Louisiana Voice

After delay after interminable delay and court decisions designed only to protect the New Orleans Roman Catholic Diocese instead of the victims of abuse at the hands of representatives of the diocese, if finally appears as if things are about to get serious.

Last Friday (Dec. 6), two insurance companies have submitted requests for documents to the New Orleans Archdiocese and to the Committee of Unsecured Creditors in the federal bankruptcy case that is part of the sex-abuse case against the diocese on behalf of more than 500 plaintiffs who claim they were sexually abused by Catholic clergy in the archdiocese.

U.S. Fire Insurance Company and International Insurance Company filed their requests in which they asked for:

• All Documents that the debtor (archdiocese) and committee have exchanged concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims that are the subject of a plan of reorganization in this bankruptcy case, including the claims model and/or matrices prepared by archdiocese’s counsel, Blank Rome, and given to the committee;
• The claims valuation model employed by the committee to generate the demands to insurers propounded in the committee plan of reorganization;
• All proofs of claim that assert Indirect abuse survivor claims against the debtor;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the entities filing proofs of claim asserting Indirect abuse claims against the archdiocese that provide or are alleged to provide rights of indemnification, contribution or defense for sexual abuse survivor claims;
• The contracts and/or other agreements entered into between the debtor and the Catholic religious orders that operated within the geographic domain of the archdiocese;
• The document retention and destruction policy of the diocese in place over the time period for which coverage is sought from U.S. Fire and International as well as two other insurers, Sparta and Travelers;
• All insurance, certificates of insurance, subscription agreements and other agreements between the Archdiocese of New Orleans Indemnity Company and/or National Case 20-10846 Doc 3568 filed 12/06/24 entered 12/06/24 23:21:09 main document Page 5 of 20 2 Catholic Rusk Retention Group, on the one hand, and the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, on the other hand.
• All Documents concerning the sexual abuse survivor claims asserted against the archdiocese and/or any of its apostolates, including requests for coverage for such claims, and any responses.

While the requests might seem routine steps in civil litigation, there could be an undercurrent of resistance building among the archdiocese’s insurers. For one, the committee is proposing that the insurers cough up $777 million as its share of any billion-dollar settlement.

That promises to be a hard sell – for several reasons. First, do any of the policies cover intentional acts? Most cover unintended incidents but in many cases, deliberate acts or acts done in the commission of a crime, coverage is denied as are “known prior acts.”

And “known prior acts” brings up another consideration. How many more claims are still out there? The insurance companies are not likely to relish shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars only to turn around and get hit with more claims next week, next month or next year. The so-called “lookback window” has been pushed up to June 14, 2027, which opens the door for more claims until that date.

Moreover, the insurers may take a dim view to the propensity of the archdiocese to shield offending priests from prosecution or from being sued by transferring them to other locations where they continued to have contact with children as opposed to ridding the church of pedophiles.

In case after case, the Catholic Church in general and the New Orleans Archdiocese in particular have made it a practice to SHUFFLE OFFENDING PRIESTS around like so many dominos.

Another case illustrates not only how the church protects its own, but also how the courts can be counted on to punish the messenger when a predator is discovered to be in a Catholic school and outed.

New Orleans attorney Richard Trahant indicated to reporter Ramon Antonio Vargas that he might wish to keep an eye on Father Paul Hart and he alerted his cousin

That was it. Trahant gave a heads-up to his cousin, who was principal of Brother Martin High School, that a known predator, Paul Hart, was assigned to the school as its chaplain. He also indicated to Vargas, who was then working for the New Orleans Advocate but since has moved over to The Guardian, that he should keep Hart on his radar.

“I have never provided, disclosed or disseminated any sealed or confidential documents produced by the debtor (archdiocese) or any infomration included in those documents to any person other than members of the committee, their counsel or the committee’s bankruptcy professionals,” he said in a prepared statement.

That was the extent of his comment because the entire record was under seal by court order.

After a complaint by attorneys for the archdiocese, Judge Meredith Grabill ruled that Trahant had violated the confidentiality rules despite Trahant’s insistence that additional information about Hart that Vargas subsequently published had come from other sources.

Grabill, in a classic gesture of punishing the messenger, removed Trahant along with two other attorneys and a number of clients from the clergy abuse claimants committee. Then she hit Trahant with a $400,000 fine, claiming that the amount was derived from the cost of the leak investigation.

Somehow, Grabill managed to justify imposing the cost of that “investigation” on Trahant while looking the other way as the archdiocese did and continues to do everything in its power to drag out the proceedings as the legal bill continue to pile up, some at rates of $800 per hour.

It shouldn’t be that difficult. After all, Blank Rome, the “special insurance counsel” to the archdiocese, has already performed legal work on 13 separate Catholic church bankruptcies even as they have managed to bill the New Orleans Archdiocese more than a million dollars. One would have to wonder how much of the work for New Orleans might be a tad redundant to some of those other 13 cases. In all, the archdiocese has spent some $41 million already on legal and professional fees to defend its pedophile priests.

All of which begs the question of just whom is the court trying to protect – the 550 victims of predatory priests or the officials (monsignors, bishops and archbishops) that kept moving them around from parish to parish so as not to bring any embarrassment to the church?