Lawyers bill church $19 million

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The Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon just got their bill from their lawyers for the recently concluded bankruptcy proceedings.

Full story here
Lawyers have submitted their final bills to the Portland Archdiocese for bankruptcy proceedings: $18,842,506.13.
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It’s not clear how they figured the 13 cents.
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The total includes only the lawyers and experts who worked on the case in Bankruptcy Court. Attorneys for priest accusers who filed the lawsuits that sent the archdiocese into bankruptcy in 2004 earned an estimated one-third of the $50 million in sex abuse settlements.
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I am in this archdiocese. We have been told repeatedly that all the money we give to our parish or the archdiocese directly does not go pay the legal fees or to pay for the settlement of sex-abuse related lawsuits. If that is true, where does the money to pay these bills come from?
 
Wow, are you serious? $19 million? And this was a bankruptcy proceeding?
 
Isn’t it a tragedy that the priests who abused children and others, and the bishops who enabled and covered up for those priests, did these things that, in addition to the terrible damage done to the victims, have cost so much.

It’s not the lawyers at fault here, folks - It’s the priests and bishops who led us to this result.

As to the legal fees - 1/3 is pretty standard for a contingency and the Bankruptcy Court will need to approve fees for a debtor’s counsel.

Like it or not it’s another cost of the the scandal.
 
Thanks for the clarification, johnnykins. This is just very sad to see. rpp, I sincerely hope that your archdiocese can put this behind it and make sure that things like this never happen again.
 
catechumen08 said:
Thanks for the clarification, johnnykins. This is just very sad to see. rpp, I sincerely hope that your archdiocese can put this behind it and make sure that things like this never happen again.
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One thing that the all the news up here never says. The last alleged sex abuse complaint was in 1983. I guess someone is doing something right.

But still I want to know where the archdiocese is getting the money to pay for this if they say none of the money given to parishes and directly to the archdiocese goes to this or the costs of settling with victims.
 
rpp said:
One thing that the all the news up here never says. The last alleged sex abuse complaint was in 1983. I guess someone is doing something right.

But still I want to know where the archdiocese is getting the money to pay for this if they say none of the money given to parishes and directly to the archdiocese goes to this or the costs of settling with victims.
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The article says insurance and sale of property. Of course, the legal fees paid by insurance are subsumed in the premium paid presumably with donations, return on investments or sale of capital at some time or other, and the property had to be bought with something presumably with donations, return on investments or sale of capital at some time or other.

Perhaps the archdiocese really means "**no ** money recentlygiven to parishes…goes directly…
 
rpp said:
One thing that the all the news up here never says. The last alleged sex abuse complaint was in 1983. I guess someone is doing something right.
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Ah, I see. It’s good to see that something is being done about it.
 
Caesar said:
Ugh, these blood-sucking lawyers make me sick.
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Perhaps priests and bishops who put the church in the position it’s in - not to mention the damage done to victims - is where you should focus your disgust. There would be no case or liability if hundreds of priests and many bishops had not either abused victims or covered up and enabled the abusers. The fees are indeed large, but perhaps the priests and bishops should have considered the evil they were up to - and put an end to it. If this were an isolated instance you might have a point. Unfortunately, it was widespread - endemic, even.

Like it or not the lawyers are part of the solution here - not the problem. It’s a pity that huge sums of money has finally got the attention of the bishops when nothing else did. For the source of the problem we need only look to our shepherds’ lack of integrity.
 
johnnykins said:
Perhaps priests and bishops who put the church in the position it’s in - not to mention the damage done to victims - is where you should focus your disgust. There would be no case or liability if hundreds of priests and many bishops had not either abused victims or covered up and enabled the abusers. The fees are indeed large, but perhaps the priests and bishops should have considered the evil they were up to - and put an end to it. If this were an isolated instance you might have a point. Unfortunately, it was widespread - endemic, even.

Like it or not the lawyers are part of the solution here - not the problem. It’s a pity that huge sums of money has finally got the attention of the bishops when nothing else did. For the source of the problem we need only look to our shepherds’ lack of integrity.
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The media, the accusers and these lawyers have all taken advantage of the Church for their own gain. They are like vultures.
 
Caesar said:
The media, the accusers and these lawyers have all taken advantage of the Church for their own gain. They are like vultures.
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If so, the priests and bishops who left their prey strewn all about bear the blame for attracting vultures!
 
Caesar said:
The media, the accusers and these lawyers have all taken advantage of the Church for their own gain. They are like vultures.
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I would disagree with a such a blanket statement.

Yes, I think there have been some who have taken advantage of this. In fact there was a man in Portland Oregon a few years ago who was convicted for fraud for making a false claim and seeking monetary compensation. And he was not the only one.

But these are the exception.

There is nothing about this situation that makes anyone happy except the enemies of the Church. And even some of them draw the line here. Before my conversion in 2003, I was an enemy of the Church, yet I felt that the media was treating the Church unfairly. Especially since the incidence of public school teachers doing the same thing is much higher. The difference is that state governments, like Oregon revised laws in 2000 to remove the statute of limitations for the Church but not for any other legal entity, like public schools. And that is when suing the Church became like trying to win the lottery.

This is a terrible and awful thing. Whenever lawyers get involved everything get very expensive very fast.

Grave sin has a high price. And, like most grave sins, the innocent are hurt along with the guilty.
 
We have avaricious lawyers and an agenda-driven media circling the Church, pushing people to make claims for ridiculous sums of money. Dioceses are going bankrupt, churches are closing, the faithful are being cut off from the grace which comes through the Sacraments. And what is worse now, we have Catholics who stand around and say exactly what these lawyers and the media want them to say “we have nobody to blame but ourselves…”. :mad:
 
Caesar said:
We have avaricious lawyers and an agenda-driven media circling the Church, pushing people to make claims for ridiculous sums of money. Dioceses are going bankrupt, churches are closing, the faithful are being cut off from the grace which comes through the Sacraments. And what is worse now, we have Catholics who stand around and say exactly what these lawyers and the media want them to say “we have nobody to blame but ourselves…”. :mad:
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No - we have our priests and bishops to blame - not ourselves.
 
The attorneys advertise that they can get you money. I worked for such an attorney. I was the one that went through the thousands of people that call and usually get turned down. Many of those turned away needed help but were the ones that would not make the judge or jury sorry for them.

Sorry but the money never made things better for the many that received it. The people that receive the money do not get help in how to budget it. They are not required to get medical help with the money. Most felt they won the lottery and purchased a new car, wide screen TV or other “stuff”. Most also tended to be just as broke after a year or two as when they started the process.
 
This seems pretty sad to me. First they have to deal with the huge settlement, then they have to go bankrupt, and finally they get a HUGE bill from there attorney’s.

Almost seems like a sick comedy.
 
Adonis33 said:
This seems pretty sad to me. First they have to deal with the huge settlement, then they have to go bankrupt, and finally they get a HUGE bill from there attorney’s.

Almost seems like a sick comedy.
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A comedy of sick human morals that many have tried to normalize. No matter where the sick people try to hide (we need to pray for them and there victims) they PERSONALLY need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. (God will deal with them later)
 
Caesar said:
The media, the accusers and these lawyers have all taken advantage of the Church for their own gain. They are like vultures.
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Unlike the other two, the lawyers were sought out by the Church and hired to do their job, at a rate the Church agreed to in advance. Whining about these lawyers is like blaming the paper store for its high bill, for all the paper the Church will use in dealing with these cases.
 
rpp said:
The Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon just got their bill from their lawyers for the recently concluded bankruptcy proceedings.

I am in this archdiocese. We have been told repeatedly that all the money we give to our parish or the archdiocese directly does not go pay the legal fees or to pay for the settlement of sex-abuse related lawsuits. If that is true, where does the money to pay these bills come from?
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I have not followed this story closely, but it sounds like you answered your own question. The money to pay the settlement and legal fees for the sex abuse cases probably came from insurance.

Other expenses that are only indirectly related to the cases probably come straight from the archdiocesan budget: hiring another PR person to deal with the public and the media, recarpeting a room that’s been used a lot for meetings in the case, buying relevant books for the diocesan library, filing for bankruptcy…
 
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