Chapter 11 Announced - Part 6 - Plan 5.0/TCC Plan TBD

[Eagle1993]

1 minute ago, vol_scouter said:

Paper records could have been lost or destroyed in a flood or fire.  Our council records are intact but there was a good percentage that were not able to be associated with a record anywhere.

Local councils and the BSA have worked diligently to identify all claimants but many could not be found.  

Thanks for the background, and the BSA was definitely clear they did all of the review of files that they have and the councils did as well.  Part of this was legitimate questioning.  I think the other part is just Century causing trouble.

Sometimes I think Century's lawyer is a bit like the Blues Brothers when they were recruiting Alan Rubin.  Tanc is simply there to create cahos, causing extra hearings, pontificating, jumping in on arguments he isn't a party to.  I expect in mediation, he is telling BSA and the Coalition ... "If you say no, I will file requests morning, noon and night, every day of the week."

[yknot]

49 minutes ago, vol_scouter said:

 

Local councils and the BSA have worked diligently to identify all claimants but many could not be found.  

That's not surprising because I think this all depends in the council you/were are in. As someone who was involved more on the committee side for years, councils are often unable to keep track of paperwork. Lost recharter packets, lost Eagle Scout applications, lost adult applications, lost training records, no matter whether in hard copy or e format. Our latest council after a series of mergers is somewhat better but in many cases records before fairly present day are simply lost. 

[ThenNow]

17 hours ago, Eagle1993 said:

BSA councils are saying that they cannot even find the vast majority of claimants on their rosters.  They are also saying they have so many rosters from that time period they cannot possibly scan them all in.  

This has several layers that need to be remembered:

1) 6165 POCs stated no date or date range;

2) 38,663 had no mention of LC or, to my understanding, identifying geographic markers to make the required connection;

3) Did every child get registered without out fail? My Unit was every which way and loose;

4) As stated by one of the LC attorneys, some of the paper rosters are like handling the Dead Sea Scrolls or worse. They turn to ash in your hands like so much magician’s flash paper;

5) No one thought such a record search would ever be needed to this degree and across the entire range of the organization; and

6) As stated many times, some of the claims are fraudulent and/or so badly mishandled on intake as to make them on the one hand facially invalid and on the other subject to exclusion.

Any attorneys found to have improperly vetted otherwise valid claims should be disbarred, regardless if the claim can be cured.

Edited December 3, 2021 by ThenNow

[Eagle94-A1]

8 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Any attorneys found to have improperly vetted otherwise valid claims should be disbarred. 

Can they also be fined and/or pay for this case forfeited  and applied to the victims? I'm all for imprisonment, but would rather hit them where it really hurts, money, and benefit the victims.

 

[ThenNow]

3 minutes ago, Eagle94-A1 said:

Can they also be fined and/or pay for this case forfeited  and applied to the victims? I'm all for imprisonment, but would rather hit them where it really hurts, money, and benefit the victims.

Proofs of Claim are filed under penalty of perjury subject to a $500,000 fine, 5 years in the hoosegow or both. Also, they have malpractice insurance for the client.  

[klleboe]

One of my biggest concerns was that they wouldn’t find my son in the records. We included the LCs involved, the CO, the troop information, the court records, the sex offender registry record for the perpetrator, and our names, but I worry  because we redacted his name as he is still a minor. 
 

I know the legal system is wicked complicated, especially in a mass tort bankruptcy, but it’s hard to wrap my head around not getting civil recourse for my son, when we’ve already had a criminal conviction, just because record-keeping was lacking, or my son’s name is redacted to protect what little privacy he has left. 
 

I know that everyone involved is just trying to do their job, whether I agree with their methods, but I really wish the adults would get it together and do right by the kids: the current ones, and the ones that were kids when their lives were changed forever. 

[Eagle1993]

 

 

40 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

This has several layers that need to be remembered:

1) 6165 POCs stated no date or date range;

2) 38,663 had no mention of LC or, to my understanding, identifying geographic markers to make the required connection;

3) Did every child get registered without out fail? My Unit was every which way and loose;

4) As stated by one of the LC attorneys, some of the paper rosters are like handling the Dead Sea Scrolls or worse. They turn to ash in your hands like so much magician’s flash paper;

5) No one thought such a record search would ever be needed to this degree and across the entire range of the organization; and

6) As stated many times, some of the claims are fraudulent and/or so badly mishandled on intake as to make them on the one hand facially invalid and on the other subject to exclusion.

Any attorneys found to have improperly vetted otherwise valid claims should be disbarred, regardless if the claim can be cured.

I do question if all of these should have the same voting value.  

1) .Really, someone who was abused and impacted cannot provide a date range on when they were a youth?  

2) One would think they could at minimum provide a city/town/state.  That info + date range would give a LC.  38,663 seems incredibly high.  Yes, I can imagine a few ... youth that moved a lot ... that would struggle with this.  But  46% of the claims don't have enough data to provide a council?

3) I'm sure that could happen.  I'm also sure rosters could be lost.

4/5) Agreed; however, the LCs also stated they ensured everyone they looked through ALL of there rosters and already identified who was listed on one. 

At first I had always thought perhaps 5-10% were fraudulent.  However, I'm starting to question the law firms, in take process and many of these claims.  How many people saw the late night advertisements, thought what the heck and submitted a claim?  If no one truly vetted these, perhaps we are talking 50% range of questionable claims.

1) I have an issue that even if they only take the $3500, that is a LARGE amount of the funding that is going away from real victims.

2) Those votes should not count.  Only real victims should have their votes counted.

Again ... 5% on rosters, only 54% can even identify enough info to locate a council ... those should be red flags.  They shouldn't get $3,500 with no questions asked and they shouldn't be able to vote.  

[InquisitiveScouter]

35 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Proofs of Claim are filed under penalty of perjury subject to a $500,000 fine, 5 years in the hoosegow or both. Also, they have malpractice insurance for the client.  

Is that per POC?

[ThenNow]

9 minutes ago, InquisitiveScouter said:

Is that per POC?

Yup.

[ThenNow]

13 minutes ago, Eagle1993 said:

One would think they could at minimum provide a city/town/state.  That info + date range would give a LC.  38,663 seems incredibly high.  Yes, I can imagine a few ... youth that moved a lot ... that would struggle with this.  But  46% of the claims don't have enough data to provide a council?

This was the number initially logged by the TCC back when. They have begged men to amend with additional data to supplement their initial filing, but I have no update on how many did so.

[Eagle94-A1]

59 minutes ago, ThenNow said:

Proofs of Claim are filed under penalty of perjury subject to a $500,000 fine....

Could the $500,000 per POC fine could be used to add more money for the victims?

[MattR]

On the one hand I could see survivors struggling to fill out the form. If a form needed dates for when I was a scout I could not do much better than a year or two. Someone suffering trauma might just freeze up at that point.

On the other hand, the lawyer that signed that form could and should have walked them through it. The fact that any of these forms do not have at least a range of dates or locations is on the lawyers.

As for the records, here's a simple test. Take a random sample of 1000 scouters that were scouts and see what percentage of youth records can be found. If it's only 5% then that explains the discrepancy. If it's 75% then there's a big problem. I'm all for truth and knowledge, for the sake of everyone involved.

[Eagle1970]

As a victim/survivor, the last thing I want to do is be cold to anyone with a legitimate claim.  However, it's just not that hard to document you were a scout, like an affidavit from a fellow scout or at least something.  I still have all of my paperwork and awards from the 1960's, and certainly have the ability to contact living former fellow scouts.  It seems to be a pretty low bar for any kind of legal claim. 

Frankly, with all of the advertising and talk of big bucks for claimants, this is ripe for fraud and the insurers have the right to at least cursory vetting.  I have read lately about the large percentage of covid relief fraud compared to the legitimate payments.  And fines with jail time didn't seem to slow that down.  So, anything these days that is not documented should be vetted.  If a claimant cannot even give the name of a former fellow scout, that's a pretty tall leap for me to judge as legitimate.

[Eagle1970]

1 hour ago, klleboe said:

One of my biggest concerns was that they wouldn’t find my son in the records. We included the LCs involved, the CO, the troop information, the court records, the sex offender registry record for the perpetrator, and our names, but I worry  because we redacted his name as he is still a minor. 
 

I know the legal system is wicked complicated, especially in a mass tort bankruptcy, but it’s hard to wrap my head around not getting civil recourse for my son, when we’ve already had a criminal conviction, just because record-keeping was lacking, or my son’s name is redacted to protect what little privacy he has left. 
 

I know that everyone involved is just trying to do their job, whether I agree with their methods, but I really wish the adults would get it together and do right by the kids: the current ones, and the ones that were kids when their lives were changed forever. 

In your case, you would have plenty of documentation that the claim and participation as a scout was legit, whether or not he is on the records.  The purpose of vetting is to validate your claim and eliminate those with zero substantiation.

[Eagle1970]

14 hours ago, yknot said:

That's not surprising because I think this all depends in the council you/were are in. As someone who was involved more on the committee side for years, councils are often unable to keep track of paperwork. Lost recharter packets, lost Eagle Scout applications, lost adult applications, lost training records, no matter whether in hard copy or e format. Our latest council after a series of mergers is somewhat better but in many cases records before fairly present day are simply lost. 

However, IF they are unable to document the case, the former scout should be able to furnish something to rectify that failure, such as names of fellow scouts, patrols, camps attended, scoutmaster name and so on.