Chapter 11 announced - Part 14 - Plan Effective

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There was an article today in Bloomburg Law about Dechert LLP joining the fight against Slater for their profesional misconduct and ethics violations. The article is behind a paywall. However, I contacted the author of the article. Alex Wolfe gave me permission to publish the entire article. Thanks Alex!  If the moderators would like to see the correspondence with the author where he gave me permission to publish this article. Shoot me a private message. Thanks.

 

 

Boy Scouts Abuse Claimants Tap Dechert to Fight Mass Tort Firm

 

Summary by Bloomburg Law AI

 

Feb. 13, 2026, 3:35 PM

 

• Attorneys from Dechert LLP are assisting a group of Boy Scouts abuse claimants seeking to terminate their contingency fee arrangements with Slater Slater Schulman LLP.

 

• The group alleges that Slater's misconduct and deception has resulted in irreparable injury to claimants and undermined the credibility of the bankruptcy system.

 

• The claimants are seeking to have the court decide whether Slater should be financially penalized for allegedly deceiving thousands of child sex abuse claimants about the status of their claims in the Boy Scouts of America Chapter 11 settlement process.

 

Attorneys from multinational law firm Dechert LLP are assisting a group of Boy Scouts abuse claimants seeking to terminate their contingency fee arrangements with mass tort firm Slater Slater Schulman LLP.

 

A trio of Dechert attorneys, including Yale Law professor G. Eric Brunstad Jr., were part of the team that filed papers Friday urging the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware to decide whether Slater should be financially dinged for allegedly deceiving thousands of child sex abuse claimants about the status of their claims in the Boy Scouts of America Chapter 11 settlement process.

 

“The Slater firm’s misconduct and deception has resulted in irreparable injury to claimants, undermined the credibility of the bankruptcy system, and has wide-ranging impacts on the BSA debtors’ estate,” the group said. “This court has jurisdiction and the power to ensure that justice is done.”

 

Brunstad, who has argued multiple cases in front of the US Supreme Court, adds heft to an effort to terminate Slater’s 30% to 40% contingency fee agreements it holds with more than 14,000 Boy Scouts child sex abuse claimants.

 

Lawrence Friedman, a former executive director of the Justice Department’s bankruptcy monitoring unit, has spearheaded the legal fight for the claimants.

 

A group of 14 former Slater clients seek to punish the New York-based plaintiffs’ firm for concealing for more than a year that all of its claim submissions were under investigation by the Boy Scouts abuse settlement trust. Slater in September acknowledged that it had submitted “problematic claims” and, as a result, would reduce its total legal fees by about 4%.

 

Its former clients have argued that the firm should either be denied all of its fees or receive as little as $250 per claimant.

 

The group tapped Dechert for additional help after Delaware bankruptcy judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in November said she’s unsure whether she has jurisdiction to wade into the fee dispute, which takes broad aim at the business practices of mass tort plaintiff firms. “So what’s the proper vehicle to raise those issues?” she asked at the time. “I don’t know.”

 

In their brief Friday, the former Slater clients said because the issue is core to the Boy Scouts bankruptcy case, Silverstein has “inherent authority” to decide it. The same authority was used decades ago by a Virginia bankruptcy judge to regulate attorney contingency fees in the Chapter 11 case for A.H. Robins, which settled more than 300,000 personal injury claims stemming from the company’s Dalkon Shielddevice, they said.

 

“Just as in the A.H. Robins case, and perhaps most consequentially for claimants, reducing or capping the Slater firm’s fees would affect the amount that each of the claimants would receive,” they said.

 

An attorney for Slater didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

Claim recovery has become a fraught topic for abused former scouts, who have so far received just 1.5% of what they’ve been told their claims of childhood molestation and rape are worth. The settlement trust, which began operating in April 2023, had been constrained from distributing additional funds while the Boy Scouts’ Chapter 11 plan was on appeal.

 

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s refusal last month to hear a petition brought by a small group of claimants that opposed the plan, the trust has said it will be making supplemental distributions that raise recoveries up to 4.7% of claim value.

 

Slater is represented by Law Office of Susan E. Kaufman LLC, Robert & Robert PLLC, and Continental PLLC. The movants are additionally represented by Scheer Law Group LLP and Rosner Law Group LLC.

 

The case is Boy Scouts of America, Bankr. D. Del., No. 20-10343, brief filed 2/13/26.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wolf in New York at awolf@bloomberglaw.com