Louisiana Voice

After four-and-one-half years of foot-dragging, $40 million in legal and professional fees and little progress toward a resolution, events in the Catholic Church’s New Orleans Archdiocese appear to be suddenly moving at warp speed, including rumors of a pending high-level (as in the highest local level) retirement

Abuse survivors, some 500 or so of them, have filed a response to the court-appointed expert’s REPORT filed on October 21 that contain a few surprises, including a call that Archbishop Gregory Aymond be deposed along with a “corporate representative” of the archdiocese (other than Aymond), expert Mohsin Meghji and the husband-wife team of Wayne and Susan Zeringue.

Early word is that Aymond will refuse to cooperate on any proposed deposition and if ordered to participate, is expected to plead the Fifth Amendment on the basis of the ongoing criminal investigation into possible sex-trafficking by the church.

But the biggest surprise (though not really a surprise to some) is that Aymond may well announce his retirement in the coming days, perhaps as early as tomorrow (Thursday). That would follow the national trend of retiring bishops and archbishops in the wake of the wave of sexual abuse litigation that has spread from Boston to Los Angeles and points between.

Here is Meghji’s 35-page report, for which he was paid $350,000, or $10,000 per page:

One person who read the report said he was not impressed with Meghji’s work. “I’d like the opportunity to compare this Report with other Reports that Meghji has generated in other cases, and with similar Reports by other ‘experts’ that were generated in other Catholic Church bankruptcy cases across the country,” he said.

“Meghji’s Report is exactly what one should have expected as ‘an opening salvo’ from a ‘numbers cruncher’ or ‘bean counter.’ Note that on page three, Meghji states: ‘…an analysis of the underlying facts, claims, defenses or other factors related to the hundreds of sexual abuse proofs of claim asserted against the Debtor is beyond the scope of this Report.’ Translated into plain English from mediator language this means: ‘FACTS BE DAMNED; let’s start talking numbers,’ because the numbers are all that matter. ‘How much have you got? What are you willing to take?’

“Generally, in mediation-speak, it takes at least 15 minutes or so to reach this point, which will drive the discussions until the end of the process. Meghji cut to the chase in just a few pages. For this case to settle, the archdiocese and the apostolates will have to identify and be prepared to liquidate vast real estate holdings that have not yet been identified and valued accurately. If you represented an insurer of the church, would you pony up hundreds of millions of dollars in cash (that rightfully belongs to your shareholders) before the church and its apostolates have accurately identified and valued their real estate holdings, much of which will have to be liquidated via sales to third parties before any Survivor Trust can be funded and settlement reached?

“As I read Meghji’s Report, I couldn’t help but conclude that the man (who is under INVESTIGATION for having engaged in at least one attempt to curry favor so he could exercise undue influence with at least one official, namely a Texas bankruptcy court judge, who recently resigned from the bankruptcy court bench in Houston, but only after the same Judge had approved a large loan by the debtor in a bankruptcy case that benefitted Meghji directly) has an agenda.”

Here is the full seven-page response filed on Monday:

Funny thing about Meghji’s report is that nowhere in that October 21 report does he mention a mediation, apparently scheduled for November 5. Yet, the archdiocese’s insurer certainly got wind of such a mediation and on November 1 fired off a letter to bankruptcy judge Meredith Grabill requesting a seat at the table. Here is that letter:

So, why do the plaintiffs want both Zeringues deposed? Well, as LouisianaVoice pointed out on OCTOBER 1, Susan Zeringue is the executive counsel for the archdiocese, having replaced Wendy Vitter, wife of former U.S. Sen. David Vitter, upon Wendy Vitter’s confirmation as a federal district judge for Louisiana’s Eastern District.

Susan Zeringue was instrumental, as the top legal advisor for the archdiocese, in the hiring of New Orleans law firm Jones Walker to defend the archdiocese bankruptcy litigation. Her husband, Wayne, is a partner in the Jones Walker firm and among the Jones Walker invoices for services to the archdiocese were 11.8 hours charged by Wayne Zeringue – for communications with his wife – pillow talk, as one observer called it, at a rate of $400 per hour.

The problem with that is that Wayne Zeringue’s field of expertise is in maritime law. He has zero experience as a bankruptcy attorney. But what’s the harm of a little hint of nepotism as long as you keep it in the family?

The lawsuits thus far have generated only delay, delay, delay – and $40 million in legal and other expert fees – money that will go to the hired guns in suits while 500 alleged victims continue to wait.

And the meter’s still running…

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Here’s LSU Coach Brian Kelly in his post-game press conference as he discusses the Tigers’ chances of making the 2024 NCAA playoffs:

PLAYOFFS?

…Oops, sorry, that was another coach at another time and place.

But, hey! It could well have been Kelly after LSU’s humiliating loss to ‘Bama in Tiger Stadium last Saturday – especially after top honchos at the Ole War Skule cratered to a two-bit politician’s demands that a live tiger, albeit not Mike VII, but a borrowed (or rented) cat from Rhonda Santis’s state of Florida, be ushered into the stadium before adoring (a better word being sympathetic) LSU fans.

Could it possibly get any worse?

Well….yes, it can.

U.S. District Judge John deGravelles on Tuesday, in a 177-page decision, figuratively knocked over the easel that Landry intended to use to display the TEN COMMANDMENTS in each and every public classroom in Louisiana.

Saying that posting the commandments would make children a “captive audience” (sort of like 100,000 LSU fans jammed into Tiger Stadium last Saturday night), the judge said the law was “facially unconstitutional,” adding that Louisiana’s law was in direct conflict with a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court decision that struck down a similar law in Kentucky.

Landry’s sock puppet Attorney General Liz Murrill said that while the disastrous Alabama decision is final now that the loaner tiger has been returned to Florida, the state would “immediately appeal” deGravelle’s preliminary injunction, saying, “We strongly disagree with the court’s decision.”

Of course, she does and of course there will be an appeal.

How else can all those attorneys who contributed to the campaigns of her and her boss earn their fees? They’re gonna reap financial windfalls litigating this issue for years to come.

Wait. You mean you actually thought those campaign contributions were made to advance good, clean, honest government? That’s so cute. You probably learned that in high school civics (if they even still teach that). But this is the real world.

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The tangled web of sex abuse litigation and possible child sex trafficking involving the Archdiocese of New Orleans is a holy mess (no pun intended) that has reverberations all the way to the Vatican.

Oddly enough, some of the claims of ex parte meetings and furtive plots date to the 2009 disbarment of New Orleans attorney Ashton O’Dwyer. Both issues, though completely unrelated on the surface, share an ugly history that goes all the way back to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005

Throw in the Louisiana Supreme Court’s assignment of the state’s 5^th Circuit Court of Appeal (not to be confused with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals) to investigate itself over Pro Publica’s devastating Exposé of the its alleged MISHANDLING OF PRO SE APPEALS of their convictions by prison inmates and you have a story line that seems more appropriate for a John Grisham novel than a real-life court system in total disarray.

The state’s 5^th Circuit, to no one’s surprise, unanimously adopted an en banc (full court) resolution on Sept. 9, 2008, in response to Pro Publica’s story. In that resolution, the court completely and calmly – and apparently with a straight face – absolved itself of any wrongdoing in the handling of 454 prisoner appeals over a three-year period.

But as bad as the apparent dereliction of duty on the part of the state 5^th Circuit judges appeared to be in that story, it pales in comparison to what has transpired and continues to occur in the sex abuse case against the Catholic Church – not only in New Orleans but world-wide.

The focus of this story, however, is on the New Orleans Archdiocese and the claims of more than 500 men who are claiming they were sexually abused by priests, nuns and staff at Catholic churches, schools and residential homes for children.

And many of the same names that were involved in the beating and tasing of Ashton O’Dwyer in 2005 and his subsequent disbarment are the same ones who surface on the Catholic church litigation and O’Dwyer doesn’t think it’s by coincidence.

So, let’s start with PART ONE and work our way forward.

First, we go back to 2004 when Shell Oil Co.’s Norco refinery allegedly produced contaminated gasoline that ended up damaging the fuel gauges and “inter alia” (among other things) on motorists’ vehicles.

The result was a settlement by Shell the following year for $3.7 million to cover damages.

But the kicker was that presiding Federal District Judge Ivan L.R. Lemelle more or less took it upon himself, in an ex parte hearing, to appoint a five-member fee committee which recommended an allocation of nearly half of the $6.875 million in attorneys’ fees to the five members of the fee committee and their law firms. None of the other 74 attorneys who worked on the case were notified of the hearing on the fee committee’s recommendation nor were they shown the allocation proposal or the proposed order approving the committee’s fee share designation.

The five attorneys were John Barrett of Lexington, Mississippi; Ben Barnow of Chicago, Illinois; Patrick Geraghty of Fort Myers, Florida; Walter Dumas of Baton Rouge and Richard Arsenault of Alexandria

Besides the appearance of lawyer overkill with the involvement of 32 firms and 79 attorneys, there were a couple of problems with that. First, ex parte (Latin for one side only), defined as any communication between a judge and one party to a case either without the knowledge or consent of all parties or without proper notice to all parties, is prohibited.

Second, Judge Lemelle approved the committee’s self-serving recommendations which caused other involved attorneys to complain of being short-changed for their services (for example, one firm claimed fees of more than $114,000 but received just $33,000).

Third, Lemelle ordered that his approved fee structure be paid out immediately, with no opportunity for objections.

Forth, the judge ordered the record sealed so as to “prevent lawyers from fighting over awards that they could not compare,” according to the subsequent ruling by the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which said that Lemelle went beyond his scope of authority practically every step of the way in his decision on the Shell fee allocation.

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Lemelle, however, was never sanctioned nor otherwise reprimanded over his holding the ex parte meeting with the five plaintiff attorneys so there was little incentive for him to alter his behavior on the bench.

That same mindset prevailed when it came to his treatment of Ashton O’Dwyer’s case before him three years later, in 2008, and again the following year in which Lemelle called first for the suspension and then the disbarment of O’Dwyer.

But first, one has to go back to August 29, 2005, when an unwelcome visitor named Katrina blew into New Orleans and set into motion attorney O’Dwyer’s battle with the judicial and bar establishments which led in turn to his eventual downfall.

NEXT: How O’Dwyer’s class-action lawsuit on behalf of Katrina victims resulted in an ex parte meeting about how to deal with him and how those meetings set in motion a series of judicial rulings that not only destroyed his career and personal life, but also set the stage for the current legal crisis with the New Orleans Archdiocese sex abuse scandal.

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Some mouth-breathing moronic imbeciles who think they’re funny should give up on their efforts at humor and return to their mother’s basement where they can continue to gorge themselves on Doritos and Diet soft drinks.

As one who knows first-hand that humor is difficult, I can attest to the futility of having a joke fall flat to the echo of crickets. And I can tell you with all the certainty of death and taxes that the one sweeping across the Internet and targeting mostly Blacks is most definitely not funny.

In fact, it’s sick and indicative of a demented mind that’s incapable of formulating an original thought, much less the ability to convey humor.

I’m talking about, of course, the “joke” that’s suddenly appearing as a text on individuals’ cell phones with the following message:

Normally, I would say this is the work of a immature third-grader but I believe a normal person of that educational level would exhibit better skills at punctuation and syntax. I mean, what does “searched down” even mean? And has this cretin ever heard of inserting a period at the end of a sentence?

What’s particularly interesting is that the cowards who thought they were so clever in sending these texts didn’t have the balls to sign their names to the message. That really takes a special kind of courage, doesn’t it?

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said that individuals across the U.S., including Louisiana, have been receiving the text messages which are obviously aimed at blacks, though some white people have received similar texts as well.

Murrill said she has directed the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation to investigate the origins of the messages. “I urge anyone who received [such] a text to contact my office at 800-351-4889,” she said.

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Does any of the following sound somewhat familiar?

“Nothing like the regime … has ever been enacted on American soil before … a weird governmental monstrosity. Some called it ‘America’s Rehearsal for Dictatorship.’ Its justifications were the alleged mistakes of the past. It grew, thrived on the most bizarre methods and the wildest propaganda, lived a wild and hectic career.

“…[C]itizens lost their liberties and their fundamental American rights.

“The right of free elections was wiped out, and absolute control was seized by the leader of one political faction. Freeom of the press was attacked … Freedom of assembly vanished … Public records were closed to the public.

“Only a patriot of the staunchest character could stand up to the power … and the threats and reprisals … [that were] used so freely. Those who were willing to [resist] paralleled the acts of America’s bravest patriots at any stage of American history.”

George Orwell’s 1984 or Animal Farm? Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale? Some other equally dystopian novel?

No. In fact, it isn’t taken from any work of fiction, but from an all-too-true account of another American dictator from a century ago. Those words were written by Louisiana’s then Gov. Sam H. Jones in his foreword to 1941’s Louisiana Hayride by Harnet T. Kane – subtitled as Huey Long’s American Rehearsal for Dictatorship.

With that in mind, I would urge each of you to read Louisiana Hayride if you haven’t already or to re-read it if it’s been a while since you last picked it up.

I would also implore you to read today’s Something Like the Truth post by Bob Man entitled “Where Do We Go from Here?” To read the post, click HERE.

Bob, as only he can, says to yes, grieve for a time over the results of Tuesday’s election but then get busy resisting the usurpation of the progress and rights others have worked to hard and for so long to obtain. In other words (and this my own interpretation of what he said), follow the advice of the late John Lewis and “make good trouble.”

Mann also provides a list of organizations we can join to work toward ensuring that those rights are not stripped away. To his list, I would respectfully add The Innocence Project, which works for the exoneration of those individuals who have been wrongfully convicted.

Please read his post. It is a rational, intelligent and productive path to sanity for those who despair the election of a tyrant to lead our nation.

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