hearing agenda (at least the current version). Basically, from what I can tell, primary battles over discovery requests. https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/963b908b-4745-4ddd-8dce-09e0789f8fbd_6635.pdf Moving Insurers vs Eric Green - Discovery BSA vs TCC and many others - Discovery Paul Mones request to no longer be counsel for client Insurance companies vs aggregators vs Coalition (Discovery of aggregators & Coalition fee request) Law firm fighting against insurance companies over subpoena of aggregators

The two Pennsylvania councils are Washington Crossings & Minsi Trails (note that Minsi is one of the members of the Ad Hoc committee). Total Assets Washington Crossings - $6.45M ($5.8M net) ... $3.9M Net Unrestricted Assets Minsi Trails - $16.7M ($15.0M net) .... $6.7M net unrestricted Current Contributions Washington Crossings - $1.39M Minsi Trails - $2.58M Total CSA Liabilities per TCC: Washington Crossings - $11M - $64M Minsi Trails - $16.4M - $93.4M The TCC statement indicates the PA councils should pay about $14M (based on $58M total & $44 from NJ). That would be about 75% of their total net assets or 132% of their total net unrestricted assets ... so my guess is that TCC is calling into question some of their "restrictions".

Scouter.com is not well liked by National and believe me, while we are all scouters, we have various opinions of BSA. I think if BSA fails, we will help build up a new scouting organization. If you want to know what national thinks of scouter.com just read this article .. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tasneemnashrulla/boy-scouts-confusion-about-girls-in-boy-scouts#.pfl5BBjVE We do our best to allow topics to be discussed without editing/censorship. You will find that this forum is much more open than reddit/bsa or reddit/boyscouts or any BSA facebook group. However, there are times we have to step in to ensure all forum members feel welcome to participate. Since this has been discussed already. CS was given a warning for his excessive downvoting of a member who ended up quitting the site. This member left since CS's downvoting essentially broke his ability to use the forum. This was abusive behavior. After that, CS continued to hound a few other members on our site. So, he earned a second warning and moderated content for 1 week. He can still post, but it does limit his ability a bit. After a week, that will be removed. He is a great forum member, we will welcome him back, but we still need to step in when we feel it is necessary. We ask everyone to follow the scout oath/law. ... friendly, courteous & kind. We understand that is tough with these conversations and we do let them go for a while. However, we also will step in when we feel we have to in order to ensure all feel welcome. If anyone has a concern about any specific post ... click on the 3 dots and select report. We get those, review and can take action if appropriate. I hope this provides some background.

I only caught a small portion but I believe that they said they are going into the mail this week. So I would expect you see this next week.

Going to lock this topic a bit to so some cleaning. Looks like we went way off of the Michael Johnson discussion. I'll move some of the comments and others may just hide (no offense intended). Ok, I moved a couple of posts. Others that were not on topic I hid. I was a bit heavy handed as the forum feeds are filled with this one single topic and many points were just quick back and forth messages that were not necessarily on topic. This isn't bad, it just makes it difficult for those who are attempting to keep updated. If you want, you can spin off new topics in our forums. If you had any posts that disappeared that you think should reappear, just let me know. I can spin them into new topics if you like. Thanks!

Pretty major development in a different Judge Silverstein case. She just tossed out 16,000 votes out of the talc injury bankruptcy as the law firm failed to do any diligence to determine if claimants who they submitted ballots for had been exposed to talc products produced by Imerys. https://www.law360.com/delaware/articles/1430779/judge-tosses-16k-talc-claimant-votes-in-imerys-ch-11 This is where we may run into issues with the claim aggregators. If discovery shows that claims are coming into question into certain lawfirms and those lawfirms do not confirm the claims are valid ... it could impact voting. "In order for master ballots to work, great trust is placed in the plaintiffs bar," Judge Silverstein said. "With respect to Bevan & Associates, the evidence shows that such trust was not well-placed." Edit: When I think of similarities to BSA ... it really goes to the validity of the mass tort claims. Did those law firms do any sort of confirmation of the claim? Are they simply racking up thousands of claims to put on an excel spreadsheet so they can collect large fees? Silverstein has shown in one case she does not ignore evidence of law firms lack of due diligence, I would expect the same here.

I was reading into the package again. 1) The Coalition is expecting a direct payment from BSA of $18M if the agreement goes into effect in March ($16M in February). This is on top of the 30 - 40% they will get from their claimants. I really hope the judge denies this. 2) There is a footnote. The Coalition & FCR agree with the TCC that the BSA estimation of claims is wrong (page 433). They just believe it isn't worth fighting anymore.

If the current plan is approved by enough claimants and the judge confirms it then it is locked in. The earliest we can probably say it is locked in is end of January or early February next year.

To be clear ... someone has the data to calculate the 50% number. I think all that is being asked is some additional details behind that number. If forum members here didn't care, they wouldn't even be posting comments. If there are further details, it may spur discussions on what actions can be taken that protect scouts while still maintaining the program. For example, MJ mentioned vetting older youth ... what does that look like, how would we do that and what are the impacts to youth & the program. Just a high level number doesn't help that much other than to raise these questions. More details would really help us understand the situation further.

I agree with you & @Eagledad's comments. To me, this one should drive BSA to release more details. If this includes a lot of minor non abuse incidents then less concerning. There is more grey area with youth than there is with adults and youth. If this means 50% of CSA is older kids raping younger youth then that is a completely different story. While the tenting rule helps, there are still many cases where an older scout will be alone with a younger scout.

I completely agree. Many of us have added our own safety requirements on top of BSA's in terms of youth protection ... so some of what he said was not surprising. The two areas I was surprised was that 50% of the abuse are done by youth and known abusers are in the BSA. I knew that was a growing concern, but if someone were to ask me a week ago, I would have guessed 10%. Honestly, that was the point that scared my wife. She knows the rigor we apply YPT to other adults ... but knowing half the assaults' are done by kids was a bit of a wake up call. The other is known abusers are in the BSA. That one needs specifics. I'm struggling to accept that one. I hope it isn't true.

Yes. My wife told me yesterday she will have a hard time letting my daughter join Scouts BSA. My daughter dropped out of Cub Scouts due to various conflicts and lack of girls in the Pack, but we always talked about her joining Scouts BSA. I also talked with an ASM and as a Troop we may start ignoring the 72 hour rule. (We already require YPT). We may require any adult who wants to spend the night with the Troop to register as an adult leader. Finally we started having 1 scout per tent during COVID. That may continue.

Looks like the TCC removed themselves from the claims aggregator discovery. I found that a bit interesting. https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/614bb955-d899-44d5-a2f7-3f995b92f932_6589.pdf

Looks like a great trip!

I don't think anyone said that. What they said is that we shouldn't just do weekly meetings and eliminate the outdoor program. Honestly, scouting without an outdoor program is not scouting ... its school. So why continue? Risk management is not eliminating all risks. It is mitigating them while still ensuring the program/process/product can continue. My son downhill skis. Yes, he can die. He could get seriously injured. He wears safety equipment and skis within his ability ... but there is still the risk. The ski club makes me sign a wavier to tell me of the risks. My son mountain bikes. Yes, he can die. He could get seriously injured. Once again, there are mitigations & waivers. At scouting ... yes, there will and should be an outdoor program. There should be mitigations in place to protect him. However, there will still be some remaining risks. Perhaps there should be more transparency over some of those risks for parents and perhaps more mitigations ... but there must still be an outdoor program. Otherwise, I see no need for scouting.

Thank you for contributing and sharing this info! I really think having external CSA experts with experienced scouters working on change is a great approach. There are aspects of the program that are critical. External experts may not realize that so hopefully they can help provide solutions within the framework of the program. I could imagine that is a tough balance at times.

Um ... really. You laid off your Director of Youth Protection while in bankruptcy due to issues with youth protection? Um ... ok. I am just laughing right now .... I just. I hope there is more to the story.

https://www.umc.org/en/content/umc-leaders-share-important-information-for-churches-sponsoring-scout-troops