By Bob Negele
The Boy Scouts of America may have to deal with increasing financial difficulties as child abuse allegations evolve.? A recent article in the L.A. Times is reporting that the potential damages in sex abuse lawsuits could be devastating.
The Boy Scouts released 1,200 confidential in-house files on suspected sexual abuse from the past decades.? It is still too early to make an accurate guess on how high settlements and court verdicts might be, but it has the potential to be enormous.
The article likens this case to the claims raised against the Roman Catholic Church over the past several years.
?To settle similar claims in the last decade, dioceses in Roman Catholic Church were forced to file for bankruptcy and sell off property.? The church scandals and [the Jerry Sandusky conviction] have made judges and jurors more sympathetic to allegations of sexual abuse and institutional cover-ups.?
The Boy Scouts have been preparing for legal payouts for a few years now.? In 2010, the internal Boy Scouts treasurer reported that pending lawsuits could be covered by its insurance and cash reserves.? As of December 2009, the Scouts had nearly $1 billion in assets, with $65 million to pay for settlements and jury awards.
A lot of the variability in the payouts and verdicts will depend on where the suits are filed.? For most types of lawsuits brought against the Boy Scouts for child abuse, the suit will have to abide by the state?s statute of limitations.? Each state will have its own statute of limitations.
A statute of limitations is a way to bar a law suit because the cause of the suit happened too long ago.? The statute of limitations will differ depending on what the cause of action (or legal reason for the law suit) is.
There are a lot of good rationale for statute of limitations.? The main one is probably to avoid prejudice to the defendant.? After too long a time period, it becomes increasingly difficult for a defendant to have evidence in their defense.
While statute of limitations are important, they do inherently bar some lawsuits that the plaintiff should recover.? If the statute of limitations has run, then it?doesn't?matter how much evidence the plaintiff has.? He or she is prevented from proving their case.
?Geography determines justice.? That?s the problem,? said Paul Mones, an Oregon attorney who represented Kerry Lewis.
The Lewis case is the largest recovery against the Boy Scouts to date.? Lewis was a Boy Scout in the 1980's and in 2007 he alleged that the Scouts ?failed to protect him and other boys against known molesters, citing detailed evidence from the organizations confidential files.?
In that case, Lewis was able to recover $20 million.
Tags: Abuse, Boy Scouts, Liabilities
This entry was posted by Bob on Friday, October 26th, 2012 at 11:16 am and is filed under Finance 101: Secure Your Future. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Source: http://www.totalbankruptcy.com/blog/boy-scouts-future-financial-trouble/
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