Louisiana Voice

Incest is not normally a subject that’s broached in polite circles, especially as it might involve members of the clergy.

But incestuous would seem to be the appropriate description of the mess that is the sexual abuse litigation in the New Orleans Catholic Archdiocese – especially as it pertains to all the legal eagles involved, both directly and peripherally.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, some 550 claimants have now come forward to accuse more than 80 priests of sexual abuse of children just in the New Orleans Archdiocese. Those numbers do not account for the suspected high number of cases that go unreported. Nor do they even come close to the number of sexual abuse allegations that have swept through the Catholic Church from Boston to San Diego, from Alaska to Florida.

But for this post, I’m going to focus only on the New Orleans Archdiocese, second oldest archdiocese in America.

Rather than agree on compensation for the victims, whose demand is now $1 billion (an average of about $1.8 million per claimant), the archdiocese offered $62.5 million (about $113,600 each), putting the two sides nearly $940 million apart, the archdiocese would rather spend some $41 million on legal and professional fees to fight the claims.

And it’s those fees that have caught the attention of observers and which have produced at least one legal filing objecting to some of the legal fees paid by the archdiocese.

It should be worth noting that in May 2020 the archdiocese declared bankruptcy even though it currently has real estate holdings worth something north of $1 billion. Archbishop Gregory Aymond, in filing the bankruptcy petition, notified the Vatican that the archdiocese’s legal exposure did not exceed $7.5 million and that the costs would be borne by the church’s administrative offices and not the apostolates (individual Catholic churches, schools and ministries within the archdiocese). But with legal and professional fees alone already surpassing $41 million – and counting – Aymond reversed his position and in a letter to area churches, informed them that the apostolates would have to bear some of the cost of resolving the litigation after all. He immediately attempted to shift the blame for the burgeoning costs by claiming that expenses to defend the lawsuit far exceeded the predictions of New Orleans law firm Walker Jones, which is representing the archdiocese in the ongoing legal battles.

And, as Shakespeare said in Hamlet, “There’s the rub” and you’ll probably need a program to keep up with the players.

• Eastern District of Louisiana Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill quite possibly owes her job to Eastern District Judge Wendy Vitter, wife of former US Sen. David Vitter and, prior to her appointment by Donald Trump to a federal judgeship, worked as legal counsel for – wait for it – the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
• The current archdiocese general counsel? That would be Susan Zeringue, wife of Jones Walker partner Wayne Zeringue.
• Grabill, by the way, succeeded Elizabeth Magner as a bankruptcy judge. Magner is a former Bankruptcy Section partner of another big New Orleans firm, Lemle & Kelleher. She is married to former federal prosecutor and now Jones Walker partner Michael Magner.
• Then there’s Eastern District Chief Judge, Sarah Vance, who is married to Jones Walker Bankruptcy Section Co-Chair Patrick Vance. He shares the co-chair position with Mark Mintz who is actually the lawyer representing the archdiocese in the bankruptcy case. Mintz once taught a course with Grabill.
• And just to add a little spice to this legal stew, the husband-and-wife team of Wayne Zeringue (Jones Walker partner) and Susan Zeringue (legal counsel for the New Orleans Archdiocese) each actually billed the archdiocese for communicating about the litigation – with each other. Wayne, for instance, billed 11.8 hours at $400 per hour in what one observer said amounted to “pillow talk” between spouses.

Soren Gisleson, of Herman, Katz, Gisleson & Cain, is the attorney representing abuse victims who filed a formal objection to many of the fees of Jones Walker, which had an astounding 54 attorneys who have billed the archdiocese for legal work, some at rates as high as $490 per hour. “Sexual abuse survivors have waited more than four years to find a fair resolution while Jones Walker takes as much as it can at their expense,” Gisleson said.

The real indication of just how far the archdiocese is willing to go in order to deny justice for the victims can be found in the controversy swirling around the legislature’s 2021 passage of R.S.9:280.9, the so-called look-back statute which gave plaintiffs additional time in which to file claims. Aymond’s publicly expressed agreement is to not  fight the so-called look-back statute but there was strong lobbying against passage of the bill and once passed, the Diocese of Lafayette, which is part of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, challenged the look-back window in court which was ultimately upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court. The Diocese of Lafayette had a dog in the hunt because of Aymond’s reversal on the apostolates’ being on the hook for a part of any payout.

And despite Aymond’s saying before the Supreme Court’s decision that he was never opposed to the look-back window and that the archdiocese would contribute the same amount of funds toward a settlement regardless of the court’s ruling, Jones Walker continued to bill (57.2 hours, or $21,640) on prescription-related issues, according to Gisleson.

UP NEXT: A look at an individual case in the Diocese of Lafayette and how characterizing each archdiocese as a separate entity unto itself protects the Vatican from liability is considered by at least one authority to be a form of corporate fraud.

ON DECK: Think Catholic priests have the market cornered on child abuse? Think again. The Southern Baptist Convention has its own skeletons it would very much like to keep closeted and the Mormons are not exactly lily-pure.