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A researcher hired by the Scouts to analyze a more complete set of records from 1944 to 2016 testified earlier this year that she had identified 7,819 suspected abusers and 12,254 victims, marking the youth group’s first known tallies, the Los Angeles Times reported. But even those numbers likely understate how many molesters infiltrated the Scouts’ ranks over the years, according to lawyers who have sued the organization on behalf of hundreds of alleged victims. Most of the suspected offenders were accused of abusing multiple boys, they noted, and many instances of abuse were never reported. Several lawyers also said that they had signed up hundreds of new clients and that many of their claims accuse men who aren’t on the Scouts’ blacklist. The magnitude of the accusations takes on new significance as New York and New Jersey recently have extended their statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse lawsuits, opening the 109-year-old youth organization to a potential slew of new claims. Similar legislation is pending in California.

Harvey Weinstein’s former movie studio is seeking to liquidate in bankruptcy, a final blow to a prestigious Hollywood institution that imploded when Weinstein was accused of abusing multiple women, the New York Times reported. In a bankruptcy filing on Tuesday, lawyers for the studio, the Weinstein Company, said it was burning through what little cash it had left. The Weinstein Company filed for bankruptcy in March 2018 and promptly sold off many of its assets to a private-equity firm, Lantern Capital Partners, making a liquidation seem likely. The studio, which helped make award-winning films like “The King’s Speech” and “The Artist,” collapsed after dozens of women publicly accused Weinstein, its former chief executive, of sexual misconduct and assault dating back years. He also faces criminal charges in New York and has pleaded not guilty. The move to liquidate requires approval by the bankruptcy judge. The Weinstein Company has been negotiating for more than a year with insurers, creditors and women who have sued for compensation for abuse, and the filing could be legal maneuvering intended to speed up a resolution. The filing said efforts to resolve legal claims by some of the women had stalled in recent months, putting more strain on dwindling resources. But lawyers for some of the women and the New York attorney general’s office painted a more optimistic picture of the mediation process, according to a separate bankruptcy filing yesterday. The parties are literally days away from receiving a proposed global resolution,” the lawyers said in the filing, adding that the settlement would include “remuneration for Harvey Weinstein’s victims.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking a bankruptcy judge to keep PG&E Corp. on a short leash, requesting a cap on how long the state’s largest utility has to steer a course out of bankruptcy without worrying about rival restructuring proposals, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Democratic governor asked the judge overseeing the utility’s debt restructuring to limit the period during which it alone can propose a turnaround plan. That request by Newsom, who has emerged as a vocal critic of PG&E, came earlier on Wednesday, when California investigators later said they had concluded that the company’s equipment sparked the largest fire in the state’s history. PG&E wants the exclusive right until Nov. 29 to file a chapter 11 plan that would resolve damage claims from years of wildfires. The governor said that he wants an Aug. 15 deadline for PG&E to either file an exit plan or demonstrate sufficient progress to justify its maintaining control of its future. Read more.

In related news, California fire officials said yesterday that Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. power lines sparked a Northern California blaze that killed 85 people, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century, the Associated Press reported. Cal Fire said that transmission lines owned and operated by the San Francisco-based utility started the Nov. 8 fire in the Pulga area that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The fire wiped out nearly 15,000 homes. Many of those killed were elderly or disabled. The oldest was 99. The investigation also identified a second nearby ignition site involving PG&E’s electrical distribution lines that had come into contact with vegetation. The second fire was quickly consumed by the initial fire. Read more.

San Francisco may make a multibillion-dollar bid within months for some of PG&E Corp.’s assets, Bloomberg News reported. Mayor London Breed told the bankrupt power giant in March that the city may submit a formal offer for the utility’s electric distribution system in San Francisco “within the coming months” should the acquisition prove feasible, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission said in the report. The agency estimated that the fair market value of the assets is “in the range of a few billion dollars.” The report takes San Francisco one step closer to an offer that city officials have been talking about since PG&E filed for bankruptcy in January under the weight of an estimated $30 billion in liabilities from wildfires. In light of the chapter 11 filing, Breed asked the utilities commission to evaluate how the city could ensure its power supplies remained affordable, reliable and in compliance with climate goals.

Former U.S. national team gymnasts backing a Texas bill that would allow victims of sexual abuse more time to sue in civil court yesterday urged the state's lawmakers to restore a key provision allowing those individuals to sue institutions, the Associated Press reported. A push to expand the statute of limitations laws for child sex abuse victims is underway in statehouses nationwide as an onslaught of lawsuits are roiling institutions including the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and USA Gymnastics. In Texas, lawmakers quietly removed a bill's provision allowing victims to sue institutions and are now shielding the groups that lobbied them to do so. Thirty-seven states have introduced measures in 2019 to extend the amount of time victims of sexual abuse have to file lawsuits, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But Texas is the only state where lawmakers are trying to bar victims from taking on institutions. Texas state Rep. Craig Goldman declined to say which groups or lawmakers lobbied for the change in his legislation, noting "it's all a matter of crafting the best piece of legislation that you want to see pass."

Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s bankruptcy won’t prevent San Francisco from pursuing its claims that the utility is holding up some local public projects and charging too much to deliver power to them, the judge in the bankruptcy case ruled yesterday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. When a company files for bankruptcy, as PG&E did in January, lawsuits and other legal actions against the filer are generally suspended. But U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said San Francisco can ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to decide whether the utility is violating federal law in the conditions it requires for supplying electricity to a variety of local projects, including housing developments, parks and homeless shelters. “The stakes are high for the city,” Judge Montali said at yesterday’s hearing, and “if (PG&E)’s culpable, it’s going to have to pay the piper anyway.” But if the federal commission decides San Francisco is entitled to a refund, he said, the city will have to stand in line with other creditors in the bankruptcy proceedings. San Francisco buys much of its own electricity but relies on PG&E to supply customers over its transmission lines. City officials say the company has required the city to invest huge sums in infrastructure upgrades and has regularly refused to provide power at wholesale rates, instead charging premiums and insisting on unnecessary equipment.

California has for months been weighing the idea of a fund that utilities could dip into when facing crippling costs tied to wildfires. On Wednesday, state lawmakers got a feel for how big that fund would have to be, Bloomberg News reported. During a legislative hearing, an energy advisory firm commissioned by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) office presented a range of options for creating a pool of anywhere from $10 billion to $40 billion. The analysis, outlined by Nathan Pollak of Filsinger Energy Partners, showed that a $10 billion fund had a 98 percent chance of being depleted by 2030 while a $40 billion fund would have a 7 percent chance. The projections were based on fire claims logged over the past five years and underscore just how damaging California’s intensifying wildfire seasons have become. The Camp Fire that broke out in November killed 85 people and destroyed an entire town, becoming the deadliest blaze in state history. While it’s unclear exactly how the state would finance such a fund, a task force Newsom assembled had suggested that utility shareholders and ratepayers could contribute. All of California’s major utilities, including bankrupt PG&E Corp. and Edison International, have backed the idea of creating a fund to deal with their wildfire damages. A legal doctrine holds them responsible for the costs of blazes that their power lines ignite, regardless of whether they’re negligent. That forced PG&E, which is facing an estimated $30 billion in liabilities, to file for chapter 11 in January.

Johnson & Johnson failed to get 2,400 state-court cancer lawsuits tied to its baby powder immediately transferred to a federal court in Delaware, where it could forge a single defense strategy, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika dismissed J&J’s request yesterday, noting that the world’s largest maker of health care products is partly responsible for the boomlet of litigation over its transfer strategy that it now characterizes as a crisis. J&J wants to invoke the legal rights of its bankrupt talc supplier, Imerys Talc America Inc., to gather the baby powder suits before Judge Noreika in hopes of quicker trials and resolutions of claims that the talc-based product causes cancer. In February, the unit of Imerys SA sought chapter 11 protection to deal with a wave of identical suits. “J&J cannot establish an emergency’’ tied to Imerys’s bankruptcy-reorganization effort, Noreika said. “J&J’s desire to centralize its own state-law litigation does not justify the finding of an emergency” requiring immediate transfer, she added. She must still decide whether to accept the cases on a permanent basis.

Officials at USA Gymnastics have begun to focus on negotiations with insurers and former gymnasts who have said they deserve compensation from the organization’s failure to protect them from a longtime doctor who sexually abused them, the WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. In court papers, lawyers for the Indiana-based sports organization proposed to hire Nevada bankruptcy Judge Gregg Zive to help with the settlement talks between the organization and gymnasts, who have filed a request for compensation before the April 29 deadline. The organization filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in December, facing law-enforcement investigations and lawsuits filed by former Olympic gymnasts and other women. The filing halted depositions and discovery in those lawsuits. Since then, former gymnasts, taxing authorities and companies that did business with the organization have submitted more than 300 claims.

Ruth Madoff agreed to pay nearly $600,000 and pledged to surrender her remaining assets when she dies under a settlement with the liquidating trustee cleaning up after the Ponzi scheme perpetuated by her husband, Bernard Madoff, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Madoff, who was never charged with any crime pertaining to her husband’s $20 billion fraud, will pay $250,000 in cash and hand over two New York trusts for her grandchildren that are valued at $344,000, according to settlement documents filed on Friday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. She also will transfer her remaining assets at the time of her death to liquidating trustee Irving Picard, who has spent the past decade suing people and institutions linked to the sham investment firm Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC to dig up money for its investors. After the forfeiture of her and her husband’s properties, the U.S. government agreed to let her keep $2.5 million, but that didn’t resolve Picard’s claims against her. Until her death, Madoff, 77, can spend her money on “reasonable living and medical-care payments,” according to the settlement. Read more. 

Be sure to listen to ABI's latest podcast as ABI Editor-at-Large Bill Rochelle talks with Josephine Wang, president and CEO of the Securities Investor Protection Corp. (SIPC), about recovery efforts in the Madoff case.