Chapter 11 announced - Part 3 - BSA's Toggle Plan

[Eagle1993]

Updated Plan (which includes the Toggle Plan)

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/886292_2594.pdf

Redline Document

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/886294_2595.pdf

 

[RememberSchiff]

I do not see how this "amended" Revised Plan addresses the issues with the Revised Plan (March, 2021) raised by TCC, other victim groups, and insurers.

The "Toggle Plan" appears to distract the  claimant  "vote"  from approving/rejecting a plan based on detailed financials and fairness to deciding between two vague plans (Global Resolution and Toggle) with different buckets.

The Debtor invited the LC's and CO's to its bankruptcy for their mutual benefit. The Debtor can toggle that invitation; the independent LC's or CO's can toggle their participation.

???

Edited April 14, 2021 by RememberSchiff

[Eagle1993]

Until a decision is made about HA bases, legal status of LCs and an estimate of the abuse claims, the proposals and voting should stop.    I'm surprised we are 14 months into this and we have yet to have a single court rule on these critical aspects of the bankruptcy.  

[T2Eagle]

Can anyone describe for me what the BSA says is the relationship between Arrow, JPM, the Foundation loan et al, and/or how that ownership structure makes the Summit a restricted asset?  Alternatively, in the event that no one can explain it, or it cannot be explained, if you could point me to a document that purports to lay it out, and I'll try to dig through it myself.

[elitts]

Quote

I’m using this as a jumping off point, of sorts, and don’t expect much response. If so, I’d love to hear.

Alongside whatever has/hasn’t gone on with BSA hiding the asset peanut, I feel like they are simply doing a terrible job of representing what I thought Scouting was supposed to be. As you know, Scouting wasn’t all it was meant to be in my life. Still, I see the good, carry with me great lessons and some happy memories, and know the moral and ethical construct is sound. From the apparent lack of interface with the TCC, the failure to engage anyone on the claimant side before filing Amended Plan 1 and soon Amended Plan 2, the lack of collaboration between LCs, and more or less lying to LCs about the prospect of needing to contribute to receive a release, Scouting has the egg of untrustworthiness all over its face. Add to that an ice cold lead council who exudes no compassion and comes off the quintessential robotic and unsympathetic Wall Street lawyer. She’s Gordon Gekko’s go-to. I’m certain she’s a big law sniper. A heavy hitter and extremely competent. All well and good, but she lends no measure of credibility or reinforcement to the alleged narrative that the BSA gives two turds about the survivors. I would never have selected her to be lead, at least publicly. I recognize you want the best, but this is a PR case as well as a legal one.

Scouting? I see good. For sure. BSA? The nasty taste in my mouth isn’t soon to fade. 

The BSA is in a tough spot when it comes to balancing the fact that they "care about survivors" and the practical issues surrounding the operations of an organization.  Frankly, the ultimate duty of the BSA Board and top management is to the organization and the members it serves, NOT to survivors; so I never expected this bankruptcy process to be anything but adversarial and acrimonious.  If they had simply sold everything and given every dime to the lawyers, they would have failed in their responsibilities.

The PR implications of the situation mean that actual honesty isn't really possible since basically no one in the public is willing or able to actually respond to emotional issues in a balanced and measured way; so you get statements that don't match up with actions because there isn't really any other option.  The "real truth" of this situation is that most people wouldn't support the kinds of liability that are being argued in many of these cases if it were applied to them; but this can't be pointed out publicly because it's "insensitive" and because we are talking about people who were children. (And won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?)  I mean, let's imagine that you are hosting a party and one guest you invited rapes another one.  Is that your fault?  What if it's a caterer you hired?  Or the entertainer who is doing magic for the kids?  If someone is a Scoutmaster and one scout is bullying another scout in private and it doesn't get reported, is the Scoutmaster liable?  After all, we all know that bullying happens regularly in middle and high school, so shouldn't the SM have been watching more closely?  

 

[ThenNow]

1 hour ago, T2Eagle said:

Can anyone describe for me what the BSA says is the relationship between Arrow, JPM, the Foundation loan et al, and/or how that ownership structure makes the Summit a restricted asset?  Alternatively, in the event that no one can explain it, or it cannot be explained, if you could point me to a document that purports to lay it out, and I'll try to dig through it myself.

All I can point you to is the TCC's action on asset issues, where it is discussed and noted on the infamous "Exhibit B." A lack of documentation to support the BSA's assertion of a restriction is really sort of the problem.

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/868464_1.pdf 

Edited April 14, 2021 by ThenNow

[ThenNow]

42 minutes ago, elitts said:

I mean, let's imagine that you are hosting a party and one guest you invited rapes another one.  Is that your fault?  What if it's a caterer you hired?  Or the entertainer who is doing magic for the kids?  If someone is a Scoutmaster and one scout is bullying another scout in private and it doesn't get reported, is the Scoutmaster liable?  After all, we all know that bullying happens regularly in middle and high school, so shouldn't the SM have been watching more closely?  

Now, let's imagine you host a 100-year party for boys where you (your predecessors and successors) tell parents, "It's all good. We got this. You can trust us 100%!", recruit and anoint adult men to staff your party, ask for entry and recurrent fees, charge for various goods and services, advertise your party as the most pure and wholesome event going...and almost 1000 boys are sexually abused by your volunteer (and paid) staff each year over the course of your hosting services. Then what? At the party I attended for almost 8 years, it now looks like upwards of 10 kids were repeatedly sexually abused. That's 1+ kid per year. For one of them (me) it was multiple times per year. Realistically, that's the same story for most if not all of them. Now what? How do most people feel about that?

Edited April 14, 2021 by ThenNow

[Owls_are_cool]

6 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

For one of them (me) it was multiple times per year. Realistically, that's the same story for most if not all of them. Now what? How do most people feel about that?

Has the person responsible been convicted of the crime and those that did nothing about it been convicted of being accessories to the crime? This lawsuit punishes scouts, not those responsible. That is how most people feel about that.

[ThenNow]

1 hour ago, Owls_are_cool said:

Has the person responsible been convicted of the crime and those that did nothing about it been convicted of being accessories to the crime? This lawsuit punishes scouts, not those responsible.

I’ve spoken a good bit about all of this, if you are interested in the details of “story” and thoughts on this. You can search my screen name and review posts. Sorry to deflect and opt out of a re-re-rehash. 
 

1 hour ago, Owls_are_cool said:

That is how most people feel about that.

Who are “most people”?

Edited April 14, 2021 by ThenNow

[elitts]

29 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Now, let's imagine you host a 100-year party for boys where you (your predecessors and successors) tell parents, "It's all good. We got this. You can trust us 100%!", recruit and anoint adult men to staff your party, ask for entry and recurrent fees, charge for various goods and services, advertise your party as the most pure and wholesome event going...and almost 1000 boys are sexually abused by your volunteer (and paid) staff each year over the course of your hosting services. Then what? At the party I attended for almost 8 years, it now looks like upwards of 10 kids were repeatedly sexually abused. That's 1+ kid per year. For one of them (me) it was multiple times per year. Realistically, that's the same story for most if not all of them. Now what? How do most people feel about that?

Unfortunately, your scenario simply doesn't track with reality.

• Scouts was never 100% safe.  Just like sports, the promise is only "this program is as safe as it reasonably can be while doing dangerous activities and deliberately having scouts interact with a variety of other adults on both group and individual levels".
• Scouts has never (at least since I became involved in  the 1980s told parents "please drop off your kids and leave, we'll take care of everything".  In every troop I've ever been a a part of they've been desperately looking for adults to stay and get involved. (barring of course the parents who can't watch or help without going overboard)
• Fees paid for entry and services are very clearly identified as going to pay for administrative operations, program development and materials, NOT a robust system of safety checks and other measures to keep the kids safe as a bug in a rug.
• I've never seen Scouts advertised as "Clean and wholesome".  They advertise that a good Scout should strive to be Clean (and everything else in the Scout Law) and that those are the ideals we try and instill in the youth, but in day to day practice?  Only a complete idiot would think you could do anything with a group of boys, with limited parental involvement, and have it be strictly "clean and wholesome".  At the very least, I would hope no parent is that naive. (You've been listening to a certain other user's rants about organizational "hypocrisy" too much)
• The BSA doesn't "anoint" Scoutmasters or other leaders, they merely do a basic check for obvious problems with a person and then put their name on the list.  This is also fairly clearly spelled out.
• The BSA doesn't regularly recruit "staff" for direct involvement at the troop level.  The local council may occasionally direct a volunteer without a home to a troop in need, but it's still strictly voluntary.

As for what happened to you and others in your troop, well, that was a horrible situation that I'm sorry you went though.  And if you reported the person to the BSA and they took no action, then your case would be one of the limited number where I would agree that the BSA actually has some liability (the other major area being situations where someone was abused by staff at summer or H.A. camps) since they had been informed of a risk/danger to scouts, but didn't take reasonable and prudent actions to mitigate the risk.   (And if our laws permitted us to take every single thing the perpetrator owns, then spend a nice long time subjecting the person to every single abuse they inflicted upon someone else before finally castrating them and dumping them into shark infested waters while still bleeding, I'd be right there to hold the door while you pushed him in.)  But if your abuser wasn't known and the abuse went unreported, how could it be anyone else's fault?  From everything I've heard, serial pedophiles are usually very careful about creating a veneer of respectability and reasonableness around their actions, so even if adults are generally "on their guard", the person most likely to get overlooked is the pedophile.

[Owls_are_cool]

5 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Sorry to deflect and opt out of a re-re-rehash. 

Okay, I'll put you on the side that wants my son to pay instead of those responsible. Higher fees, no summer camps to go to, etc will be the outcome of this bankruptcy, which will punish the scouts instead of those responsible. Come to think of it, I invested a bunch of time and money into the program, only to be used to bailout those responsible, instead of benefiting my troop. 

[Eagle1993]

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2012/10/boy_scout_perversion_files_off.html

For a background on why were are here in bankruptcy, this case is likely the one many will point to.

One question I would have is on a case by case bases ... who knew what & when and how quickly did they act.  That should determine liability regardless of any systemic issue.

The second question ... should the BSA have recognized, through their massive file system and decades of reports, that there was an epidemic of sex abusers within the BSA ranks.  Should they have seen that simply removing and keeping leaders removed, after the fact, was no longer sufficient.  If they should have realized there was an epidemic of sex abuse, then I agree they are liable for ALL cases.  I think many claimants would state that BSA should have realized they had a systemic problem and fixed it proactively (perhaps we better vetting, random checks, etc.).  So ... my question ... did the leaders within BSA know (or should have known), at some point, that they had a problem but the solutions were too painful so they didn't implement change?  To me, that is the $10B question.  If that answer is yes, then we deserve the losses.

Unfortunately, our court system isn't great at working these out at a reasonable cost, so we are in bankruptcy.  All we are left to settle on is how much & when.  

[ThenNow]

8 minutes ago, elitts said:

Unfortunately, your scenario simply doesn't track with reality.

I’ll respond more thoroughly when back at my computer, but a few sentences for now.
 

I was being intentionally hyperbolic to accentuate the complete absurdity and inapplicability of the initial analogy. The two are in different universes. A one-off at a private party does not equate to 85,000 sexually abused boys in a non-profit organization that BOLDLY holds itself out as Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind...A one-off does not equate to 1000’s of boys sexually abused within one Local Council. A one-off does not equate to 10+ boys sexually abused in one Troop. A one-off does not equate to one boy sexually abused 10’s of times in 7+ years. 

Back in a bit. Please read my other posts, if you’d like more on my situation and experience, since you’re using assumptions in your responsive posts. Thanks.

[ThenNow]

1 hour ago, Owls_are_cool said:

Okay, I'll put you on the side that wants my son to pay instead of those responsible. Higher fees, no summer camps to go to, etc will be the outcome of this bankruptcy, which will punish the scouts instead of those responsible. Come to think of it, I invested a bunch of time and money into the program, only to be used to bailout those responsible, instead of benefiting my troop. 

Please read my other posts before this blasting starts again and again and again. Or, ask a couple of the other guys. Several guys have backed me up, supported my position and presence here, and otherwise clarified how they view my input. I hope they don't mind, but among them are very recently DavidCo (even though we had a clash and I was reactive, for which I am sorry), qwazse (directed others to not ask me to go over details and read my posts...ty), CynicalScouter, 5thGenTexan, ynot (has echoed and strongly supported my posts), MisterH, MattR and most recently Eagle1993 with an eloquent note, if I do say so myself (and I just did...also, grateful).

Like others who have similarly unleashed on me (personally), you really have no idea what I did or did not "invest into the program" and continue to assume. I would ask you not do that, please.

[Owls_are_cool]

6 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Like others who have similarly unleashed on me (personally), you really have no idea what I did or did not "invest into the program" and continue to assume. I would ask you not do that, please.

All I did is point out is that the lawsuit will punish the scouts in my troop and punish the adults associated with the troop who invested time and money into the program. The wrong people are being punished.