%1

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has spent $10.8 million on victim compensation and legal fees related to sexual abuse by clergy over nearly three decades, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. It has also spent roughly $5 million more toward a minimum but livable compensation for priests suspended for abuse. That’s according to a financial accounting released this week as pledged by Bishop David Zubik earlier this year in a pastoral letter on the sexual-abuse crisis that flared locally after the release in August of a statewide grand jury report on six dioceses, including Pittsburgh. The grand jury alleged abuse by more than 90 Pittsburgh priests across seven decades, many of whose names had not been made public before the report. The total payments are low compared to those of many dioceses nationwide, some of which have paid in the nine figures and filed for bankruptcy. Catholic entities in the U.S. have paid an estimated $3 billion in settlements since the 1980s. The Pittsburgh diocese has a current Catholic population of more than 600,000 across six counties. The Pittsburgh figure is likely to rise due to an ongoing out-of-court victim-compensation program set up by the diocese.

It will be up to a U.S. bankruptcy judge whether to order the Catholic Foundation of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe to produce records related to $48 million in assets, the Associated Press reported. A creditors committee of clergy sex abuse survivors filed a motion last week in the ongoing bankruptcy case involving the archdiocese. The Albuquerque Journal reports the panel wants to determine whether the foundation's assets are property of the archdiocese's estate. The archdiocese filed for reorganization last December, citing the financial strain of the abuse scandal. In its bankruptcy petition, the archdiocese claimed nearly $50 million in assets. The filing also said more than $57 million in property was being held in trust for numerous parishes and property transfers worth an additional $34 million were done over the past couple years.

PG&E Corp. is lobbying for legislation that would allow the bankrupt California utility giant to securitize some of its profits to pay for past wildfire liabilities, Bloomberg News reported. PG&E was pressing California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and state lawmakers over the weekend to add the securitization to a sweeping bill introduced last week that would help utilities deal with the mounting damages from wildfires that their power lines keep igniting. The financing may prove crucial to PG&E’s exit from bankruptcy. As part of a $31 billion restructuring plan, the company is proposing a $14 billion fund to pay out victims of a series of deadly blazes that its power lines have sparked over the past two years. The utility is lobbying just as the Newsom administration is pressing lawmakers to pass the bill by a July 12 deadline — before the rest of California’s utilities possibly see their credit downgraded to junk.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blasted Jamie Dimon for reviving a policy that pushes JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s credit-card customers into arbitration to resolve disputes instead of the courts, Bloomberg News reported. “We write to express our strong concern with reports that Chase has decided to reverse course and to urge you to reconsider your plans to resume exploiting its customers,” the Massachusetts Democrat said in a letter to Dimon, the chief executive officer of the biggest U.S. bank. Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) also signed the letter, which was dated Thursday. Warren, who has advocated breaking up big banks and other corporate giants, said arbitration lets companies “get away with scamming large numbers of customers out of relatively small amounts of money.” Banks say that mandatory arbitration is faster and cheaper for the public than litigation, and JPMorgan called it “standard practice” for the industry when it announced the switch earlier this month. The New York-based company’s customers can opt out of mandatory arbitration if they mail a written rejection notice by Aug. 9.

OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP is struggling with slumping sales, a shrinking workforce and restructuring challenges as it battles lawsuits related to the opioid crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported. Purdue’s revenue is expected to drop below $1 billion this year for the first time in more than a decade, as employees leave and a potential bankruptcy filing looms. Controlled by members of the billionaire Sackler family, Purdue has also been reviewing the corporate structure of at least two dozen entities affiliated with the company that are under government scrutiny for possible fraud. Purdue has previously said that it may file for bankruptcy but hasn’t made a decision.

The federal government is demanding part of Oklahoma’s landmark $270 million settlement with drugmaker Purdue Pharma, a potential multimillion-dollar problem for the state, which has no access to the money, the Washington Post reported. In a June 12 letter to an Oklahoma Medicaid official, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it “is aware the state reached the aforementioned $270 million . . . settlement with the Purdue defendants” and “the federal government is entitled to a portion of that amount.” The settlement stemmed from Oklahoma’s 2017 lawsuit against three major pharmaceutical companies — Purdue, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and Johnson & Johnson — that has become a closely watched first test of whether states and cities can force the drug industry to pay for the damage of the opioid epidemic. All of Purdue’s payments in the March 26 out-of-court settlement went to entities other than the state. It’s unclear how Oklahoma might pay anything to the federal government unless it digs into its own coffers.

Three states and a handful of cities and counties have objected to a plan that would estimate the total value of legal claims against bankrupt opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics Inc., Law.com reported. Insys, which filed for chapter 11 protection on June 10, filed a motion to estimate the costs of about 1,000 lawsuits brought against the Phoenix-based company over the opioid crisis. The procedure would preserve funds and “fix aggregate amounts of particular categories of claims on an expedited basis,” according to the motion. But a hodgepodge of plaintiffs suing Insys, such as the states of Florida, New Jersey and New York, filed objections on Tuesday insisting that the plan was premature and procedurally improper and would reduce their potential compensation without due process. “The debtors ask this court and all of their many creditors, including sovereign governmental entities such as the state, to go through a truncated, procedurally backward, and ludicrously expensive estimation process,” wrote Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody. “Rather, the estimation motion is a clear attempt by the debtors to reduce their liabilities without affording any due process to claimants.” A hearing on the plan is set for July 2.

The Diocese of New Ulm (Minn.) yesterday announced a $34 million settlement agreement with clergy sexual abuse victims and survivors in its chapter 11 bankruptcy case, the Marshall Independent reported. New Ulm Diocese Bishop John M. LeVoir said that the settlement is fair and represents years of respectful negotiations with those representing victims and survivors while continuing essential church ministry. Jeff Anderson & Associates, the firm representing many of the New Ulm survivors, said the $34 million will be paid to 93 sexual abuse claimants. These claims were filed against the diocese during the three-year term set up by the Minnesota Child Victims Act, which lifted the statute of limitations on historical childhood sexual abuse claims. The diocese filed for financial reorganization under chapter 11 in March 2017, under the supervision of the Federal Bankruptcy Court. According to the diocesan website, the diocese has been working with the victims and survivors of clergy sexual abuse to resolve claims made against the New Ulm Diocese and parishes within the geographic area.

More than 150,000 former students of for-profit colleges filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Tuesday, claiming the agency is depriving them of the student debt relief to which they’re legally entitled, CNBC.com reported. The plaintiffs, represented by Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending and Housing & Economic Rights Advocates, accuse the Department of Education under DeVos of failing to implement an Obama-era regulation known as “borrower defense, ” which allows students to have their federal student loans cancelled if their school misled them or engaged in other misconduct. “The law is clear: Students who experienced fraud should not be required to pay back federal loans that should never have been made by the Department in the first place,” said Toby Merrill, director of Harvard Law School’s Project on Predatory Student Lending. Around 160,000 people have filed claims with the government that their school defrauded them, and new applications continue to pour in. Almost all of these complaints concern for-profit schools, of which there are some 7,000 around the country and which take in around 15 percent of government financial aid.