CB DBA Chubb Limited

By Andrew Scurria and Peg Brickley 

Law firms representing sexual-abuse victims accused the Boy Scouts of America's liability insurers of trying to intimidate victims from seeking compensation as the youth organization moves closer to proposing a settlement plan.

Insurers affiliated with Chubb Ltd., Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. and other companies that wrote policies covering the Boy Scouts against legal liabilities have questioned whether some of those law firms filed poorly vetted claims about their clients' experience, which the firms have denied doing.

The Boy Scouts, faced with sex-abuse claims, filed for bankruptcy nearly a year ago. The organization is near to proposing a chapter 11 plan that would set up a compensation trust for men who were abused as children. Abuse victims are counting on insurance policies from decades ago, when most of the trauma took place, to fund a big chunk of the settlement program.

In court papers, the insurers question if many of the 95,000 sexual abuse claims filed against the Boy Scouts are legitimate and are seeking to interrogate a sampling of 1,400 men to determine whether their claims stand up to scrutiny.

That would require permission from the judge overseeing the chapter 11 case. An informal group of law firms calling itself the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice said in a Friday filing that the questioning would potentially retraumatize the men and that there were safeguards already in place to unearth phony claims. The discovery request "serves no legitimate purpose at this time other than for purposes of delay, harassment and intimidation," the Coalition lawyers said on the behalf of the victims they represent.

In the filing Friday, the Coalition responded to the insurers singling out one claimant whose mother had emailed the Boy Scouts to dispute his claim of abuse and who withdrew his claim when the insurers asked him to respond to questions about it.

"Scaring survivors so that they withdraw presumptively valid claims is not good cause; it is disgusting," the Coalition lawyers said. Lawyers for several other law firms also filed papers denying what one called "grossly misleading allegations, and outright fabrications by" insurers.

The amount of potential insurance coverage available to fund settlement payments hasn't been revealed as the Boy Scouts' and victims' lawyers negotiate behind closed doors.

Tancred Schiavoni, an attorney representing Chubb affiliates, said in response to the Coalition's filing that it didn't "cite to or provide the declaration of a single person to refute any of the detailed factual declarations and expert statements" put forth by the insurers.

A Boy Scouts spokesperson said the organization continues to cooperate with the insurers and other participants in private mediation and anticipates any concerns will be appropriately addressed through that process.

The Boy Scouts have said repeatedly that they believe the abuse victims, but are staying out of the scuffle between their insurers and those representing the victims.

Insurers cite the attorneys' use of claims generators and advertisements as grounds for demanding a closer look.

Law firms filed claims without sufficient information, in some instances on behalf of men with criminal backgrounds, the insurers said.

The insurers suggested that the profiles of some victims with criminal pasts provide a basis for further investigations of the validity of their claims.

A life of addiction and crime are part of the damage thousands of men sustained after being sexually assaulted in Boy Scouts, said Andrew Van Arsdale, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers.

"A lot of these people have not had very good lives. They were abused as children, and that left them alone and fragile in this world," Mr. Van Arsdale said. "Many times they took difficult paths."

The number of claims is likely to fall by roughly 10,000 once duplicate claims are weeded out, according to lawyers involved in the bankruptcy.

Many claimants don't recall the names of their abusers, but are asked by lawyers when gathering the claims to provide other corroborating details such as the location of regular troop meetings or outings where abuse occurred.

The Boy Scouts are on a tight timetable to leave chapter 11. The organization has said it needs to leave bankruptcy by August or risk running low on cash, owing to a slump in revenue from the coronavirus pandemic that has resulted in curbs against camping and other activities.

Write to Andrew Scurria at Andrew.Scurria@wsj.com and Peg Brickley at peg.brickley@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 08, 2021 18:46 ET (23:46 GMT)

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