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An oil well site in the Permian Basin owned by a bankrupt shale producer has spewed polluting gases into the atmosphere for 10 months, despite being investigated by Texas regulators, according to an environmental group, Bloomberg News reported. Infrared video footage collected during multiple visits from November 2019 through September show “continuous intense and significant” emissions from faulty valves and tank hatches at MDC Energy LLC’s Pick Pocket location in West Texas, Earthworks said in a letter to two state regulatory agencies on Thursday. The group called on the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the Texas Railroad Commission to rescind permits for MDC. It’s the latest example of mounting environmental concerns in the Permian Basin, where the extent of methane emissions from the oil and gas industry is largely unknown. Those concerns are being compounded by a collapse in crude prices that’s forced many producers into bankruptcy, sparking worries that they won’t be able to pay to maintain producing wells or properly plug ones that are abandoned. Methane emissions attract particular scrutiny because it’s a greenhouse gas far more potent than carbon dioxide. 

Purdue Pharma LP, the OxyContin maker controlled by members of the wealthy Sackler family, is nearing an agreement to plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a broader deal to resolve U.S. Justice Department probes into its alleged role in fueling the nation’s opioid crisis, Reuters reported. Purdue lawyers and federal prosecutors are brokering a plea deal that could be unveiled as soon as within the next two weeks and include billions of dollars of financial penalties. In addition to the criminal case, U.S. prosecutors are negotiating a settlement of civil claims also carrying a financial penalty that allege unlawful conduct in Purdue’s handling of prescription painkillers. The Stamford, Conn.-based company is expected to face penalties exceeding $8 billion. They consist of a roughly $3.54 billion criminal fine, $2 billion criminal forfeiture and $2.8 billion civil penalty. They are unlikely to be paid in the near term, as the criminal fine and civil penalty are expected to be considered alongside other claims in Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings and the company lacks necessary funds to fully repay all creditors. The tentative agreement would draw a line under Purdue’s criminal exposure for what prosecutors and state attorneys general have described as aggressive marketing of a highly addictive painkiller that minimized the drug’s potential for abuse and overdosing. Over the years, Purdue reaped billions of dollars in profits from its opioids, enriching Sackler family members and funneling illegal kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies, federal prosecutors and state attorneys general have alleged. The company now faces thousands of lawsuits seeking damages to address a public health crisis that has ravaged U.S. communities.

The owner of the New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts gyms is seeking to speed up a planned sale of its business in bankruptcy court as pandemic pressures mount in the fitness industry, Bloomberg News reported. Town Sports International Holdings Inc. asked for court permission to shorten the timeline to sell itself to a group of investors or other interested parties, court papers show. Given gyms’ cash constraints and liquidity needs during the pandemic, the company is seeking to complete the sale by early next month. Lenders have submitted an initial credit bid for around $80 million. The fitness chain is still marketing its assets and has had “various levels of attendant discussions with nearly 50 potential bidders,” Christopher Wilson, an adviser to the company at Houlihan Lokey Inc., wrote in court papers. The sale must be approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge <b>Christopher Sontchi</b> of Delaware. A hearing to approve bidding motions is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Friday, with objections due the same day. Plans call for an Oct. 26 bid deadline and a sale hearing on Nov. 2. 

Buffalo Diocese (N.Y.) officials, citing a sharp decline in donations and an estimated $4 million per year in bankruptcy costs, are pleading with a federal judge to speed up its reorganization by reducing the time childhood sex abuse victims can file claims and appointing a mediator to negotiate a settlement, the Buffalo News reported. Diocese officials told Chief Judge Carl L. Bucki that the diocese is strapped for cash and no longer provides financial support for 19 programs and ministries, including outreach to youth and migrants, lifelong faith formation, evangelization efforts and aid to Catholic elementary schools. The diocese discontinued tuition subsidies for 34 Catholic schools, which in the past have received as much as $4 million from the diocese, Sister Mary McCarrick, diocese chief operating officer, wrote in a letter to Bucki. McCarrick said some schools “are in a very real danger of closing” because of the loss of diocese funding. Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger last month appointed a task force to study consolidations of churches and schools. The diocese also has reduced spending for campus ministry, its outreach to deaf people, its Office of Worship and support for priest retirement homes, among other programs, according to court papers.

More than two-thirds of the victims who signed up to participate in a fund set up by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Camden to compensate survivors of clergy sex abuse were left with their claims unresolved and diminished expectations of seeing a payout, according to previously unreleased information included in the diocese’s bankruptcy filings last week, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. Now, 141 people who were encouraged by Bishop Dennis J. Sullivan to come forward and recount their trauma for fund administrators last year must join a line of other creditors — including banks, independent contractors, and lawsuit plaintiffs — to jostle in court over a limited pot of money that will be divided up by the bankruptcy court. In announcing the move last Thursday to become the first diocese in New Jersey to seek chapter 11 protection from creditors, church leaders said that their intent was not to dodge their responsibility to abuse victims, but rather to ensure a future for the institution that serves South Jersey’s nearly half-million Catholics. “The diocese does not seek bankruptcy relief to hide the truth or deny any person a day in court,” wrote the Rev. Robert E. Hughes, the diocese’s vicar general, in a declaration filed with the bankruptcy judge. But “beyond its obligation to creditors, the diocese has a fundamental and moral obligation to the Catholic faithful it serves [and] the greater community.… In order to do this, the diocese must survive.”

A judge ordered the bankrupt operator of New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts gyms to stop charging New York customers who submitted cancellation requests or whose primary gyms remain closed, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The ruling by Judge Debra A. James of the Supreme Court of New York came after New York’s attorney general filed a lawsuit last week accusing Town Sports International Holdings Inc. of charging monthly fees to customers despite coronavirus-related closures. “This order stops New York Sports Clubs and Lucille Roberts dead in their tracks and halts these health clubs from continuing to unlawfully charge many of their members,” Attorney General Letitia James said. James began investigating the gym operator’s billing practices in March when Town Sports didn’t freeze memberships after the state mandated fitness centers to shut down. Town Sports then resumed the charges on Sept. 1. As of last week, the attorney general’s office had received nearly 1,850 complaints about the company. A restraining order issued Friday has blocked the company from charging or attempting to charge any dues, fines or penalties to customers in New York who have submitted cancellation requests since March 16 and to those whose main gyms remain closed.

Hartford Financial Services Group, The Travelers Cos. Inc. and other insurers won’t have to face a consolidation of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of business-interruption claims tied to the COVID-19 outbreak, a group of judges concluded, Bloomberg News reported. Having one judge oversee more than 1,000 cases -- grouped by individual insurers -- would be too cumbersome, and it’s more efficient to have courts around the U.S. decide whether the coronavirus fallout triggered coverage by major insurers such as Hartford, Travelers and Lloyds of London, the legal panel ruled Friday. The group did agree to have a federal judge in Chicago oversee cases against Society Insurance, a smaller carrier. It was the last gasp of plaintiffs’ lawyers attempting to pull together business-interruption cases against major insurers. They’re seeking to recover losses from the economic blows wrought by the virus, which prompted a wave of bankruptcy filings. They argued that having one judge oversee the litigation would cut duplication and hold down legal costs. “Rather than have one judge attempt to organize and resolve the core policy interpretation issues,” having judges already hearing the cases decide whether coverage exists “will result in quicker and more efficient resolution of this litigation,” U.S. District Judge Karen Caldwell, the panel’s chair, said in a nine-page order. Insurers warn that the tidal wave of business-interruption suits could swamp them. Analysts warned this year that the industry could face at least $100 billion in losses from the pandemic, which could wind up being the most in insurance history.

Nearly 300 people at a JBS meat-processing plant in Greeley, Colo., tested positive for the coronavirus, and at least six have died from it, according to data from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the New York Times reported. Several families of JBS employees in Greeley are now seeking compensation for a death caused by COVID-19. The company has denied some families’ claims, according to lawyers representing the families who are now taking those claims to court. Those denials offered a view of the difficulties faced by families of essential workers who have fallen ill or died because of the coronavirus, many of whom are struggling to cover medical or funeral costs. Across the U.S., more than 100 meat-processing plants operated by different companies, including Smithfield and Tyson, have had outbreaks of COVID-19, in part because of crowded working conditions. So far, more than 44,000 meatpacking workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, and more than 200 have died, according to the Food & Environment Report Network, which has been tracking the outbreak. Workers’ compensation has traditionally been used to address on-the-job injuries — not fatalities tied to a pandemic that has disrupted millions of lives and killed more than 200,000 people in the United States. Tracing the exact origins of individual infections can be difficult, which appears to have given JBS an avenue to deny compensation claims on the grounds that the illnesses were not necessarily work-related.

The Diocese of Camden, N.J., has filed for bankruptcy, citing revenue losses because of the millions it paid out to clergy abuse victims and the pandemic, the Associated Press reported. The filing yesterday comes after New Jersey eased its civil statute of limitations in 2019 to make it easier for victims of alleged sexual abuse at the hands of clergy to sue for damages. In addition to the expanded statute of limitations, the outbreak of the coronavirus has only made things harder for churches, who rely on in-person donations from Mass-goers. “If it were just the pandemic, or just the costs of the Victims Compensation Program, we could likely weather the financial impact; however, the combination of these factors has made that impracticable,” Bishop Dennis Sullivan in a statement posted on the diocese website titled “Reorganization.” The state attorney general launched a criminal probe of the clergy abuse scandal in 2018 after a Pennsylvania grand jury report uncovered that more than 1,000 children had been abused over decades by about 300 priests. The investigation is still pending. New Jersey's Catholic dioceses set up a victim's compensation fund for people abused by clergy. The fund closed to new applications earlier this year, paying out or authorizing the payment of about $11 million. The Diocese of Camden has nearly 500,000 members across 62 parishes in southern New Jersey's Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester and Salem counties. The bankruptcy announcement does not affect schools, parishes or pension plans, the statement said. 

The official committee representing survivors of childhood sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy is asking the judge for permission to issue subpoenas for information it claims is being withheld by the organization and its local councils, the Associated Press reported. Committee attorneys say that they need to review financial records, troop rosters and insurance policies in order to participate in discussions regarding a possible global resolution of the thousands of sexual abuse claims that drove the Boy Scouts to seek bankruptcy protection. They say that the BSA entities have “slow-walked” information on the local councils’ financial assets and stonewalled on the roster requests.