Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren said at a hearing last week that neither plan proposed in the Rochester Diocese bankruptcy can move forward for a vote yet, the Rochester Beacon reported. Instead, he set an Apr.16 date for the hearing to be continued. It would be the hearing’s second continuation and third session. Judge Warren had previously called off an early October hearing that was to have dealt with the rival plans. Accounting for much of the complication is that insurance companies balked at payment amounts survivors sought as compensation. By the end of last year only one insurer, the Continental Insurance Co., also known as CNA, had not come to terms. Instead it offered a rival plan of reorganization to a joint plan offered earlier by the diocese and a committee representing survivors. The survivors’ committee has made it clear that it sees CNA’s plan as an inadequate take-it-or- leave-it offer. The court’s go ahead on a vote on one or both plans after the April 16 date assumes the diocese and CNA will have met series of conditions the judge laid out, many having to do with more clearly explaining legal issues to the nearly 500 abuse survivors who account for most of the diocese’s creditors.
