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

[Owls_are_cool]

Again, the end result of this lawsuit will punish the scouts in my unit. They will be the ones stuck with higher fees because of liability insurance. Availability of summer camps will be more limited and more expensive, though one could argue that is a good thing. Etc. The people responsible for the abuse are not paying a dime. 

[David CO]

1 hour ago, Owls_are_cool said:

Again, the end result of this lawsuit will punish the scouts in my unit. 

I don't think your scouts are being punished.

[David CO]

1 hour ago, Owls_are_cool said:

Again, the end result of this lawsuit will punish the scouts in my unit. They will be the ones stuck with higher fees because of liability insurance. Availability of summer camps will be more limited and more expensive, though one could argue that is a good thing. Etc.

I understand.  I have felt that way for a long, long time about YP.  I know it's not true, but I have still felt that way.

It feels like YP is punishing my scouts.  They didn't cause the problems, so why are their scouting activities being curtailed and restricted.  Why can't they experience the same sort of great scouting program their fathers and grandfathers enjoyed.  It's just not fair.

YP wasn't put in to punish my scouts.  As much as I hate it, I have to admit that it wasn't intended as a punishment.  I can't call YP a punishment.  It does make things difficult and expensive, and it does drive good people out of scouting, but it is not a punishment.

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by David CO

[Owls_are_cool]

Question: Montana Council has a large endowment fund that maintains the campgrounds that the council runs. It also lowers the cost of council operations and they can offer summer camps more cheaply for scouts. Montana Council does not charge a registration fee for scouts at recharter time. 

Will this endowment fund be liquidated to fund the victim compensation fund?

[T2Eagle]

5 minutes ago, Owls_are_cool said:

Question: Montana Council has a large endowment fund that maintains the campgrounds that the council runs. It also lowers the cost of council operations and they can offer summer camps more cheaply for scouts. Montana Council does not charge a registration fee for scouts at recharter time. 

Will this endowment fund be liquidated to fund the victim compensation fund?

Probably not, Montana is not one of the look back states so these older claims are beyond the statute of limitations.  Montana Council might decide to put some of that endowment into the victim trust fund in return for a release of any the old claims against it.

Of course, if a scout or scouts were abused more recently, and it's shown that some negligence on the part of the council contributed to that abuse, the endowment could be wiped out by that.  Nobody thirty years from now would then be saying "hey, my scout is being punished today for something that happened thirty years ago".

If the victims who may finally be receiving some part of the compensation due them, had received it back at the time it was due them, today's camps and endowments would be smaller, we just wouldn't know that they were smaller.

[Eagle1993]

37 minutes ago, T2Eagle said:

Probably not, Montana is not one of the look back states so these older claims are beyond the statute of limitations.  Montana Council might decide to put some of that endowment into the victim trust fund in return for a release of any the old claims against it.

Of course, if a scout or scouts were abused more recently, and it's shown that some negligence on the part of the council contributed to that abuse, the endowment could be wiped out by that.  Nobody thirty years from now would then be saying "hey, my scout is being punished today for something that happened thirty years ago".

If the victims who may finally be receiving some part of the compensation due them, had received it back at the time it was due them, today's camps and endowments would be smaller, we just wouldn't know that they were smaller.

https://childusa.org/law/montana/sex-abuse-sol/

Civil lawsuits must by filed by 27 years old.  So, the question is how many sex abuse victims are under 27 that were abused within the Montana Council.

Now the issue is, if there is even 1 case, that could cost the council a ton of money (one Oregon case cost $20M).  It doesn't take many cases like that to bankrupt a council.

The other question is if the endowment is a restricted asset.  That would factor in even if they had enough cases to bankrupt the council.  Too many unknowns, but for now, I would think it is relatively safe.

[elitts]

11 hours ago, T2Eagle said:

These cases aren't about finding someone to punish, they're about trying to compensate people who have been injured.  And this cannot be said enough, no scout is today is having anything taken away that they own or are entitled to.  Neither they, nor likely we, bought or built much if any of the camps and endowments that may be given over to people who were children when the worst offense we can think of short of murder was committed against them.

If we think scouts today should have strong camps after these victims are partially, slightly, compensated than we need to go out and rebuild those camps and endowments for those scouts.

Except that this really isn't true.  These cases are entirely about finding someone to punish, because in most cases the actual offender isn't punishable and basically all of the victims tell you "it isn't about the money".  The general feeling in this country is that for almost anything bad that happens, there has to have been some over-arching villain or problem that caused it or allowed it to happen.  I assume this is because people know you can't ever stop bad people (or unfortunate accidents) from existing, so instead they want to try and find some other entity to take action against to make them feel like they have some control and can feel safer.

The unfortunate thing is that our legal processes have transformed civil liability in this country from an objective concept that can be independently measured into not much more than formalized extortion.  Made worse by the fact that the insurance companies making a profit on the whole thing insist on settlements rather than making people actually prove their case.

 

[DavidLeeLambert]

Another letter from a Scouter and parent has appeared on the docket...

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/887200_2644.pdf

The writer is a mother of two Eagle Scouts and volunteers regularly to help with Day Camp. She attaches the program from a district-wide Eagle recognition ceremony, with the words of 20 Eagle recipients from that year recounting their accomplishments and what they learned from Scouting.

Several of the Scouts lead off with the number of Merit Badges they earned or name-drop people they met or places they visited, but several report acts of service, generally their Eagle projects. All report learning and fun.

The first-listed Scout reports that he set his Scoutmaster's broken leg on a campout. Talk about training a boy to lead, and about a Scoutmaster not necessarily being perfect!

[ThenNow]

1 hour ago, DavidLeeLambert said:

 

Another letter from a Scouter and parent has appeared on the docket...

 

Quite a powerful letter. 

[fred8033]

1 hour ago, DavidLeeLambert said:

Another letter from a Scouter and parent has appeared on the docket...

https://casedocs.omniagentsolutions.com/cmsvol2/pub_47373/887200_2644.pdf

The writer is a mother of two Eagle Scouts and volunteers regularly to help with Day Camp. She attaches the program from a district-wide Eagle recognition ceremony, with the words of 20 Eagle recipients from that year recounting their accomplishments and what they learned from Scouting.

Several of the Scouts lead off with the number of Merit Badges they earned or name-drop people they met or places they visited, but several report acts of service, generally their Eagle projects. All report learning and fun.

The first-listed Scout reports that he set his Scoutmaster's broken leg on a campout. Talk about training a boy to lead, and about a Scoutmaster not necessarily being perfect!

We should all write such letters.  I have a few powerful stories that could bring you to tears ... some tears of how moving ... show tears from how funny.  All good.

[Eagle1993]

I'm going to lock this for a short bit while I move some of the this to a new topic.  The comments back and forth are fine, just straying pretty far from the bankruptcy discussion.  Will unlock shortly.

[Eagle1993]

Ok ... I think I split off the separate topic correctly.  Apologizes if I caught a couple of on topic remarks.  You can find the new topic below.

 

[CynicalScouter]

Took some time off. Wanted to work on some things. Get my head on straight.

Yes, I am aware of all the activity and buzz. In the end, the bankruptcy is not about who is writing the most poignant letters to the judge (here's a hint, ex parte communications like that will likely never make it to the judge and even if they did, the canons of judicial ethics prohibit her from considering them).

It is as I have said from the start about math. As someone from the TCC said in a prior town hall: this is a business proposition. How much (to creditors) and when. Not who writes the most tear jerking letters.

So, what has BSA delivered? Not much, but it might be the best they can do.

1. The deal with Hartford is a joke. $650 million might matter if there were only 650 claims (think USA Gymnastics). That's not what is playing out here. We are talking thousands, just in terms of states where the statute of limitations hasn't run. Last I checked, there were 850+ state and federal lawsuits pending against BSA that are part of the automatic stay. There's no doubt been a rush in states like NC, NJ, and NY where there are deadlines coming up or past to file more.
2. $400 million from LCs? Even bigger joke. Local councils and Chartered Organizations are just utterly screwed at this point. We have talked at length about how they have not even been 100% forthcoming about their assets. But even if people seized all $4 billion, so what? There isn't enough.
3. The TCC is absolutely getting cut out of this conversation, for the very reasonable reason that at this point they are useless because…
4. BSA thinks it can cut a deal directly with the Coalition/AIS/Kosnoff (or at least the Coalition) and bypass the TCC. Read the mediation documents and read between the lines of why TCC was not even invited to the last day of the Miami mediation and why they were not allowed to pose questions. They are not relevant to the deal BSA is trying to cut.
5. The only group more annoyed than TCC right now? Insurance companies not named Hartford. From what I gather, they were put in a Zoom waiting room the entire time in Miami.
6. Every document I have read and the feeling I got from the Zoom sessions with the judge make me more and more convinced that there will be a BSA-Coalition deal that leaves out the LCs/COs and effectively cuts TCC off at the knees. The rest will involve Chubb and the other insurance companies vs. the abuse claimants for the next decade with BSA possibly siding on the side of the abuse claimants. This happened in some Catholic abuse cases where the dioceses sued/went after the insurers.
7. Victims need to start wrapping their arms around the idea that $1 million payouts are off the table. You cannot get blood out of a stone and $102 billion is not going to magically appear where there is not $102 billion to be had. Chubb and the other insurance companies would themselves have to be liquidated to come up with that kind of cash. Never going to happen.
8. I would lay money that within days of BSA National finalizing the contingency plan/toggle plan to come out of bankruptcy, at least half a dozen councils will file their own Chapter 7 or 11 bankruptcies. With thousands of suits and claims already in the pipeline, there is just no working around it.

So, stop thinking like people with emotional ties. Start thinking about this as a sheer function of math. There is not enough money to go around. This means either victims are looking at a pittance, or they opt to reject and will get million-dollar judgments that are worthless (again, cannot get blood out of a stone). BSA National survives as a hollowed-out shell that will keep bleeding out members (I can just see the headlines of BSA only paying out $10k per victim, that will sell well). We are already at World War II membership levels. Let's see how long it takes to get to World War I levels. Local councils are just utterly, utterly screwed.

 

Edited April 21, 2021 by CynicalScouter

[RememberSchiff]

On 4/14/2021 at 8:01 AM, Eagle1993 said:

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.  

This.

[CynicalScouter]

On 4/14/2021 at 8:01 AM, Eagle1993 said:

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.  

1) There has been no voting.

2) I think the idea with the new toggle plan is to legal the legal status of the LCs alone, estimate abuse claims based on a point system. That just leaves the question of the HA bases.