BSA Secret "Perversion" Files

[Engineer61]

Found the answer to my own question.... LDS...they are paying part of the damages as well.

[acco40]

I guess the Scouter should have added a few more wives to keep him "busy."

[Engineer61]

Known issue in my locale...Oregon must not have noticed.

[jhankins]

Well, the judgement was rendered:

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/04/23/scouts-pay-man-m-punitive-damages/

 

18.5 million dollars. 60% to the Oregon victim's fund, 40% of what's left to the lawyers.

 

Here's the kicker: "In determining the award, the jury was allowed to consider the wealth of the Boy Scouts to decide the amount of punitive damages."

 

 

[NJCubScouter]

Here's the kicker: "In determining the award, the jury was allowed to consider the wealth of the Boy Scouts to decide the amount of punitive damages."

 

That's not unusual. As far as I know it is the law in every state (and definitely in NJ but there's no reason why it would be different anywhere else) that when a jury is considering an award of punitive damages, the financial condition of the defendant must be taken into consideration.

 

If this sounds unreasonable, it also needs to be understood that just because a plaintiff seeks punitive damages, doesn't mean a jury necessarily even gets to consider awarding them. The judge would first have to decide that the plaintiff has provided sufficient evidence by which a jury could decide that the criteria for punitive damages have been met, and those criteria always include a degree of wrongdoing higher than "negligence." (Well, except maybe sometimes in products liability cases, but that's a special kind of case and beyond the scope of tonight's class.)

 

I haven't read the article yet to see if it indicates what kind of evidence led the judge to that conclusion in this case.

[Mr. Boyce]

This is a quiet travesty. Here the BSA is "damned if you do, damned if you don't."

 

Somehow the BSA is expected to keep better records than law enforcement, not only today in 2010, but back in the 1960s, when even law enforcement itself did a mediocre job with this stuff.

 

Somehow the BSA in the 1960s was supposed to give this issue the very high priority that it now receives in 2010.

 

Somehow the BSA is expected to divine, by smell?, what new scouters with no police record may end up doing.

 

There just seems to be no reason or logic in this decision. . . other than, it's sad this happened, let's toss money on it.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

The jury decided on April 13 that the Boy Scouts were negligent for allowing former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes to associate with Scouts, including Lewis, after Dykes admitted to a Scouts official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys.

 

The BSA is on the hook for being criminally negligent.

[NJCubScouter]

The BSA is on the hook for being criminally negligent.

 

Technically, "criminally" would apply only in a criminal case, and this was a civil case.

 

But the BSA was found liable not only for negligence, but also for "reckless and outrageous conduct", or at least that is the phrase used in the article linked above. And that finding is what permitted the jury to proceed to consider evidence of the BSA's ability to pay punitive damages, and ultimately to award punitive damages. If it had "only" been negligence, the BSA would have been responsible for "only" the $1.4 in damages found by the jury about 10 days earlier, and not for punitive damages.

[OldGreyEagle]

"Somehow the BSA in the 1960s was supposed to give this issue the very high priority that it now receives in 2010."

 

Perhaps had the Catholic Church given this issue the high priority that it now receives in 2010 in the 1960's, I wouldn't be the weirdzo-mobile I turned out to be, the hell of it is, we will never know, will we?

(This message has been edited by OldGreyEagle)

[acco40]

An Oregon jury's decision to award a man $18.5 million in punitive damages in his case against the Boy Scouts of America will likely be the first of many financial hits the Scouts will take as it prepares to defend itself against a series of sex abuse lawsuits.

 

Anybody have any idea how many lawsuits may be in the pipeline?

[NE-IV-88-Beaver]

Well they did increase the rechartering fee by 50% this year!

[ScoutNut]

>>"The jury decided on April 13 that the Boy Scouts were negligent for allowing former assistant Scoutmaster Timur Dykes to associate with Scouts, including Lewis, after Dykes admitted to a Scouts official in 1983 that he had molested 17 boys."

[BadenP]

Thing is Merlyn is correct the BSA was criminally negligent for not having this guy pulled out, even though it is a civil case the incident was indeed criminal, and a heinous crime at that for this guy and the 17 others this ASM molested so it is no wonder the jury awarded such high punitive damages. As far as future cases are concerned, if this one is settled with a high dollar outcome after all the appeals there could be an avalanche of new lawsuits, there are plenty of lawyers willing to go after the BSA.

 

The saddest part of the whole case is that the BSA, unlike the Vatican, isn't sitting on a huge fortune to keep them solvent and it would not take too many similiar cases to put the BSA out of business for good. Who suffers the most are the kids who we train to live by the scout law and become good citizens, what are they to think now. Are we all about to witness the demise of the BSA? I hope not.

[nldscout]

Like all lawsuits, once the emotion is taken out thru the appeal process this will be overturned or reduced greatly.

[jhankins]

We're not privvy to all the facts, but I have to agree -- if the BSA knew this guy was an issue and didn't pull him from the ranks of leaders, that's negligent.

 

I'm dealing with something similar in my own council right now, not anywhere near this bad, but in the case of a leader not being pulled after a flagged background check? I would tend to err on the side of caution to protect the boys.