CRIME Looting the Boy Scouts

Troke

On TB every waking moment
Looting the Boy Scouts
The mass tort industry gins up thousands of dubious claims.
By The Editorial Board
March 2, 2021 6:43 pm ET

The plaintiff bar long ago turned mass torts into a business model, but never underestimate legal creativity. The attempted looting of the Boy Scouts of America is highlighting the need for tort reform in a modern era of social media and lawsuit marketing.

The Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy a year ago amid what it acknowledges are legitimate claims of sexual abuse by some scout leaders. BSA and its insurers have been working in good faith to settle those claims. Which is why insurers owned by Chubb Ltd. and Hartford Financial Services are asking U.S. bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein to allow discovery into the methods of plaintiff lawyers who produced a 55-fold increase in new claims in less than a year.

You read that right. Insurer court filings note that when BSA filed for bankruptcy, it was a defendant in 275 cases and had been notified of a potential 1,400 more. BSA now faces 95,000 claims. Behind this assault is a sophisticated new tort machine that leverages Wall Street litigation funding, third-party brokers to collect and commoditize claims, and sweeping online marketing that recruits and coaches claimants. This is the new mass tort industry.

The insurer filings point to the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice, an ad hoc group of mass plaintiffs. In one June 2020 email presented to the court, a coalition founder explained that the “strategy” is to “keep focused on our marketing and media efforts,” so that “we control 80% of the claims[.] I.e. our coalition controls the case.” It did force its way in, filing 60% of all the claims in “mass filings just days before” the Nov. 16, 2020 cutoff.

Potential plaintiffs were encouraged via marketing on YouTube, social media and text message blasts. Insurers say the groups also “ran thousands of television, radio and internet advertisements that were riddled with falsehoods.”

These included “untrue statements” that claims could be filed “anonymously,” that the Boy Scouts had set up a $1.5 billion fund for payouts, that compensation was “ensured,” and that claimants wouldn’t have to appear in court, say the insurer filings. The ads were so deceptive that Judge Silverstein in September ordered the lawyers to stop running “false and misleading” information.

The lawyers also hired claims aggregators, which are private companies that employ call centers and advertising to produce claims. These processors “either sell the claims they generate or work on contract,” say the court filings. Plaintiff attorneys used hedge-fund money to buy claims, with the financiers “securing” their investment with “recoveries from the [Scouts] litigation,” the filings say.

The insurers have provided forensic evidence to the court showing that the attorneys likely didn’t even read what they filed. One plaintiff coalition attorney allegedly signed 890 “proof of claims” in a single day—one every 32 seconds, assuming eight hours. Another looks to have signed nearly 800 blank forms, allowing others to fill them in later.

It’s no wonder that a preliminary investigation by two insurers found that 11,676 claims appear to be duplicates. More than 7,000 do not identify a perpetrator. Some 4,700 do not identify any affiliation with scouting. More than 1,500 have already been the subject of litigation. And 54,000 look to be time-barred. Thousands more were signed by only a lawyer, not a claimant. A review of public information also found claimants who had been convicted of tax fraud, forgery, identity theft, false insurance claims, and child molestation.

The insurers are asking for discovery into a sample of the claimants, as well as into the methods used by 15 of the most prolific plaintiff attorneys. Judge Silverstein held a hearing last month, and this should be an easy call.

Bankruptcy law provides for discovery, and fairness demands it. A payout for fraudulent claims would reduce funds for legitimate victims. Notably, the original law firms appointed by the bankruptcy trustee to protect the interests of victims aren’t opposed to discovery into the tort coalition’s claims.

The tort bar is using these tools of mass torts in many cases, (see the opioid or Roundup chemical litigation), but the Boy Scouts’ case is the first based on sexual claims. Judge Silverstein has an opportunity to stop these abusive tactics in this case—and deter them in the future—by exposing them to legal and public scrutiny.
 

33dInd

Veteran Member
they intentionally killed the Boy Scouts
Simultaneously
they brought lawsuits for sexual abuse of children
while requiring that scouts admit adults who were child predators
yes most of us noticed that also
 

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Yeah I question the legitimacy of all those new claims. How in the world are you going to prove or disprove allegations that go back decades and more? Witnesses? Evidence? He said, who said?

I don't know but it sure seems like one huge friggen mess.

I think it's a shame that proper action wasn't taken from the get go to put a stop to such actions. I don't care who the perp was or how big they were in the community. Wrong is wrong. I'm just glad I never saw, heard or suspected anything like that was happening because I would have been the kid to say something.

All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole barrel and now the Boy Scouts are painted with a broad brush and I doubt the sour taste and odor will ever die down. What a shame because Scouting did a lot of good to a whole lot of young men. Damn!
 

lonestar09

Veteran Member
Don't forget they have girls in the boy scouts now too. Seeing several stories recently about girl eagle scouts now.
 

ShadowMan

Designated Grumpy Old Fart
Don't forget they have girls in the boy scouts now too. Seeing several stories recently about girl eagle scouts now.

Yeah....I thought that was a BIG mistake when that was started and it's stupid too. NOT EVERYTHING has to be Co-Ed. Boys and Girls need their own space and time to be just Boys and Girls, and you can't do that when you're dealing with forced Co-Ed events.
 

Troke

On TB every waking moment
The original Boy Scouts was a J6P organization. Thus it was slated for destruction. So now we have female Eagles at age 13. So much for Eagle in your resume'.
 

Jeep

Veteran Member
One of my childhood friends is an Asst. Scoutmaster in FL. We were talking a couple of weeks ago and he told me that in another scout troop in his area, one of the girls in the troop is pregnant by another scout in the same troop. The local council is trying hard to keep this hush-hush. IIRC he said both the boy and girl are 15.
 

Troke

On TB every waking moment
One of my childhood friends is an Asst. Scoutmaster in FL. We were talking a couple of weeks ago and he told me that in another scout troop in his area, one of the girls in the troop is pregnant by another scout in the same troop. The local council is trying hard to keep this hush-hush. IIRC he said both the boy and girl are 15.
When I was in the Scouts, weekend campouts were a lot of fun. If we'd had girls, they would really have been fun

Damn! Born two generations too soon.
 

fish hook

Deceased
Well the scouts looted the families of scouts and then instead of rooting out predators opened their arms and welcomed them in. Then topped it off by making BOY scouts open to girls. There must have been adults there that actually preferred little girls and they didn't want them to be left out. The BOY scouts were already dead, i have nothing against stripping the corpse. Any plaintiffs that are not legitimate are not taking anything from the scouts, they are robbing the legitimate victims of abuse by taking what is rightfully theirs.
 
they intentionally killed the Boy Scouts
Simultaneously
they brought lawsuits for sexual abuse of children
while requiring that scouts admit adults who were child predators
Absolutely correct.

Annihilating the Boy Scouts was a planned affair - from start to finish.

Getting legal discovery of "the other side" could provide a useful insight into the planned take-down of the Boy Scouts.


intothegoodnight
 
All it takes is one bad apple to spoil the whole barrel and now the Boy Scouts are painted with a broad brush and I doubt the sour taste and odor will ever die down. What a shame because Scouting did a lot of good to a whole lot of young men. Damn!
Let's bring this comment into the 2020 national election perspective, shall we?

"All it takes is one bad apple fraudulent stolen election to spoil the whole barrel the Republic, and now the Boy Scouts We, The People® are being painted with a broad brush and I doubt the sour taste and odor will ever die down."​

Notice the similarity in the methods/tactics used by the communists when systematically dismantling our Constitutional Republic?

Funny that.


intothegoodnight
 
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