Chapter 11 Announced - Part 5 - RSA Ruling

[vol_scouter]

A query to @CynicalScouter and @ThenNow,

First, to be perfectly clear, I have not heard anything at like Gilwell_1919 has said.  All of my knowledge at the upper echelons of the BSA - both professional and volunteer - support strictly following these rules. So these queries are my interest only and not in any manner based on knowledge, rumors, or anything else.

The BSA is the debtor in the chapter 11 while the LC's are interested parties (I am sure that there is a correct legal term for them).  So if a LC in some manner mentioned a large list of law firms (not a single one), is there still an issue if the LC is not the debtor.  My guess is yes it would be a problem.  

Once again, Gilwell_1919 is the only person who has made such a statement.  Everything that I know or have heard about is contrary.  I believe that @CynicalScouter has the correct answers based on timelines etc.

[Gilwell_1919]

43 minutes ago, johnsch322 said:

What kind of contact did you if you do not mind me asking?

In speaking with two of the claimants, who came to me in confidence, they didn't want to file claims... they just wanted to get the information to BSA for them to handle. When they filed their claims and were connected with AIS... they were concerned - and rightly so. I told them I would help them since I have noooo problem defending myself against rapacious lawyers or people that want to hurl judiciously acerbic spears at scouting. In reaching out to someone at AVA Law to get to the bottom of this, the email chain eventually ended up with Timmy K.

I am not too familiar with how this forum works... but I would be glad to have a side-bar conversation with you (via phone if you like). 

[ThenNow]

6 minutes ago, vol_scouter said:

debtor in the chapter 11 while the LC's are interested parties (I am sure that there is a correct legal term for them).  So if a LC in some manner mentioned a large list of law firms (not a single one), is there still an issue if the LC is not the debtor.  My guess is yes it would be a problem. 

Debtor in Possession.

Yup. That pesky word and legal  concept of agency.

[ThenNow]

5 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

I am not too familiar with how this forum works... but I would be glad to have a side-bar conversation with you (via phone if you like). 

You can direct message. Click a screen name and select it. I’m nearly a Luddite and unsure of group DMs.

[CynicalScouter]

12 minutes ago, vol_scouter said:

The BSA is the debtor in the chapter 11 while the LC's are interested parties (I am sure that there is a correct legal term for them).  So if a LC in some manner mentioned a large list of law firms (not a single one), is there still an issue if the LC is not the debtor.  My guess is yes it would be a problem.  

That's why I mentioned the officer/agent/employee aspect of this.

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

That means a debtor, through an employee/officer/agent, was directing claimants to a particular law firm.

The Scout Executive supposedly a) directed claimants to AIS and b) claimed BSA said to do as much.

IF that happened (IF here) IF it did the SE was acting as EITHER

an officer (probably not)

agent (yes), or

employee (maybe if read in a certain way) of the debtor: Boy Scouts of America. Even if he was technically a council employee, he was operating as an agent of BSA delivering BSA's message. Again, I am not convinced that message ever took place, for the reasons outlined above, or that if it did take place it was based on the SE's misunderstanding.

EVEN IF the Scout Executive said "here are a list of attorneys" that would be a tacit endorsement by the debtor through an officer/agent/employee of that list/those attorneys. No. No, no. No.

The only acceptable answer is "contact an attorney in your area". Period. Not a particular firm. Not a particular lawyer. It would also be permissible to say "contact the state or local bar for a list of attorneys in the area." That's not considered endorsement of a particular lawyer.

To put it in perspective, the TCC and their lawyers are prohibited as well from endorsing a particular law firm or firms for claimants to hire. The ONLY thing they have ever said is contact an attorney in your area (fine) one that specializes in sexual abuse claims NOT bankruptcy (ok). If they ever said "If you are in California, contact the firm of X, Y, Z or the firm of A, B, C" they'd be in trouble for giving tacit endorsement to those two firms.

Edited August 27, 2021 by CynicalScouter

[ThenNow]

8 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

In reaching out to someone at AVA Law to get to the bottom of this, the email chain eventually ended up with Timmy K.

And, he substantively responded?

[CynicalScouter]

4 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Yup. That pesky word and legal  concept of agency.

Which is why I said if true the SE was operating as

2 hours ago, CynicalScouter said:

That means a debtor, through an employee/officer/agent, was directing claimants to a particular law firm.

If the BSA told the SE to tell claimants "go to AIS" the SE would be within employee (maybe he is a LC employee?) or agent (absolutely; directed by a superior to deliver a message). I added officer because that's the typical trifecta; he's definitely not an "officer" of the debtor.

[Gilwell_1919]

52 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

ECREE: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

What you are alleging is a vast criminal conspiracy (to defraud claimants and the court), including the use of a time machine to get websites into your November/December 2019 Roundtable presentations that didn't exist until February 2020.

Things are not adding up because

1. your dates are off
2. your data is wrong, and
3. your recollection is faulty

unless somehow a TARDIS is involved.

Seriously...y'all are making me laugh. I understand it sounds 100% ludicrous. I'm simply trying to piece together the information I have and weigh it against what I have seen coming out of the courts. If my recollection of the NOV/DEC RTs is off, then I will own that. But, I am still waiting on those slides. Once I get them, I promise I will share them. Right now I am scouring through 9,000+ emails from Jan 2019 - Feb 2020 to find the info... but... most of it points to the google drive that I no longer have access to. Overall... no malicious intent here folks. 

[CynicalScouter]

21 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

hat was in Nov 2019. The chapter 11 info form is what I got from the google drive. Before Christmas of 2019, which would have been our DEC 2019 RT.

Again, that info form wouldn't have existed yet.

[DavidLeeLambert]

1 hour ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

I cannot prove what happened in the ether. People filed claims on the Official BSA portal... and then they were contacted by AIS. Does that prove colluding? Maybe... maybe not. But... From my end... sure... I stand by my analysis that BSA was doing this. 

It's possible that this is what happened:

• Your friends contacted the Council
• Council told them to submit a claim
• They submitted claims
• They were then randomly cold-called (or cold-texted, or cold-emailed) by AIS intake specialists with slack time. (I was never cold-called, but maybe they were in the "absolute optimum" demographic, 60-year-old veterans with youth Scouting mentioned on their resume, or something like that.)
• During their responses to the cold-calls, they admitted (or insufficiently failed to conceal) that they had already filed claims. The AIS intake person picked up on that and ran with it.

More likely than a leak somewhere?  Not sure. Still bad for AIS? I'd say so. Still bad for BSA? No, except that perhaps they should have done even more noticing or filed the motion to control lawyer advertisement earlier.

Edit: One other possibility, your friends did a Google search for "official BSA claims submit" and clicked on an advertisement rather than the official restructuring site, by mistake.

Edited August 27, 2021 by DavidLeeLambert

[CynicalScouter]

4 minutes ago, Gilwell_1919 said:

If my recollection of the NOV/DEC RTs is off, then I will own that.

Here's the problem.

1) I think I've pretty well established that the information/directing people to AIS couldn't have happened in November 2019 or December 2019 because the websites you listed didn't even exist yet. Again: you originally claim was that BSA, through your Scout Executive, was directing people to do this in 2019.

2) The earliest any such direction to those websites could have existed was February 7, 2020.

3) BSA filed for bankruptcy on February 18, 2020.

4) There's 11 days in-between the purchase of the www.OfficialBSAClaims.com domain and it going live (February 18, the date of the bankruptcy petition).

5) If the BSA was directing Scout Executives during that 11 day time period to tell POTENTIAL claimants (no bankruptcy yet) to go to AIS, there's a potential ethical lapse/breach.

6) If the BSA was directing Scout Executives after February 18, 2020 to tell ACTUAL claimants (bankruptcy petition filed) to go to AIS, we have a debtor in collusion with creditor law firms to defraud the claimants and the court. Forget ethical lapse/breach. This is disbarment/criminal charges territory.

I don't think there's malicious intent here. A Scout is Honest. I just believe that

1 hour ago, CynicalScouter said:

Things are not adding up because

1. your dates are off
2. your data is wrong, and
3. your recollection is faulty

unless somehow a TARDIS is involved.

[CynicalScouter]

1 minute ago, DavidLeeLambert said:

More likely than a leak somewhere?  Not sure. Still bad for AIS? I'd say so. Still bad for BSA? No, except that perhaps they should have done even more noticing or filed the motion to control lawyer advertisement earlier.

Yep. I suspect that AIS got claims data from the filings with the court and ran with it. NOT that BSA acted in criminal collusion to direct claimants to AIS.

Here's another thing that doesn't make sense. At least in the supposed 2019 timeframe, Kosnoff was still part of AIS.

Is the argument that Kosnoff was part of the BSA-AIS conspiracy, too? To help BSA? Seriously?

[vol_scouter]

@CynicalScouter and @ThenNow,

Thank you!!!  Confirmed my thoughts.  Personally, I am confident that the BSA has not done anything wrong in this regard.  Despite the comments made here, I know the BSA professional management, the NEC, and most of the NEB and they are honorable men and women who try to follow the law and listen to their legal counsel.  I sincerely doubt that any SE would commit such a mistake either.

[Gilwell_1919]

2 minutes ago, CynicalScouter said:

Again, that info form wouldn't have existed yet.

Yes, and no. I own a software development company and we create tons of sites/serves for programs. 99.99% they remain internal until rolled out to the public.... which also includes marketing materials with information. I highly doubt BSA created a website the same month they announced bankruptcy (Feb 2020). As an industry expert for such things, generally, websites like that are created months and months in advance... they go through alpha, beta, and then gold deliveries wherein all sorts of eyes look over everything (QA/QC) before something goes live. In certain situations (and with certain clients) there needs to be "marketing material", which also goes through the many stages before "going live". I can almost guarantee this this chapter 11 flyer when through a lot of different hands before it went live in Feb 2020. From my recollection, the first time I saw it was in Nov 2019. If I am conflating the dates... my apologies... but I am nearly absolutely certain I saw this well before its "official release date". Also... that is really the minor issue here. The main issue is that the some claimants, as far as I know, were told to file their claims online at the official BSA site. They told me they did just that. Afterwards... they were contacted by AIS who was representing themselves as agents of BSA. Is it possible they just went to the AIS site and not the BSA site? Look, anything is possible... but I know what I heard in the phone call, which was that AIS was in fact telling people they were acting on behalf of BSA, which doesn't implicate BSA at all... but it did start to make me question what the heck was going on. That was the whole reason I brought up the NOV/DEC 2019 RTs because that is when I first recall seeing that chapter 11 flyer. In looking through thousands of emails in 2019, I had a lot of conversations with my SE, DE, and other folks up the ladder regarding BSA's chapter 11. I also have quite a few breakfast and lunch meetings on my calendar... so I am just trying to put it all together because what I recollect, and based on what I've seen/heard.... I feel like I am walking through a cesspool at the moment and I don't like how it is making me question my entire scouting life. 

[CynicalScouter]

2 minutes ago, vol_scouter said:

Despite the comments made here, I know the BSA professional management, the NEC, and most of the NEB and they are honorable men and women who try to follow the law and listen to their legal counsel.  I sincerely doubt that any SE would commit such a mistake either.

I believe that no one would INTENTIONALLY make a mistake like criminally colluding with AIS as part of a bankruptcy proceeding. Certainly not NEC or NEB who have been lawyered up and told (wisely from a legal perspective) to let the lawyers do ALL the talking about the bankruptcy.

I can believe a local Scout Executive who did NOT have the benefit of legal counsel in his ear mixed up messages made a mistake and may have made an inadvertent error and directed claimants to AIS.

Or put more crudely "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity".