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Insurers who could be left footing the bill for personal injury litigation against former talc miner Cyprus Mines Corp. are challenging the company's proposed candidate to represent future tort claimants, Reuters reported. Cyprus is asking U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein in Delaware to approve Roger Frankel as the future claims representative (FCR) in its chapter 11 case. A status conference on the matter is scheduled for today. The company, represented by Reed Smith, filed for bankruptcy protection in February as part of a settlement with another bankrupt talc company, Imerys Talc America, that had acquired some of its talc-related assets in 1992. Cyprus is one of the companies that has been sued in recent years by plaintiffs alleging a link between exposure to talc products and certain types of cancer and asbestos-related diseases. As of Feb. 16, the company was facing 436 lawsuits making talc-related personal injury claims, according to court papers.

The National Rifle Association, long a feared power broker, will learn its fate next week in a court ruling that could hobble the gun rights group and imperil the three-decade reign of its controversial boss, Wayne LaPierre, Bloomberg News reported. The judge is weighing several options. He could let the NRA’s bankruptcy case go forward, giving the group a measure of refuge from a New York lawsuit that threatens its assets and even its existence. He could put the group under the control of a trustee, empowered to make decisions about its finances and its future. Or, in a highly unusual move, he could throw the NRA out of bankruptcy court altogether. For an organization that was until recently the most potent single-issue lobby in the U.S., none of the possible outcomes are great. LaPierre is trying to use the bankruptcy process to escape what he claims is political persecution by New York’s elected leaders and reincorporate the group in gun-friendly Texas. In the New York lawsuit, filed last August seeking to dissolve the NRA, Attorney General Letitia James alleged that LaPierre has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars of NRA funds for private plane trips for himself and his family, among many other indulgences. If the bankruptcy case is dismissed, James would have an easier time seizing the group’s assets, should she win her lawsuit. The NRA has called James’s suit a baseless attack on the Second Amendment timed to have maximum impact during the election cycle. For more than two weeks, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin “Cooter” Hale in Dallas listened to testimony about palace intrigues, shredded notes and excessive personal spending. The dispute pits several entities against the NRA. Allied with James is the gun group’s former ad agency, Ackerman McQueen Inc., which claims the bankruptcy filing was made in bad faith and should be dismissed. Even the U.S. office that monitors bankruptcies said at the end of the trial that the NRA doesn’t belong in Hale’s court. Meanwhile, a rebel NRA director has asked the judge to let the bankruptcy continue — but start a new investigation of the group’s management and board. The NRA responded to a request for comment on the case by referring to statements its attorney, Gregory Garman, made during the trial. In his closing arguments, Garman admitted that the testimony had included “cringe-worthy” evidence about the group, at one point saying, “Does anyone want to hear about your CFO taking the Fifth? Of course not.”

Bishop of Buffalo Michael William Fisher announced, in conjunction with the Movement to Restore Trust, how the diocese will be looking to help move the clergy forward following years of sexual abuse cases. Those cases lead to the declaration of bankruptcy last February, WKBW.com reported. "There are issues that we need to confront in the days and weeks ahead and that is something that I cannot do alone," Bishop Fisher said. The Bishop says those issues will be confronted through new initiatives. The diocese will group parishes together in "families" looking to increase participation and changing the way Catholic education is done. What was not address, was how the diocese will assure the clergy that the sexual abuse and resulting cover ups will never happen again. "They spent all of this time trying to establish a road to renewal and to build trust when they still haven't done anything to address the problem that put them in this very place," Kevin Koscielniak, founder of Buffalo Survivors Group, said.

Small groups of former Boy Scouts who say they were sexually abused by Scouting leaders are seeking more information about how much money local councils and insurers will be contributing to settle decades worth of sex abuse claims as part of the Boy Scouts of America’s reorganization, Reuters reported. The former Scouts filed a series of objections on Wednesday and Thursday in Delaware bankruptcy court to the organization's disclosure materials for its proposed reorganization plan. It includes a proposed settlement of more than 80,000 sex abuse claims filed against the Boy Scouts. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein will consider the disclosure materials at a hearing on May 19. If she approves them, the Boy Scouts will be able to send them to creditors who are entitled to vote on the proposed plan. The plan would set up a trust to be funded by a mix of cash, artwork, insurance policies, and at least $425 million from local councils in exchange for releases against legal actions stemming from sex abuse allegations. The organization’s proposal has already been met with opposition from groups representing the interests of abuse survivors in the bankruptcy, including an official tort claimants' committee and a group called the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice. This week, law firms representing small groups of individual abuse claimants filed papers saying that the disclosure materials need to include valuations of each local council’s assets, how many sex abuse claims have been lodged against each local council, and how much each council is contributing to the settlement trust in exchange for a release of abuse claims. The claimant groups say the information is necessary for them to determine whether the contributions are worth giving up their claims against their local councils.

Massachusetts sued a unit of French advertising company Publicis Groupe SA on Thursday, accusing it of fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic by using unfair and deceptive marketing to help the drugmaker Purdue Pharma sell more OxyContin, Reuters reported. The state’s attorney general, Maura Healey, accused Publicis Health of working with drugmakers from 2010 to 2019 on campaigns to persuade doctors to prescribe more opioids for longer periods of time, including to patients who did not need them. She said Publicis collected more than $50 million from Purdue alone, including for efforts to “humanize” opioids and make doctors prescribe them to a wider pool of patients. Publicis Health did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawsuit filed in a state court in Boston seeks civil penalties, restitution to victims and a declaration that the unit created a public nuisance. Healey’s lawsuit followed agreements this year by the consulting firm McKinsey & Co to pay $641 million to resolve lawsuits by all 50 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and five U.S. territories over its role in the epidemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said nearly 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses from 1999 to 2019. Purdue is operating in bankruptcy. In March, it proposed a restructuring plan that would steer profits to opioid victims and require members of the Sackler family who own the company to contribute nearly $4.3 billion.

Texas lawmakers are debating several bills to address how to cover the huge charges facing some energy companies for power purchased during February’s winter storm, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Legislation that has advanced the farthest, according to lawyers and executives following the process, would specifically address the bills owed by power cooperatives, allowing them to raise financing on their own and charge their customers to service the securitization debt. Other legislative efforts aim to go further by holding more market participants throughout Texas responsible for the outstanding bills owed to the state’s grid operator, Electric Reliability Council of Texas. Those two areas of legislation may be combined, as they both address money owed to Ercot. A third legislative track aims to address $16 billion of charges for power purchases made during the storm, that an independent market monitor identified as resulting from a mistake by Ercot and state regulators. That bill faced the most opposition during a hearing in the statehouse this week because it spreads greater costs among more participants in the Texas market. Moreover, a debate continues about whether Ercot is required to reverse those charges.

A Justice Department lawyer said that National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre has failed to provide adequate oversight of the gun-rights organization and that management should be removed or curtailed if a bankruptcy judge allows the NRA to remain in chapter 11, the Wall Street Journal reported. The government lawyer’s criticism of NRA management came at the conclusion of a monthlong trial over the bankruptcy, supporting New York Attorney General Letitia James’s argument that LaPierre put the NRA into chapter 11 to try to evade accountability for spending abuses, which he and the NRA have denied. James sued to dissolve the NRA in August and is seeking to either have the chapter 11 case thrown out or to bring in an independent trustee to take charge of the NRA in bankruptcy. The trial concluded yesterday with closing arguments in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Dallas that outlined vastly different visions on what should happen to the 150-year-old group. New York and federal authorities as well as the NRA’s former ad agency contend the not-for-profit is badly mismanaged and an independent fiduciary is needed to rein in Mr. LaPierre. The NRA, meanwhile, said LaPierre and his prodigious fundraising are its most valuable asset, that its board is independent and that it has a plan to bolster its corporate governance and restructure its affairs through chapter 11, setting up operations in what it says is the friendlier jurisdiction of Texas. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin Hale now will decide which path the NRA will take and said yesterday that it is one of the most important cases he will rule on during his judicial career. Judge Hale said he intends to retire next year. Assistant U.S. Trustee Lisa Lambert, part of the Justice Department unit overseeing the nation’s bankruptcy courts, said that NRA management hasn’t been accountable for lavish spending and financial irregularities that date back years before its January bankruptcy filing and persisted even during the chapter 11 case.

The three largest U.S. drug distributors, who are accused of helping fuel the opioid crisis that has resulted in nearly 500,000 overdose deaths in the U.S., will defend themselves in a trial that kicks off today, Reuters reported. The trial against AmerisourceBergen Corp., McKesson Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc. in Charleston, West Virginia, involves a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion brought by the city of Huntington and Cabell County. They claim that the companies ignored red flags that opioids were being diverted to illegal channels, flooding the state with hundreds of millions of highly addictive pills. The distributors have denied the claims, arguing they cannot be liable for distributing pills that were prescribed by doctors. Huntington and Cabell, along with other West Virginia towns and counties, opted out of a proposed $26 billion nationwide settlement with the three distributors and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson. A verdict in the trial could help lay the groundwork for settlements in the sprawling nationwide litigation over the opioid crisis, which encompasses more than 3,300 lawsuits by local governments around the country against opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies. Read more. 

In related news, the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, the maker of Oxycontin, have for months tried to portray their bid for immunity from future opioid lawsuits as a kind of fait accompli, a take-it-or-leave it fix to a legal morass. In exchange for what amounts to a legal firewall for the Sacklers and their remaining empire, members of the family have offered to forfeit control of their bankrupt drug company and pay $4.2 billion from their private fortunes. Judge Robert Drain who is presiding over the case in White Plains, N.Y., has suggested such a deal may be desirable and achievable along these broad lines. A negotiated settlement could preempt years of costly litigation — the Sacklers deny any wrongdoing — and might accelerate financial aid to communities struggling to recover from an opioid epidemic that has already cost more than 450,000 lives. But a growing group of public officials and activists are mounting a last-ditch effort to derail the plan, describing it in legal briefs as an unethical, and possibly unlawful, use of the bankruptcy court's power, NPR reported. Late last week, 25 state attorneys general filed a new brief describing the proposed settlement as "unprecedented," "unjust" and "unconfirmable as a matter of law." "The bankruptcy system should not be allowed to shield non-bankrupt billionaires," said Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey. "It would set a terrible precedent. If the Sacklers are allowed to use bankruptcy to escape the consequences of their actions, it would be a roadmap for other powerful bad actors." State AGs aren't alone in objecting to the deal. In recent weeks, attorneys representing local and state governments, native tribes and opioid activists filed briefs raising legal and ethical concerns about the plan. A division of the Justice Department that oversees bankruptcy cases also filed a brief questioning whether the bankruptcy court has the "authority and jurisdiction" to approve such a plan. Read more. 

Texans left in the dark during February’s winter storm blackout now risk being frozen out from claiming damages from Brazos Electric Power Cooperative Inc. and Griddy Energy LLC as the bankrupt power companies rush to shield themselves against potential claims for property damage and wrongful death, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Houston judge overseeing Brazos’s bankruptcy proceedings said Thursday the cooperative only needs to place notices in newspapers and a magazine to alert Texans about the requirement that they file claims to seek compensation over the deadly February storm. Under the judge’s ruling, those published notices about the Brazos chapter 11 case are enough to alert potential claimants that their rights are at risk and failure to respond by the August deadline would strip them of their chance to collect damages from Brazos. Among the claimants in the Brazos bankruptcy is Larry Ford, son of Elzie D. Ford, a 68-year-old man who was found frostbitten and unresponsive in his home five days after losing power and heat in below-freezing temperatures, according to court papers filed by the younger Mr. Ford. He died in a Waco, Texas, hospital on Feb. 20. Mr. Ford filed a claim against Brazos and sued others including HILCO Electric Cooperative Inc., one of the member cooperatives that collectively own Brazos, alleging negligence when the power was cut to his father’s house. The Texas Department of State Health Services is still tallying the fatalities but has identified 151 deaths related to Winter Storm Uri as of Wednesday. Some Texans are continuing to repair homes damaged by burst pipes. “They shouldn’t wake up and find out” their legal rights against Brazos were washed away just months into its bankruptcy, said Thomas Mayer, lead lawyer for the unsecured creditors committee, during a hearing on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston. The committee wanted a broader noticing program to reach out to potential claimants, saying that Brazos could easily alert its 1.5 million customers directly by text messages, emails and direct mailing of the deadline to file claims. Brazos said the customer lists belong to its member cooperatives, which have refused to hand over the information. Mr. Mayer said customers who try to sue member cooperatives for personal injury or property damage will be met with the argument that any negligence was Brazos’s fault. By that time, the deadline to file claims against Brazos may have passed.