A dispute between the Boy Scouts of America and childhood sex-abuse victims has put a cease-fire agreement at risk with the youth organization’s survival strategy on the line, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Boy Scouts are asking a bankruptcy judge to force an extended standstill in legal hostilities by sex-abuse victims against the local councils that control the bulk of the group’s billions of dollars in wealth. The chances of a reorganization for the Boy Scouts hang in the balance, lawyers for the organization said in a court filing on Monday. The official committee that represents sex-abuse victims will fight the effort to force a legal peace, said James Stang, lead lawyer for the committee. “We intend to aggressively oppose the motion to extend the preliminary injunction,” Stang said. “We have significant questions, underlying factual questions that haven’t been answered.” The brewing trouble highlights a vulnerability in the Boy Scouts’ strategy of resolving tens of thousands of sex-abuse claims. Only at the national level does the organization enjoy chapter 11 protection from lawsuits accusing it of failing to protect children from sexual predators. More than 250 local councils aren’t in bankruptcy, meaning the estimated $3 billion of the wealth they control isn’t shielded by the automatic stay of chapter 11, which protects against collection efforts after a bankruptcy filing. New York, New Jersey, California and other states in recent years changed their statute-of-limitations laws to allow for individual lawsuits over childhood sexual abuse even if the alleged injuries happened decades ago. In February 2020, the prospect of an onslaught of litigation propelled the Boy Scouts into bankruptcy, where it faces a reckoning with an estimated 85,000 people who have made compensation claims for suffering sexual abuse.
