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Wayne LaPierre runs the National Rifle Association as his personal kingdom, overriding checks and balances and making critical decisions about the gun group’s future without consulting or informing its board, a director who is also a Kansas judge testified yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. Any efforts to challenge LaPierre’s decisions and empower the association’s 76-member governing board are “essentially nonexistent,” Phillip Journey, a family court judge in Wichita and member of the board, said at a bankruptcy trial. “It essentially operates as a kingdom rather than a corporation,” Journey said of the NRA. “Wayne’s kingdom.” LaPierre’s long tenure atop the association is under attack in a bankruptcy case filed in Dallas. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin D. “Cooter” Hale is holding a trial to decide whether to appoint a trustee to run the NRA while it’s in bankruptcy, or throw the case out, as the New York Attorney General has requested. Judge Hale will also consider Journey’s request for a so-called examiner to look into allegations of financial impropriety leveled against LaPierre and other senior association officers. Journey testified that hundreds of NRA members have donated money to help with court costs. Journey rejoined the board of directors last year after being off the governing body for about 25 years, he said. He returned to an organization that he didn’t recognize he said. “All of the safety switches in corporate governance needed to be turned back on,” he said. “They were off.” LaPierre put the gun rights group into bankruptcy a few months after New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit seeking to dissolve the organization. LaPierre said in court last week that the bankruptcy was necessary to get a “fair legal playing field.” James’s lawsuit in New York seeks to dismantle the NRA and redistribute its $200 million worth of assets to other nonprofits. Should Judge Hale dismiss the bankruptcy, James would have an easier time seizing those assets if she wins her lawsuit, which may not come to trial until next year, according to testimony.

Attorneys for the Boy Scouts of America told a Delaware bankruptcy judge yesterday that they plan to file a new reorganization plan after gaining little support for a previous proposal that has been roundly criticized by attorneys for child sex abuse victims, the Associated Press reported. Jessica Lauria, an attorney for the BSA, told Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein that an amended plan would be filed Tuesday "unless the stars align" and the Boy Scouts reach a meaningful resolution with one or more other parties Monday night. Lauria said that the new plan is designed to continue momentum from a three-day mediation session that ended April 1 in Miami. She acknowledged, however, that differences remain among attorneys representing abuse victims, insurers and other parties. "There are some issues that will have to be litigated in connection with the plan," Lauria said. The revised proposal will include a default plan, or "Plan A," similar to what the BSA proposed in March. It calls for a global resolution of abuse claims that includes a "substantial contribution" to a victims trust fund by the BSA's local councils in return for a release from further liability. Local sponsoring organizations of Boy Scout troops that contribute to the victims trust also would be released from further liability under the amended plan, which, like the previous plan, also would provide a framework for settlements with BSA insurers. Unlike the previous plan, however, the new plan will include an estimation of the Boy Scouts' abuse liabilities, something that attorneys for abuse victims have said is critical in determining whether any reorganization plan adequately compensates victims.

A top official with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe says a financial flood from clergy sex abuse claims is coming and a settlement would serve as the dam to prevent devastation to parishes across northern New Mexico, the Associated Press reported. A letter from the Rev. Glennon Jones is posted on the archdiocese’s website. It states that progress is being made in collecting donations for a bankruptcy settlement prompts by allegations of abuse perpetrated by priests and other clergy over decades. The letter states that should the bankruptcy fail, nothing would be safe from liquidation to pay for legal costs and lawsuit settlements. In October, a U.S. bankruptcy judge ruled that lawyers for clergy sex abuse survivors can file lawsuits alleging the archdiocese fraudulently transferred millions of dollars in property and other assets to avoid bigger payouts to victims. That decision in the chapter 11 reorganization case opened the door to what could be a multimillion-dollar boon to hundreds of alleged victims. It could also result in protracted, costly legal appeals that would tap funds that could have paid valid abuse claims. Mediation is ongoing in the case. James Stang, a Los Angeles attorney who represents a committee of abuse survivors in the case, said there is a “conditional settlement agreement” that would require certain actions by the archdiocese. Other parties such as insurers and parishes would need to be brought in and a plan of reorganization written.

For three decades, Wayne LaPierre has been the implacable face of the gun lobby, a scourge of the left who argued that giving ground on gun control was akin to giving up on America. So it was remarkable to see the shambolic turn his tenure atop the National Rifle Association has taken showcased last week in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas, the New York Times reported. LaPierre acknowledged that he had secretly taken the N.R.A. into bankruptcy — without telling even his top lieutenants or most of his board — essentially as an end run around attacks from the New York attorney general, who is seeking to shut down the group amid charges of financial mismanagement and corruption. And he made a string of admissions that served largely to underscore the N.R.A.’s disarray and the questions about his own fitness to lead it. He didn’t know, he testified, that his former chief financial officer had received a $360,000-a-year consulting contract after leaving under a cloud. He didn’t know that the personal travel agent the N.R.A. had hired to book charter flights for him and his family — the Bahamas was a favorite destination — was charging a 10 percent booking fee on top of a retainer that could reach $26,000 a month. He didn’t know that one of his former top lieutenants had arranged for his wife to be hired by an N.R.A. contractor, or that her compensation had been billed back to the N.R.A. Weakened by internal strife, and after an attenuated presence in the 2020 presidential election, the N.R.A. these days often seems more fixated on litigation than guns. Among other things, it has spent nearly $8 million in legal fees to do battle with its former top lobbyist, Chris Cox, the attorney general’s office claimed, even though Mr. Cox is seeking a little over a quarter of that amount in a severance dispute. (A lawyer for the N.R.A.’s main outside firm called the figures “misleading” but did not provide a breakdown.) But perhaps the N.R.A.’s greatest power remains the perception of its power.

A travel consultant who testified in the National Rifle Association’s bankruptcy case said Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre instructed her to omit certain flight stops from invoices she sent to the gun-rights group for Mr. LaPierre’s private-jet travel, a disclosure NRA attorneys are challenging to keep out of the court record, the Wall Street Journal reported. The travel consultant testified, in a videotape deposition played in bankruptcy court Thursday, that certain invoices she sent the NRA omitted stops in Nebraska and the Bahamas, at Mr. LaPierre’s request. Some of Mr. LaPierre’s relatives who were frequent travelers on NRA-paid private jets live in Nebraska. The NRA chief previously testified he frequently traveled to the Bahamas to stay for free on a 108-foot yacht in the Bahamas with family members, provided by an NRA vendor, for security reasons. The testimony that alleged Mr. LaPierre sought to hide certain private-jet stops from the NRA’s own accountants could be evidence he knew what he was doing was wrong and was deliberately concealing it, legal specialists said. “If true, this seems like a clear documented instance of knowing misuse of NRA assets and concealing that abuse,” said Elizabeth Kingsley, a Washington nonprofit-law attorney. The testimony came on the fourth day of high-stakes hearings in the NRA’s chapter 11 bankruptcy case in Dallas. The gun-rights group filed for bankruptcy protection in January, in part to counter fraud and expense-abuse allegations by New York General Letitia James, who is seeking to have the NRA dissolved. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

In related news, Wayne LaPierre told a federal bankruptcy judge that he violated the powerful gun-rights group’s policies by failing to disclose free overseas yacht trips and other potential conflicts of interest, Bloomberg News. Under questioning from a lawyer for New York’s Attorney General, LaPierre defended the use of the yacht, calling the trips a “security retreat.” Family members joined him occasionally on the yacht, which is owned by the principal shareholder of a company that was paid by the organization to raise money, handle public relations and produce television shows, LaPierre acknowledged in his testimony in federal court Wednesday. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Harlin D. “Cooter” Hale will take LaPierre’s testimony into consideration when deciding whether to appoint a trustee to run the NRA while it’s in bankruptcy, or throw the case out, as the New York Attorney General has requested. The NRA boss said that the yacht excursions were among several items of value that he failed to disclose from 2013 and 2020, including a hunting trip in Botswana. “It should have been disclosed,” LaPierre told Judge Hale during a court fight that could reshape one of the most politically powerful organizations in the U.S. LaPierre said he didn’t pay for the hunting trip, but described it as part of the gun-rights organization’s image-building efforts. He filed a disclosure form for the first time in the past few days listing items of value he’d received from people with, or who may be seeking, ties to the NRA. Read more.

Wayne LaPierre, the embattled chief executive of the National Rifle Association, said yesterday that he had kept his organization’s recent bankruptcy filing secret from almost all its senior officials, including its general counsel, chief financial officer and top lobbyist. He also did not inform most of the N.R.A.’s board, the New York Times reported. LaPierre made the comments after taking the stand, virtually, at a trial in federal bankruptcy court in Dallas. Though the N.R.A. is solvent, it filed for bankruptcy protection in January in an audacious bid to circumvent regulators in New York, where the N.R.A. has been chartered for a century and a half. The state’s attorney general, Letitia James, had sued the association in August, trying to shut it down amid claims of mismanagement and corruption. She is also seeking tens of millions of dollars in misspent funds from LaPierre and three other current or former N.R.A. leaders. The nonprofit organization has been enmeshed in scandal for the last two years, with revelations of lavish spending by the N.R.A. and its contractors — on Zegna suits and luxurious trips Mr. LaPierre took to places like Lake Como in Italy and the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. Other benefits included chartered jets for him and his family and vacations on a contractor’s yachts, which were named Illusions and Grand Illusion.

CVS Health Corp., Walgreens Boots Alliance and other pharmacy chains face mounting pressure to settle thousands of government lawsuits over their role in the U.S. opioid epidemic, after a federal judge warned the companies they risk financial peril, Bloomberg News reported. As drug makers and distributors work to resolve similar complaints, mediation has failed with pharmacies, which are accused of ignoring red flags about suspicious painkiller prescriptions. The first trials are set to start this year, and a judge on Wednesday may expand the number of early cases going before juries to help gauge the potential cost of settling all the cases. If pharmacy owners, including Walmart Inc. and Rite Aid Corp., “want to hemorrhage money trying cases all over the country, they have a legal right to do it until they drop, go bankrupt or win them all,” U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who is overseeing all the opioid cases, said at a hearing March 10. “No other defendant is operating that way.” Judge Polster’s admonishment comes as the rest of the opioid industry seeks to resolve claims filed by local and state governments, including a $26 billion accord by Johnson & Johnson, AmerisourceBergen Corp., Cardinal Health Inc. and McKesson Corp. Purdue Pharma LP proposed a $10 billion settlement as part of its bankruptcy. McKinsey & Co., which advised the industry on ways to boost opioid sales, reached a $641.5 million deal with states last month.

Between September 2019 and December 2020 cases were filed under New York's Child Victims Act that accused 39 clergy and a lay teacher in the diocese of abuse, NorthCountryPublicRadio.org reported. Analysis of the cases in New York state was conducted by a law firm representing some of the child abuse survivors. The oldest alleged incidents were from 1959 ending with the most recent ones occurring in 1995. The Child Victims Act allows adult survivors of child sex abuse to file charges against their perpetrators. The law included what’s called a “look-back period” to allow adults to file charges even if the statute of limitations for the crimes has passed. The governor and legislature extended the look-back period because of the pandemic but it is set to expire on August 14. Liam O'Doherty and John Fallon are named in eight cases, more than any other accused clergy from the Diocese of Ogdensburg according to the analysis by the law firm Jeff Anderson & Associates. Their documents state that Fallon died in 2005 and O'Doherty was "absent on leave" or "absent on sick leave" from 1999-2003. O'Doherty was reported to be a resident of the Vianney Renewal Center in Missouri. The center is known as a residence for priests accused of sexual abuse of minors.

The official committee representing child sex abuse victims in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy is asking a judge for permission to file its own reorganization plan, saying the plan proposed by the BSA falls woefully short of fairly compensating abuse victims while shielding local Boy Scouts councils and sponsoring organizations from liability, the Associated Press reported. The official tort claimants committee filed a motion late last week objecting to the BSA’s request for the court to extend the period in which the Boy Scouts have exclusive rights to file and solicit votes on a reorganization plan. The BSA’s plan proposes a $300 million contribution by local councils to a fund for victims, about $115 million in cash and noninsurance assets from the BSA, and the assignment of BSA and local council insurance policies. In return, the 253 local councils and thousands of sponsoring organizations would be released from further liability. The committee noted in its court filing that it had made a settlement offer to the Boy Scouts estimating the value of the roughly 84,000 sexual abuse claims filed in the bankruptcy at about $103 billion, adding that those estimates were “extremely conservative.” The committee noted that its estimate counts each claim as a single act of abuse, even though a substantial number of victims were abused repeatedly and in different ways over several years. The committee also noted that its average claim value of $811,215 is less than the average of $1.2 million per claim that the University of Southern California agreed to pay last month in an $852 million settlement with more than 700 women who accused the college’s longtime campus gynecologist of sexual abuse.

Pacific Gas & Electric, the troubled utility that has started some of California’s most destructive wildfires, faces new criminal charges for its role in igniting a 2019 wildfire that burned 120 square miles in Sonoma County north of San Francisco, the New York Times reported. The county’s district attorney on Tuesday charged PG&E, which emerged from bankruptcy protection last year, with five felonies and 28 misdemeanors, including recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury, in connection with the Kincade Fire. The blaze damaged or destroyed more than 400 buildings and seriously injured six firefighters. This is the third set of criminal charges filed against PG&E, California’s largest utility. A jury in 2017 convicted PG&E of charges related to five deaths in a gas pipeline explosion seven years earlier. And the utility pleaded guilty last year to 84 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the 2018 Camp Fire, which was started by its equipment. That fire destroyed the town of Paradise and helped drive PG&E into bankruptcy, where it worked to resolve an estimated $30 billion in wildfire liabilities.