elitts

I kind of thought this drive to pass look-backs would fade fairly quickly when people started connecting the dots and imagined what could happen when school districts and state governments started getting sued. It's only a matter of time until someone tries suing a state government over "campus rapes allowed by permissive, state-run schools, who abdicated their duty to protect their students". I have to think that most LCs have insurance policies of their own to protect against losses due to lawsuits. (I know mine does) I mean, they are poorly enough run that I can easily believe som

No, they can't be used effectively in a direct comparison with statistical modelling with a provable level of reliability. However, that doesn't mean they don't provide useful data points for very rough comparisons. Regardless of the fact that there is a BSA National, each of the BSA troops/packs/crews truly is a discrete organization. The way they operate, the level of supervision and the rules they actually observe all vary drastically between groups, regardless of the fact that they are supposed to be operating in mostly the same way.

I've argued this point before. There's plenty of actual evidence showing that the incidence of child sexual abuse is much higher among the general population than it is within Scouting (based upon known cases in Scouting). Here is the quickest one I could find. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4311357/

Actually, I quite like (good) ponchos for hiking and backpacking. For those two applications, I'd much rather have a good poncho than a rain jacket, but I'll admit a significant part of that is the fact that I've always been a sweaty guy and wearing a rain suit while being active doesn't actually keep me dry, it just means I'm soaked from sweat instead of rain. One thing that can make a poncho MUCH more usable around camp is belting it around the waist to make it more of a tunic instead of a big bulky poncho. I used to just use a nylon webbing strap off a duffle bag.

When this topic re-opens I'd like to remind people to read for meaning and not simply react to word choices that might be unfortunate or even accidental. As an example (and not intended to criticize the author), there was a recent post where someone used the word "socialist" and there was an immediate hostile response. However careful reading of the tone and context of the post made it clear that the writer was referring to "sociologist" and was not in fact attempting to bring economic theories or communist threats into the conversation. Also, I'd like to reiterate that in addition to n

I promise that EVERYONE reading this thread understands your view on the issues. The horse is not just dead, it's now nothing more than a stain on the ground with some skin and bones shards mixed in. Though leaving only the small camp wouldn't really be a reasonable compromise. If you've got 14k scouts using 3 camps, while there may well be excess capacity that would allow for some consolidation, you can't take all the scouts from 3 different camps (even half-utilized camps) and cram them into the smallest one.

These are two different issues. The argument for liability for a Sexual Assault has to be that the BSA could have prevented the assault had they taken reasonable preventative steps. Whether or not you think they handled the cases appropriately after being notified has nothing to do with whether or not there were reasonable steps that the BSA should/could have taken that would have prevented the abuse.

Ok, well, I see that we are still having trouble limiting ourselves from the discussion of lawyers. I've gone through and hidden a number of posts when the entire body of the text wasn't acceptable and edited a few more posts when portions of the text were acceptable when other sections weren't. I've also deleted posts and quotes that refer to a post I've hidden. I tried to be even-handed, but if you think I was unfair, please let me know and I'll present the issue for consideration by the other Moderators. In an attempt to avoid having to keep hiding posts, I'll be more specific

Acting as a Moderator again: Since this is the 3rd or 4th or 5th time we've started in on it, let's put an end to the generalized discussions regarding the pros and cons of lawyers. If future comments aren't very directly related to the bankruptcy case AND discussing something reasonably new, I'm going to just start deleting them. And yes, I know I've made comments myself. I'm not criticizing anyone, I'm just saying we need to be done.

Yes and no. Each year we get an authorizing ordinance passed stating that the city is partnering with us to present an annual festival. That authorization also gets us 50% pricing on all city services. But getting the ordinance isn't directly contingent upon that clause in the bylaws and in fact it used to give all property to the Grand Rapids Arts Council instead. And while we could technically still function without the city ordinance, effectively we could not because doubling the cost of police, streets and other services would make it impossible to afford. So admittedly it isn't a per

Generally, it's accepted that if someone makes a statement they believe to be true, it's not a lie, even if they are later proved to be incorrect. So has some documentation been discovered that the BSA knew LCs would be stuck on the hook but wanted to lie to them for some reason, or are you just assuming they must have known? I'd be happy to have that conversation. I'm interested to find out why God feels children need to be raped and murdered. I've been a Tax Assessor for about 20 years now and I can tell you with absolute certainty that this isn't the case. When you are ta

That first comment was entirely directed at CynicalScouter. Though I'll agree that their washing their hands of the insurance companies (saying "you can pursue them") was just wrong. But I don't personally think BSA owes anyone their own funds out of any kind of moral responsibility; if they owe money it's a financial responsibility only. In other words, if they had sufficient insurance funds to entirely pay for their liabilities, I wouldn't view that as them "Getting off scott free" just because they didn't have to pay anything out of pocket. As far as the second point, I was speaking

Yet again you are implying that the $6000 average per person is the sum total of what a victim would receive when you must know this isn't true. The vast majority of the funds for claims against the BSA were/are always going to be coming from the insurance companies. That is of course the whole reason organizations buy insurance. Disagree with the proposed amount all you wish, but let's not be disingenuous about the whole thing. Yes, but since since the accused in today's world is effectively presumed guilty, the impact is much more significant on the accused than on the ac

Pretty much, they get paid by the minute and are usually evaluated by the billable hours they pull in, so you can see how "concise writers" isn't really what law firm HR departments are shopping for. Not to mention if they made things understandable to a lay-person, they'd be arguing for their own obsolescence.

I'm going to put on my "Moderator" hat here for a second: Directly responding to another member is acceptable and a desirable part of this medium. I even understand that at times, emotions will peak and there might be a response that includes some sarcasm, snark, criticism or even anger; however, responses MUST move the conversation forward. If you find yourself writing a response that includes some of those "negative" feelings, I ask you to do two things. First, wait a few minutes after typing before you post, then re-read your writing and make sure it really reflects what you w

Yeah, that belief is certainly in the realm of "squishy". And I still don't know what to make out of the Hartford deal. As someone else mentioned, it's hard to know if it's reasonable without knowing what the overall policy limit is for Hartford, which is hard to know without knowing what the actual liabilities are that would have been covered by the Hartford policies. And I agree, most wouldn't take an 85k deal without a reasonable level of confidence regarding what's left over. But I don't think the confidence they would need is in the idea that "we got every last dollar we could" but ra

This is one reason I really wish they could just adjudicate now regarding whether or not the LCs are independent. As long as there are people arguing that their assets should be included "in the bankruptcy", this isn't going to be resolved. If there was a decision that they ARE independent, then at least we could move forward with the understanding that their contributions are voluntary and can't be compelled. (obviously if they were ruled to be extensions of national instead, then the whole argument over the assets becomes moot) I realize people still have the option to go forward on

As with almost anything in the world, the cost of 100 things in a package is never the same as 1 thing times 100. So if you independently litigate a case, you might get a multi-million dollar settlement, but when you are part of a class-action, you take a hit, particularly if your situation is on the "worse" end of the scale. The advantage of course is that you aren't stuck litigating on your own. And frankly I do think most of the victims would take an $86k payout and go on their way. (though I doubt you'd hear "thanks") That's enough money to have a significant impact on someone's li

How is that meaningless? Those are exactly the problems that needs to be resolved. The current YP rules leave basically ZERO space for abuse to happen if they are followed. (I suppose maybe a pair of abusers could work together, but that seems unlikely) And the claimants don't have anything that resembles a coherent desire when it comes to YP other than to say "we want to make sure this never happens again", which of course isn't possible. Even when the subject of "What changes do you think should be made" comes up, the suggestions always revolve around reporting, not actual changes in

Those aren't issues with the Youth Protection policies, those are simply your issues with the BSA. There are two main issues with Youth Protection: Most adults are inclined to trust the other adults around them and can't really imagine abuse happening around them. It is exceedingly difficult to get strict compliance from volunteers, particularly when the behaviors you are trying to control are happening in a dispersed setting.

Most statements you see from victims of almost anything talk about how "it's not about the money". You might be different because you are/were a lawyer and you understand money is really the only option left for you. Any large class action lawsuit is a lawyer's "get rich not-quite-quick scheme". So? As long as it's not legally considered a no-no by the bankruptcy laws, the optics don't matter much since all the options are bad anyway. No, "lawyers who behave like Kosnoff" are vultures, though I would probably not say "evil". If you portray yourself as a cru

I'm not sure how you got that out of qwazse's post. No one is arguing that the impact on an individual of being raped can be balanced by whatever positive benefit they might have gotten out of the program. Obviously on an personal level, being abused can pretty much outweigh everything else that happens in a kid's life. But the situation isn't as simple as the idea: "If Scouting hadn't happened, kids wouldn't have been raped, so Scouting was/is a failure". I mean, Scouts didn't create pedophiles, it just gave them a target, but in the absence of scouts, one would assume they simply w

Except that this really isn't true. These cases are entirely about finding someone to punish, because in most cases the actual offender isn't punishable and basically all of the victims tell you "it isn't about the money". The general feeling in this country is that for almost anything bad that happens, there has to have been some over-arching villain or problem that caused it or allowed it to happen. I assume this is because people know you can't ever stop bad people (or unfortunate accidents) from existing, so instead they want to try and find some other entity to take action against to m

If all you were looking for was number of accusations, number of claims filed and stuff like that, it would be much simpler and yes, I'm sure they could tell you that. It's getting enough data into a computer to actually do analysis that gets expensive.

Yeah, you spend the entire time waiting for the proverbial "other shoe" to drop.