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Insurer Hartford Financial Services Group said on Friday that it had agreed to a settlement with the Boy Scouts of America and would pay $650 million for sexual abuse claims associated with policies issued mostly in the 1970s, Reuters reported. Under the agreement, the Boy Scouts and its local councils will release Hartford from any obligation under policies it issued, Hartford said. The Boy Scouts filed for chapter 11 protection last February, amid a flood of lawsuits over allegations of child sexual abuse stretching back decades. "Our agreement with Hartford is an encouraging step towards achieving a global resolution that will promote the Boy Scouts' efforts to equitably compensate survivors and continue the mission of scouting," the Boy Scouts said in an emailed statement. The payment will be in addition to contributions from national Boy Scouts local councils, participating chartered organizations and other participating insurers, it added. Apart from Hartford, insurer Chubb Ltd is also facing potentially massive liabilities stemming from the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy.

A former confidant of Wayne LaPierre said that the longtime NRA leader feared the prospect of criminal charges and once described the gun group’s attorney William Brewer as “the only one” who could keep him out of prison, Bloomberg News reported. LaPierre made the comment at a meeting in early 2019, Anthony Makris said Friday at the NRA’s bankruptcy trial. Makris, a senior executive at the ad agency Ackerman McQueen, said LaPierre made the comment amid a contentious breakup between the NRA and the firm. Makris testified that he asked LaPierre at the meeting why he was turning his back on everyone who’d helped him over the years in favor of Brewer and his Dallas law firm. LaPierre responded that “Bill Brewer is the only one who can keep me out of jail,” Makris said. Makris didn’t specify why LaPierre feared jail, but The Wall Street Journal reported in October that the Internal Revenue Service is investigating the former NRA leader for possible criminal tax fraud related to his personal expenses. “We are not aware of any criminal justice inquiry, period,” Kent Correll, counsel to Wayne LaPierre, said in a statement.

Federal regulators have imposed a $15 million fine against the former owner of a mid-Michigan dam that unleashed a 500-year flood last year, saying that the company failed to perform important safety work after the disaster, MLive.com reported. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced on April 15, that it would assess the penalty against Boyce Hydro, a bankrupt company co-owned by Lee Mueller of Nevada that formerly operated the Edenville Dam. The Gladwin County dam failed last May, causing a downstream failure of the Sanford Dam and subsequent flooding in the village of Sanford, city of Midland and beyond. The fine has been anticipated since FERC proposed it in December. It equals the largest civil penalty for a hydroelectric dam safety failure in the United States, assessed after the 2005 Taum Sauk reservoir collapse in Missouri, which also resulted in a $15 million fine. The fine is based largely on Boyce Hydro’s failure to act on federal orders after the May 19, 2020 dam collapse in Edenville, which caused more than $200 million in estimated damages and forced the temporary evacuation of about 10,000 people. However, attorneys say it’s unlikely the fine can be paid because Boyce Hydro is insolvent and bankruptcy claims by creditors such as Byline Bank and other flood victims are taking priority over payment to the federal government. Boyce Hydro no longer owns the dam, which was transferred to the Four Lakes Task Force (FLTF). The task force paid $1.5 million to acquire the Edenville, Sanford, Secord and Smallwood dams through eminent domain as a delegate of Midland and Gladwin counties.

Nearly four years after an infamous festival that was billed as an ultraluxurious musical getaway in the Bahamas left attendees scrounging for makeshift shelter on a dark beach, a court has decided how much the nightmare was worth: approximately $7,220 apiece, the New York Times reported. The $2 million class-action settlement, reached Tuesday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York between organizers and 277 ticket holders from the 2017 event, is still subject to final approval, and the amount could ultimately be lower depending on the outcome of Fyre’s bankruptcy case with other creditors. But Ben Meiselas, a partner at Geragos & Geragos and the lead lawyer representing the ticket holders, said on Thursday that he was happy a resolution had at last been reached. “Billy went to jail, ticket holders can get some money back, and some very entertaining documentaries were made,” Meiselas said in an email mentioning Billy McFarland, the event’s mastermind. “Now that’s justice.” Lawyers representing the trustee charged with Fyre’s assets did not immediately respond to a request for comment. McFarland and the festival’s co-founder, the rapper Ja Rule, have faced more than a dozen lawsuits against their company, Fyre Media, in the event’s aftermath. The plaintiffs have sought millions and alleged fraud, breach of contract and more. McFarland is serving a six-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to wire fraud charges. In 2018, a court ordered him to pay $5 million to two North Carolina residents who spent about $13,000 apiece on VIP packages for the Fyre Festival.

Fast-casual chain Meatheads Burgers & Fries, which has received more than $2.4 million in PPP funding, has declared bankruptcy, Restaurant Business reported. The chain, which lists 13 locations around the Chicago area on its website, filed for chapter 11 protection in the Northern District of Illinois on Friday, as did its owner Crave Brands, LLC. But the company's lender is not so sure. LQD Financial Corp. filed a motion to dismiss the case on Tuesday, saying that the bankruptcy filing was a “stunt Crave’s former manager pulled to stay in charge” and that the filings were made in bad faith. In its chapter 11 filing, Meatheads said it had liabilities totaling $8.4 million with total assets of $6.7 million. The chain received a Paycheck Protection Program loan of $982,112 in 2020 and nearly $1.44 million in PPP funding during the second round this year. Crave Brands, LLC, the owner of Meatheads which also filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, received an Economic Injury Disaster Loan for $149,000.

Family members of a Kroger real estate executive who died following an altercation at Shotgun Willie’s in 2019 say the Glendale strip club’s recent bankruptcy filing “is an attempt to use the COVID-19 pandemic as a smokescreen to limit the debtor’s liability in six pending lawsuits,” the Denver Post reported. “The truth is that the debtor is a profitable company that will likely recover quickly from the pandemic and has the financial wherewithal to provide a significantly higher return to unsecured creditors,” the surviving wife and children of Randall Wright wrote in a March 24 court filing. Wright was 48 when he died in May 2019 after being put into a chokehold by a bartender at the club, according to a wrongful death lawsuit his family filed five months later. The local district attorney’s office announced in September 2019 that it would not file charges in connection with the incident, citing multiple factors. The club disclosed the family’s lawsuit and others pending against it when it filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November. In a statement to BusinessDen at the time, Shotgun Willie’s attributed the filing to the pandemic, noting the club was prohibited from operating for weeks in the spring, and again around the time of the filing.