DavidLeeLambert

Last time a troop I was involved with did a physical visit to a city council meeting together, yes, at least two leaders were present. One time I took three of my own children (one Scout, one Cub Scout, and one Girl Scout, at the time) to visit a city-council member and interview her. In that case, there was no other registered adult present, but I'm pretty sure there's an exception for a parent doing something with their own children. At present my wife is also a registered leader, so we can be the "two adults" together at any meeting or activity. But GSUSA has a stronger rule: the

The claim form says: So if an adult "yells at a youth in frustration", I don't think it would count I think it might if that yelling included inappropriate sexual references. But the claims have not been vetted at this point, so there could potentially be some that don't actually allege anything that matches the definition on the claim form. If you're looking for for scenarios that might match the definition on the claim form but might result in a low-dollar judgement if they actually went before a jury, consider this one: The Scouts are having a sleep-over at someo

Other councils have been selling and transferring property over the past decades, maybe not so much over the past year. The surrounding grumbling has sometimes included nonspecific allegations that the transfer was not in good faith with prior donors and volunteers, or was not arm's-length, or was not the best possible deal for the Council, but I'm not aware of a case where a sale has actually been blocked by a court. My council, Michigan Crossroads, has four operating full camps and one operating cub-only camp, down from about a dozen across several pre-merger councils a decade or two a

A few possible variants on the above scenarios: Different Claimants get Different Amount per Severity: As in the Arizona Catholic Diocese settlement that @ThenNow posted, claimants may be assigned "points" by the Settlement Adminstrator, or the Plan could up-front divide abuse claimants into finer classes, by the severity of their injury, the nature of their abuser's relationship to Scouting, etc. Just a few examples off the top of my head: Multiple incidents of abuse against the victim versus just one Penetration versus something less invasive Abuser was a Scoutmaster v

For someone who actually looks, the Ineligible Volunteer Files already have cases where look-back liability could just as well be assigned to a local government entity. See for example https://documents.latimes.com/paul-j-wadaga/ (elementary school teacher for 24 years, molested at least 18 boys, was an ASM for 4 years of that but the Council asked around and didn't find any Scouts among his victims), https://documents.latimes.com/michael-c-spangler/ (assistant fire chief), and https://documents.latimes.com/eric-frank-feichtinger/ (police officer in a Child Sexual Abuse investigation unit).

I saw that too. It's worth mentioning that Stang's firm has promised to contribute 10% of their revenue from this case to the trust fund for victims. Still, that's roughly $10.00 per abuse claimant (less $1.00 promised contribution), or $1.00 per registered adult volunteer at the end of 2019, or $0.40 per registered youth at the end of 2019. Troops that collect monthly dues should tack on a quarter, a dime and a nickel to support him, and his firm is just one of many that are billing BSA.

Also watch out: that list included GSUSA and a lot of Girl Scout councils.

I haven't read through this entire thread. Has the motion in the link been ruled on? No. The attorneys spent the better part of 8 hours at the last omnibus hearing arguing that and another related motion (at $1000/hour for many of them, of course). Two of the experts were introduced and cross-examined. The judge gave no indication of if or when she would rule on them, and i haven't seen any ruling on them yet.

The Scoutmaster is right that he has the power to approve or disapprove service (for rank advancement, not for merit badges or Eagle), but if you're on the committee or a commissioner you should encourage him to use that power wisely and fairly. As a general rule, work on the actual service of another Scout's Eagle Project should count as service hours for any participating Scout. But I wouldn't expect the ceremony to count as service hours for the candidate; by that time, his project should be finished, approved, closed out, turned over. He should be done with it.

I was the CC of an LDS pack and a CM of the corresponding troop when their charters were allowed to expire. There was no "unit" bank account to write a check from (expenses were always reimbursed as incurred from the ward budget, except camp, where scouts sometimes raised some money for it the same year). I took a picture of the troop trailer (two flat tires and a flat spare, needed a paint job, contents had also been used for the Young Women program) and sent it to the Scout Executive who sent us the red form, asking if we should do anything with it. He never gave us any instructions about t

I agree 100% with your judgement that BSA's response was above-average and generally legally correct, by the standards of the time. But please remember that the bankruptcy proceeding is not "the" lawsuit. At the end of 2019, the BSA was the defendant in dozens of lawsuits (mostly abuse, a handful of wrongful-death, and the GSUSA trademark suit). The Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding allows the debtor (BSA) to invite everyone who has a claim to come forward and be treated equally. It's sort of a reverse lawsuit, the debtor comes to the court and says "I know (or at least guess) that I owe all

Or if some CO dropped its charter in 1980, it could still be on the hook for abuse that occurred in 1975. One bad-case (I can imagine worse) scenario I can imagine goes as follows: BSA (national) goes into Chapter 7, takes all the councils with it. Between pension liabilities, general secured debt, and the rock-bottom prices that most camp property will fetch when hundreds of camps are all offered at liquidation sales at the same time, the amount available to unsecured creditors (including all the abuse claimants) is $100MM or less. That means $1000 or less to each self-filing abuse

First of all, it's only 86,000 claims, because of all the duplicates (although a few late claims with good reason for the delay might still trickle in). I don't think anyone has publicly disclosed whether some of the "duplicate" claims are Omnis's fault, for assigning a new claim number to filings that were meant to be amendments to prior claims, or that were true exact duplicates submitted by the same person as a precaution (say someone did the electronic submission and also sent a hard copy in by certified mail the same day). But in a filing earlier this week one of the insurers' experts no

No, AIS is not a member of the TCC. The TCC is composed of nine abuse victims who have volunteered for that extra work (literally "volunteered", they aren't paid and don't expect to have their own claims treated any more favorably than anyone else's), and has a fiduciary duty to work for the benefit of all abuse claimants. AIS is Koznoff, Van Arsedale and one other lawyer. There's also the "Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice", the "CASJ" or "Coalition" for short. The CASJ seems to have started as the AIS members plus some other lawyers, but back in September, when one of the insurer

So the news article doesn't mention Scouting by name, but I think the BSA is clearly one of the "other religious and youth-serving organizations" mentioned... Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Pa. House leaders plan emergency fix on abuse lawsuits after filing error https://www.post-gazette.com/news/faith-religion/2021/02/04/Lawmakers-emergency-amendment-harrisburg-sex-abuse-lawsuits-Catholic-grand-jury/stories/202102040148

The insurance companies dropped a couple more motions on the case docket on Friday. The first one, "HARTFORD AND CENTURY’S MOTION FOR AN ORDER (I) AUTHORIZING CERTAIN RULE 2004 DISCOVERY AND (II) GRANTING LEAVE FROM LOCAL RULE 3007-1(f) TO PERMIT THE FILING OF SUBSTANTIVE OMNIBUS OBJECTIONS" [D.I.1972], asks for an order allowing them to serve discovery on 1400 abuse claimants that they have already randomly selected, and then depose up to 100 claimants from that group seeking more information. Interesting excerpts from the motion and attachments... [a page with examples i

I don't think the LDS church forfeited the standard insurance/indemnification that any other CO would have had by ending it's relationship at the end of 2019. Charter agreements were always per-year. That said, the LDS church has been self-insured in other areas, and LDS units in my council were told not to pay the council "insurance fee", relying instead on the church's other activity insurance. But the hundreds of Methodist churches who put in defensive claims did so on the basis of indemnification in the charter agreement, not an insurance contract; I don:t see why the LDS church could

No idea whether he has was ever a Scout, but something to think about if anyone suggests a service-project of picking up trash is "too easy" or "not of lasting value"... https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/behind-viral-photo-rep-andy-kim-cleaning-midnight-after-riots-n1253519

First Class requirement 4a reads, The pre-2016 First Class requirement 2 was worded pretty much the same. Until the end of 2020, a modified version of the requirement is allowed due to COVID-19, Both versions talk about "requires measuring the height and/or width of designated items". I know there are ways to do that; I remember reading through the chapter about that in the Boy Scout Handbook I used in the early '90s, and there are even sections on that in the 1948 Handbook and the 1910 Handbook. But if I'm helping design an orienteering course, how can I make it "re

My sons' troop has gone through several phases over the course of the pandemic: Before March, it was on the news but we weren't thinking about it, not too worried about the bankruptcy either. We were preparing to merge in a troop chartered by a church that was closing, planning to spend a week at council Summer Camp during the summer, planning to work on the Cycling merit badge as soon as the weather got warm and finish it by the end of summer. In the week when our state went into lockdown, things got crazy. The COR posted to Facebook a terse statement that activities would be su

I'm an EPrep MBC, and when I first heard "make masks", I thought "that's not a real Emergency Preparedness project!" too, but when you quote the requirement it makes sense. The one thing I'd still watch out for would be that whatever the scout takes part in, it should be a "project", something planned and with tasks allocated to participants, something with measures of completion and success, not just an "activity" where people individually do something that may be related to an emergency. That doesn't mean the Scout has to make the plan, or direct its execution. Making the plan wou

Well, GSUSA and 4-H don't have exactly the same Youth Protection program, but from what I can see it's similar in each case. See the "Clover Safe Notes", in particular #99 "Youth Protection Safe Environments". And youth programs run directly by a public school or municipality might have a defense of governmental immunity, or more sympathy from a jury, as compared to a private program organized by like-minded potential volunteers. But I'll agree that smaller organizations are at grave risk. Consider the case of the Boston Children's Therater (Boston Globe article; WBUR article). Pu

Yes, Friday's docket report contains new motions to appear for Jessica Boelter [D.I.1533], Mike Andolina [D.I.1535], and Matt Linder [D.I.1535] with the new firm, and orders granting their admission [D.I.'s 1536–1538].

So we've seen reports that the "Coalition" has names of over 28,000 alleged victims that it purports to represent. But a court filing [D.I.1505] on behalf of the TCC a week ago shows that the actual number of submitted abuse claims so far is still below 6,000: The Local Council omissions I can believe. I don't even remember my Unit Number from when I was a Boy Scout (thought I did, but then my dad handed a uniform down to me and it had a different number on it), and I remember hearing my leaders talk about how we were in a certain council because that's where the other nearby same-CO

Well, there is one (former) CO that allegedly had $100 billion in a rainy-day fund consisting of liquid investments at the end of 2019. But the next man in line to be Prophet is a former State Supreme Court Judge, and that church owns a law school. If I were an abuse-claimant lawyer I'd be worried that the LDS church would use its assets as a litigation warchest and fight for many years without ever giving out a penny. From my random perusal of the Ineligible Volunteer Files that were made public, I don't see a lot of cases with obvious LDS involvement; and I wouldn't be surprised if there a