fred8033

I thought I heard in the past that BSA had been paying for counseling for some past victims. I remember reading it. The poster commented that when bankruptcy started those payments stopped.

I'm assuming your 55,000 is SOL based. I'm betting it's much higher if you factor in (as you alluded to), ... a familiar church (family, friends, etc) a insufficient pot of money to justify firms floating cost of contingent legal cases COs that just don't exist anymore victims that just are not that committed (headaches, insufficient incentive, rehashing the past)

I'd be interested in more information state conference having power to consolidate / sell property. From what I read, that is probably more about the goodwill congregation to congregation and that the congregation wants to stay in the good graces of the state conference. I read this to learn more about Methodist church structure. It's only one sample though. https://nccumc.org/treasurer/files/Incorporation.pdf I'm betting that, beyond cooperation, a state conference has no real power to force selling a specific congregations property.

Perfect answer. A great CC looks to protect SM / scouts from too many adults.

Methodist deep pockets are the assets (building / acreage). It's a mismatch. No liquidity, but huge assets. It's why I wonder if individual Methodist churches might be better off on their own in this. Would lawyers represent on a contingent basis cases from 30+, 40+ years ago against a congregation with little revenue, but only has a building. It would be expensive and complicated to pursue. Plus, the congregation would be forced in to bankruptcy and need to argue the building is protected as a fundamental for all the good they do for the community. I just don't see thousands of individual CO court cases happening. Hundreds? Maybe. Thousands? No.

I don't understand talking about Catholic and Methodist as two of the parties. These are the two largest "categories" of COs. Well established legally separate --> 150 Catholic dioceses --> 32,000 Methodist congregations. Some with recent bankruptcies that complicate / erase past "legal" liability. Some with their own CSA settlements that could overlap. No single structure to get more cash or to bring in each of these to the settlement. Only way for BSA to exit bankruptcy is BSA only. I just don't see CO protection. On the flip side, I'm not sure how many of the 32,000+ individual entities would actually be sued and/or have to pay in their own case. I'm betting of BSA's 80,000+ cases that the majority would have trouble on a CO case-by-case basis. So, I'm betting many of the COs would not feel a need to get protection.

Tying settlement to future membership revenue is confusing to me. This is a bankruptcy. BSA is a new company after. But the LCs are doing the payment because they are NOT in bankruptcy? Is that the idea? This settlement sounds like a Hail Mary play to try to find the end-zone.

That's when scouting starts getting fun. The troop can actually start performing. I've seen troops keep switching people because they need jobs. The troop never gets out of 1st gear to do anything interesting.

This is a long-stated position of mine. BSA needs to be careful about their messages to the adult volunteers. Adult volunteers too often hear that BSA is about leadership. Thus, their job is to teach leadership or to teach scout's how to lead / how to run things. What I often see is the worst possible message and lessons. IMHO, BSA should be telling adult volunteers to teach scouts how to setup a tent or cook a meal ... or better yet ... enable an experienced scout to teach a new scout how. Let the scouts naturally learn leadership / getting the job done by doing / being active. Leadership is a great benefit of scouting. BUT, scouting is about DOING.

Absolutely agree with this. BUT the question is what challenges? I view that as the pride of successfully camping in a torrential down pour or cross country skiing at -20F or a 50 mile camping bike ride or a ... Youth also want responsibilities. Setting up tent. Cooking. Being responsible for themselves. What youth do NOT want is to be preached at. It's why the scoutmaster's minute works so well. A light reflective moment that SMs can leverage. ... example ... I hope never again to see adults hovering around injecting as a patrol creates their meal plan and decide who's going to shop.

Yes. Many of us still went by XXX. It's that our registration and all documentation became #XXX. Scouts learned quickly to deal with it. Over time, everyone just called it #XXX. ... It's really a transitional issue. Scouts and parents age out. Very quickly scouts are asking why we just don't use our full number #XXX. In fact, most scouts do use #XXX as it was a ten year ago change and all their advancement cards (MB, rank) and their hand book says #XXX.

Though I want to avoid the baiting ... I do fully agree with you. I daily think scouts has lost it's path. At the tail end of twenty years ago where my wife told me to bring my first son to a cub joining event, I really question whether I'd do it the same again. I kept my son in it for the activities, the outings and the friendships. We tolerated much of the rest as part of paying the price to be in scouts. BUT, the price was a too much too many times. I wanted my sons to camp, canoe, ski and get outside. I did not bring my sons to be preached at repeatedly.

Giving back to the community is the reason that I have always seen. "Marketing" or promoting depends. I have never seen CO's use it as a tool to get more CO members or more CO revenue. Heck, they'd be even more involved if they wanted to do that. I have SLIGHTLY seen it as "pride"; which in today's era could also be called hubris.

An extra 4th digit was prefixed on when our council merged with another. We can always tell which legacy council units were in.

I'd love to see the bill versus payment. A lawyer friend of mine made the comment that he's sure the court was not necessarily paying 100% of the legal bills. Courts can reduce fees as they see fit. ... I'm not seeing that in this case. If you have a link to it that I can see, I'd appreciate it.

MattR wrote: .... Enron it was 2% and for the BSA it's already 40%. 2% wouldn't have much impact on what survivors get. Numbers need context. 2% of Enron's 63.4B bankruptcy is $1.3 billion in legal cost. BSA's case is probably as hard if not harder due to the ugliness of CSA and the many competing factors and other plaintiffs. Also, it's hard to find BSA's value alone, but it's way smaller than Enron.

When you write "billed to the estate" ... that being the estate of BSA (old, pre-bankruptcy). QUESTION - Is that money flowing out right now? Or pending settlement? I ask as if it's being billed and paid now, what is the closure incentive ? Closure would mean a dried up revenue stream. ... If as I suspect, the BSA estate value is being diminished at a rate of $10m+ a month to handle the legal fees against a $200m/$300m settlement from BSA. It reminds me of the divorce of a friend of mine. He and his ex-wife spent well over $600k on the divorce legal process as it was not a nice divorce. His comment was that there was no incentive for the courts, the lawyers or his wife to work it efficiently. ... His wife was a lawyer too.

So 10% is not in the retainer agreement? It's a good-will basis?

Settlement trust is money from BSA's bankruptcy. The bankruptcy needs to pay debtors in sequence and some justified percent. ... I am far from an expert ... If I was another plaintiff if this bankruptcy, I'd be saying that the firm's fees are padded to give their client cash out of BSA's bankruptcy. If the firms were not padding their fees, then there would be more funds to pay all the debtors. It's raiding the cash to pay the debts. ... It's the whole problem with kickbacks.

So the TCC lawyers are not members of any law firm that are representing victims on a contingent basis? Really? If so, I did not know that.

I intentionally avoided asking. It makes me ask if it's legal. Effectively, that "fees" kickback gives one debtor more than other debtors are getting.

Is it all money? It can be intentionally vague. Fees? Hourly fees to administer claims and make payments? Court case fees? 10% percent of their share of the award? I'd want to see the explicit wording on what is in and not in the 10% kickback. Say they bill $100m for court case, $100m for administering claims / making payments and 40% of their victim's share of the award ... say $250m. Of the theoretical $450m, are they sharing $45m or $10m? Or something different.

May 2020. Wow. Reminds me. We're way past two years of talking about this. BSA announced opening for girl membership Oct 2017? Shortly after that lawsuits started. GSA. CSA. I was at a council meeting in 2019 (or earlier) discussing the lawsuits and possible bankruptcy. I'm betting we'll be having these discussions for another two years.

Yeah. I'm just going off the larger 8*,*** number. Originally, the prediction I heard was 1,500 to 2000. Perhaps that was wishful thinking with a rumor mill that kept reducing the estimate.

It's called a kick-back. Customer manipulation. A common form of business fraud. I would not brag too much about giving back 10%. We had a local auto glass replacement company that bragged about giving a box of steaks with every job. Insurance companies complained. Because a job that was $200 then became $230. Common hourly rates in the hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. Who will notice the padding. ... I really liked the article that an auditor was hired to look at legal fees in this case. They were able to reduce charges by $200,000 or so. Then, billed the case $200,000 (or so).