The Boy Scouts of America is nearing final approval of a reorganization plan that would allow the youth organization to set up a $2.3 billion trust to settle decades’ worth of claims by more than 80,000 men who say they were abused as children by troop leaders, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Wilmington, Delaware, at a Thursday court hearing overruled remaining objections to the Boy Scouts' chapter 11 plan. She stopped short of approving it, however, instead asking for further revisions that the organization said could be completed relatively quickly. Boy Scouts' attorney Jessica Lauria acknowledged in court that it had some "work to do," but said that the remaining changes could be completed in less than a week. The Boy Scouts had sought confirmation of a modified chapter 11 plan that aimed to address Silverstein's July 29 ruling rejecting some parts of the plan. The biggest change was the removal of a $250 million settlement between the Boy Scouts and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which Judge Silverstein refused to approve because it went too far in protecting the Mormon church from abuse claims that were only loosely connected to scouting activities. Judge Silverstein overruled the remaining objections to the plan from insurers and sexual abuse claimants who argued that recent revisions went beyond the scope of Silverstein's July opinion. The insurers, for example, objected to a new assertion that the bankruptcy court's estimation of the value of abuse claims did not act as a limit on insurers' eventual liability for those claims.
