T2Eagle

There are no bears where I live, and I don't think there are any in Ames Iowa --- or in most of the more populated areas of the country. I have feeders out and filled all year round. I do know to periodically clean them with detergent and water.

That's where you lose me. Somebody lent the BSA a boat load of money to buy and develop Summit. BSA never had that kind of money to throw around, and JPMorgan didn't become JPMorgan by giving money away. Whatever twists and turns of rolling over that debt looked like, the idea that the Summit is unencumbered defies sense. Is there some assertion, let alone some proof, that JPMorgan or some precursor to JPMorgan didn't issue a bunch of debt and send out the cash to buy the property and improvements? You can make a lot of transfers of both debt and equity between LLCs more or less controlled by the same people without any of them being fraudulent conveyances. I don't know who the burden of proof lies with here. I suspect that for so long as BSA is the debtor in possession than the burden lies with a petitioner. JPMorgan attorneys would have to have really screwed up if they don't stand in first position on any claim of the Summit. I don't see that money going into the settlement trust, at least not without JPMorgan collecting its funds first.

That doesn't really explain it. That may mean BSA constructively owns Summit, but it skips any mention of JP Morgan. BSA may own Arrow, which owns Summit, but that doesn't mean Summit isn't encumbered to something like its full value by a JP Morgan instrument that's going to stand in front of any other claims. I could set up an LLC or trust to own my home, but if there's a mortgage close or equal to the property's value, forcing me to reclaim title from the Trust/LLC wouldn't make any money available to me or a creditor until the mortgage note is satisfied.

can you explain how you see this as a shell game. I don't have a preconceived notion of it, but i can't seem to piece it together that way from the pleadings. The common understanding among scouters was that BSA borrowed an absurd amount of money to buy and build the Summit. There's no reason to think they've paid much if any of that off, which would suggest that there is a big honking mortgage/note still outstanding owed to somebody. It wouldn't surprise me to find out there's little to no actual equity in the property. But how do you see it?

Social distance, flatten the curve.

I took a quick look, there are very few listings for the states with new SOLs:, zero in CA, two in NY. Weirdly there are 13 in MI, no idea what that's about. For 250+ LCs this actually looks like a pretty low level of churn. There are lots of reasons to take a job that may or may not have a long tenure. I once took a job with a company that was being bought and would likely eliminate my position when the merger completed, but I didn't like my old job, liked my new boss, and figured better is better while it lasts. They paid me while I worked there, and when it was time to leave I left. No job is guaranteed. As long as everybody has their eyes open there's nothing in the least dodgy about bringing people on board today. I suppose if you really believe that BSA is going away and all the LCs are going to burn down with it you would think we should bring it all to a screeching halt now. I think the LCs in non SOL change states are going to pay what they can from assets they have today, but they're still going to be here tomorrow. Much of their operating revenue comes in year to year from their own local efforts, so if they're paying salaries today they'll likely pay salaries tomorrow. Speaking of salaries, I know my council has received their share of PPP. Don't know if others have.

You do know that DEs are low paid, entry level jobs , right?

Back when the world, or at least you and I, were young, insurers wrote much more open policies than they would today. I roughly understood this when I worked for an insurer a couple decades ago, but never well enough to explain it. The quickest sort of explanation that I could find for what these might have looked like comes from the wikipedia article on Lloyds. "Unexpectedly large legal awards in US courts for punitive damages led to substantial claims on asbestos, pollution and health hazard (APH) policies, some dating as far back as the 1940s. Many of these policies were open-peril policies, meaning that they covered any claim not specifically excluded. Other policies (called standard, or broad) only cover stated perils, such as fire. The classic example of "long-tail" insurance risks is asbestosis/mesothelioma claims under employers' liability or workers' compensation policies. An employee at an industrial plant may have been exposed to asbestos in the 1960s, fallen ill 20 years later and claimed compensation from his former employer in the 1990s. The employer would report a claim to the insurance company that wrote the policy in the 1960s. However, because the insurer did not fully understand the nature of the future risk back in the 1960s, it and its reinsurers would not have properly priced or reserved for it. In the case of Lloyd's, this resulted in the bankruptcy of thousands of individual investors who indemnified general liability policies written from the 1940s to the mid-1970s for companies with exposure to asbestosis claims."

In addition to the challenege of figuring out what the coverage was, the insurance companies also argue, similar to the victims, that BSA knew about the extent of the problem of predation, and that by hiding that they either voided or limited the amount of coverage that the insurers need to provide. So it's not even a straightforward math problem of totaling up all the policies. I would be surprised if there a billions with an s available in insurance payouts unless the insurers were unusually dumb or open ended in their policy writing.

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.

One distinction you and others may be missng is that in our legal system criminal and civil actions have very different purposes. Criminal actions are where we look for punishment, but civil actions are focused on compensating injured parties. That's why you cannot insure away your criminal liability, but you can virtually eliminate any cost to yourself of your negligence through insurance. 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.

I'm a little unclear what you're saying here. The insurance companies were not insuring the victims of abuse, they were insuring BSA against their own negligence in allowing the abuse. I have no idea what the original coverage was or what exposure the insurance companies had. BSA doesn't have much incentive to negotiate with a bias in either direction. They're not going to be the party that collects the proceeds so they're probably not holding out for the last marginal dollar, on the other hand, the more money they procure the more hope that a final settlement can be reached. I suspect the insurers are probably the most pragmatic parties in this action. They're only concern is how much they'll pay, and this is their business --- they have lots of experience and so know the costs of litigation for both sides, along with what their exposure is, and what amount could be expected to be paid at the end of a full litigation of their obligations. They don't have the emotional involvement of the claimants nor do they have any vested interest in whether BSA survives or not. It's possible BSA's lawyers weren't competent in their negotiation, but I suspect the insurers already know what this is going to cost them so the number they're willing to settle at is probably not very different no matter who is in control of bringing the claim.

That sounds like a lot of money, and I suppose in absolute terms it is, but with 84,000 claimants that's only $7738 per claimant. Combined with the original BSA offer that's less than $14000 per claimant, which doesn't sound like the level of recompense most folks would be looking for.

The challenge with it, besides leaving a lot of victims completely uncompensated, is that it would lead to bankruptcy for virtually every council in at least half a dozen states, and a lot more trouble for the COs there also. So that much more money into legal fees on both sides and a very non-rationalized change in resources in those states. For instance, some really well run, really well attended camps that happen to not be deed restricted would end up sold, while camps with few resources, probably lacking in modern enough facilities and infrastructure, but that happen to be restricted, would be left. None of those decisions would have anything to do with ideas like geography or population accessibility. BSA had to lay out this possibility because it had to respond to motions from the creditors, but it's a pretty bad option for both sides.

I would certainly concede that, especially the latter point. The near uniformity of that challenge is really something we've only come to understand in recent decades. Which I think argues for recognizing the need for justice now for wrongs done then.

It's hard to know where to start, but I I want to look at two ideas that I see as somewhat related. 1) that today's scouts are being punished and 2) that somehow these crimes are being judged too harshly because things were different then. My council owns two camps, one is over 100 years old and the other is over 50. Neither I nor my scouts are entitled to those camps by virtue of anything I or they have done. I've invested some time, treasure, and talent towards them in the last 20 years, but that's certainly only a small part of them. If I and my scouts are going to benefit from those camps then we do so because we're joining ourselves to the organization that built them, and that legacy, we now know, comes with both benefits and liabilities. If I'm cheerfully enjoying the former than I have to at least accept the latter, and understand that the legacy is not unencumbered. If we lose one or even both those camps because the organization whose existence made building them possible also through its negligence made possible far too many almost unimaginable crimes and injuries, then so be it. If that's the case then I as a scouter am in the same position that scouters 50 or 100 years ago were in, and I need to do what they did and figure out how to build some camps. As to judging people by some supposed lesser standard 30-40 years ago --- I think that's balderdash. The rape of children has always been a heinous crime punishable by decades in prison. I was an adult 40 years ago so it certainly wasn't such a long ago time for me that I would claim that what would be morally wrong for me today would have been morally acceptable for me then. I'm not quite so old that I would have been one of the decision makers at the scouting level so I wasn't confronted with this type of thing. I'd like to think that if I had been I would have done the right thing as I understand it now and as I already understood it then. Maybe I'm honest enough to know that I might not have, and maybe all those excuses we're making today would have been the excuses I would have told myself back then. But if that's true than shame on me for failing to be Brave, and shame on those who did fail then. Even if you can explain the failures, that shouldn't be the same as excusing them, and it shouldn't change the accountability for them. There are certainly other people that failed that moral test back then, but make no mistake scouters and the scouting organization were among them. If some of the good those scouters and that organization accomplished needs to be undone to partially balance that failure with the one group of people who absolutely were not a part of that failure, the victims, then I can find no injustice in that however sad I may also find it.

Can anyone describe for me what the BSA says is the relationship between Arrow, JPM, the Foundation loan et al, and/or how that ownership structure makes the Summit a restricted asset? Alternatively, in the event that no one can explain it, or it cannot be explained, if you could point me to a document that purports to lay it out, and I'll try to dig through it myself.

Don't get too caught up in the idea that you need to "stay in your lane". Your lane is at least as broad as your troop. Think of a good way to help your troop, what do they need that you could dedicate some extra time and energy towards, recruiting, advancement, planning, finance, adult training --- that's your ticket.

Interesting procedural arguments. Doesn't move the ball down the field at all.

As my first official act as a moderator, I welcome you to the forums.

Conceding up front that I don't know what kind of profits HA bases currently throw off, it seems unlikely that they're exceptionally lucrative. Nothing in BSA's past 20 years of finances would suggest that they were reaping millions let alone billions from those operations. No sale has to be so quick that they wouldn't get fair market value for the properties, and either paying out or having those monies invested by and on behalf of the trust seems like a better bet than hoping an organization that's adverse to your interests, is steadily shrinking in membership, and has not demonstrated any particularly great business acumen would generate large profits on your behalf.

I think these are the "Key 3". IIRC, an early estimate of the claims was in the 8500 range. If that was an accurate number we would be looking at $60,000 per claimant plus all the insurance. Maybe that's a number that would get somewhere. I think BSA started this process thinking they could control it. Pay up about 1/3 of their assets, pass the benefits and challenges of collecting insurance onto the claimants, and come out the other side more or less intact. I suspect that the idea of losing a HA base just never occurred to anyone, and they are now facing the probability of losing either Philmont, Summit or both, and that's probably beyond their ability to process/accept. I suspect they're now nearly paralyzed and aren't sure how to move forward. What's clear at this point is that the case is stuck in the mud and some kind of ruling on one of the major issues needs to be litigated or conceded, or we're just going throw money onto the campfire while producing neither heat nor light.

Public opinion regarding the Catholic Church being sued for past abuse has resulted in a lot of outrage --- towards the church. That has been the primary driver behind the changes in SOL laws that brought us where we are today.

the current lawsuits and bankruptcy have nothing to do with BSA's internal database. The suits are based on the fact that a lot of abuse occurred and changes in the law have made it possible for men who probably would not have been able to articulate what happened to them before are being given another shot at it. The existence or non existence of the IV files is irrelevant. The 84,000 claimants aren't staking their claims to a list that was first published almost ten years ago now.

Since it's been mentioned twice, my understanding of the rule about texts and emails is that any communication from an adult to a scot must include another adult. Although it's good practice for scouts to also include another adult in their communications, it's not clear that a scout has violated YPT if they send an email or text to just one adult, it's the response that must include a second adult. The burden is on us not them.