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The Boy Scouts of America defended its record of protecting children, a day after lawyers published the names of alleged sexual abusers and called on all victims to come forward, the Wall Street Journal reported. Across the U.S., victims of childhood sexual abuse are preparing lawsuits against the youth organization as some states think about making changes to the statute of limitations. News that the organization may file for bankruptcy protection has also triggered interest in litigation, lawyers said. A bankruptcy filing would temporarily halt lawsuits, creating an impetus for some victims to move forward with litigation now. “People said, ‘If these windows are opening and there is a possibility for bankruptcy, I got to bring my claim now. I can’t sit around anymore,’” said Gilion Dumas, an attorney who represents victims of sexual abuse. She said more than a dozen victims from California have recently hired her to sue the Boy Scouts. States including California and Pennsylvania are thinking about following New York and New Jersey, which recently passed legislation that creates temporary windows allowing sexual-assault lawsuits regardless of when the alleged abuse occurred and other expansions to the statute of limitations. The Boy Scouts have been at the center of sexual-abuse scandals in the past, and the organization is facing a number of lawsuits that allege inappropriate conduct by employees or volunteers in incidents dating back as far as the 1960s.

PG&E Corp. can pay employees up to $350 million in bonuses this year to spur them to help meet the bankrupt California power provider’s safety goals to prevent wildfires, a judge said yesterday, Reuters reported. PG&E’s management has said the company needs to implement the bonus plan to carry out tasks such as clearing trees and branches around power lines to avert contact that triggers wildfires. While the maximum cost of the plan is $350 million, PG&E has said it expects the likely cost will be around $235 million. Bankruptcy Judge Dennis Montali said at yesterday's hearing he was persuaded to approve the bonus plan, which provides for quarterly payments, after hearing testimony from John Lowe, who is responsible for PG&E’s compensation programs. Lowe said that performance targets would be challenging to achieve and that targets for clearing trees and branches could be raised if PG&E’s state regulator requires it. Read more. 

In related news, Pacific Gas & Electric is asking state officials for permission to raise electricity rates to pay for safety improvements and to offset the financial risk of more wildfires, the New York Times reported. PG&E, working its way through its second bankruptcy in two decades, isn’t alone in its request. The state’s two other investor-owned utilities — Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric Company — are seeking similar rate increases, saying they need bigger profits to attract investment given their exposure to liability from fire-related damage claims. A California legal principle holds utilities responsible for damage from wildfires started by their equipment even when the companies were not negligent. In recent years, courts have ordered the state’s power companies to pay billions of dollars in damage to homeowners and businesses. PG&E, the state’s largest utility, estimates that it could be liable for an estimated $30 billion in damage for fires in 2017 and 2018. But consumer groups say the utilities are trying to shift the cost of their mistakes onto ratepayers. These groups point out that PG&E in particular has been cited by state investigators for not doing enough to trim trees and properly maintain its equipment. PG&E asked regulators to let it earn a 16 percent return on equity starting next year. If the regulators approve that request, the company’s return would be significantly higher than the national average for utilities. That change and a second request to raise rates to pay for equipment upgrades would together increase a $100 monthly electric bill by $22 to $23. Read more. 

Sexual abuse settlements have already strained the Boy Scouts' finances to the point where the organization is exploring “all available options,” including chapter 11 protection. But now the financial threats have intensified, the Associated Press reported. States have been moving in recent months to adjust their statute-of-limitations laws so that victims of long-ago sexual abuse can sue for damages. New York state has passed a law that will allow such lawsuits starting in August. A similar bill in New Jersey has reached the governor’s desk. Bills also are pending in Pennsylvania and California, although the Pennsylvania bill stalled in the Senate last fall. In New York, New Jersey and elsewhere, lawyers are hard at work recruiting clients to sue the Boy Scouts, alleging they were molested as youths by scoutmasters or other volunteers. Attorney Tim Kosnoff, a veteran of major sexual abuse lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church, said Tuesday that he and his team have signed up 186 clients from dozens of states in just the past few weeks who want to be part of litigation against the Boy Scouts. Kosnoff said 166 of them identified alleged abusers who have not been named in any of the Boy Scout files made public in past years. Jeffrey Schwartz, a New York-based bankruptcy expert with the firm McKool Smith, said the Boy Scouts don't have a particularly large flow of cash and might be forced to sell off property in bankruptcy. The Boy Scouts have extensive land holdings, including camping and hiking terrain.

Homeowners in Chicago cheated by a mortgage fraud scheme are seeking to form a committee to protect their interests in the bankruptcy of Ditech Holding Corp., the company that owns their loans, Bloomberg News reported. The Investor Protection Center at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law filed a request for the creation of a committee of consumer creditors to represent borrowers who were victims of the scheme. The fraud targeted elderly African-American homeowners and coerced them into reverse mortgages with no benefits that left some in foreclosure, the filing states. Ditech, the mortgage lender and servicer led by Tom Marano, filed for bankruptcy in February and has proposed a plan to restructure its debt that would release it from liabilities such as lawsuits filed by consumer borrowers. J. Samuel Tenenbaum, a professor of law at Northwestern, said the homeowners he helps represent will be harmed by such a release of liabilities. The center’s clients “are elderly, disabled, and lack the financial means to obtain representation, are the most vulnerable and at risk of harm in Ditech bankruptcy matters," Tenenbaum, who is the director of the Northwestern’s Complex Civil Litigation and Investor Protection Center, wrote in the filing on Friday.

California utility owner PG&E Corp. said yesterday that it agreed to a deal with BlueMountain Capital Management LLC to appoint a new independent director and a safety adviser, resolving a months-long battle with the activist shareholder, Reuters reported. BlueMountain, a New York-based hedge fund, in March selected 13 candidates it hoped to install as directors at PG&E’s board after slamming the embattled power utility for seeking bankruptcy protection. As part of the agreement, BlueMountain will withdraw its nominee slate of 13 candidates and vote in favor of PG&E’s board nominees at the meeting, PG&E said in a statement. PG&E said that it has appointed Fred Buckman, former chief executive officer of utilities Consumers Energy and PacifiCorp, as an independent director, effective immediately, while Christopher Hart, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, will serve as a special independent safety adviser. Buckman replaces Richard Kelly, who has resigned as a director.

A push for an official voice for ratepayers in PG&E Corp.’s bankruptcy case is gaining momentum as California’s largest utility confronts the fallout from years of wildfires linked to its equipment, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Utility Reform Network, or Turn, is asking for a seat at the bargaining table for customers as PG&E negotiates with investors and wildfire victims over its future. Ratepayers want to make sure they don’t have to pay the price for PG&E’s safety failures, said Turn Executive Director Mark Toney in an interview. Backed by representatives of big utility customers and the Public Advocate’s Office of the California Public Utilities Commission, the nonprofit is campaigning for the appointment of an official committee in PG&E’s bankruptcy case. PG&E filed for chapter 11 protection at the end of January, after being hit with claims for an estimated $30 billion in damage from wildfires. PG&E hasn’t responded to the request for a ratepayer committee, which came in a series of filings in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Francisco. California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has suggested a state fund be created to cushion utilities against the shock of wildfire damages, exciting both shareholders and bondholders. Ultimately, someone will have to pay, either shareholders or ratepayers, for such a fund, which is being talked about as a fund of $15 billion or more, according to a recent report from Moody’s Investors Service.

Johnson & Johnson asked a federal judge to take over 2,400 baby-powder lawsuits it faces instead of allowing the cases to go before state court juries around the country, where the company has a mixed record, Bloomberg News reported. The health care company is seeking to take advantage of court protections available to J&J’s bankrupt talc supplier Imerys Talc America Inc. Under chapter 11 protection, Imerys is able to temporarily halt lawsuits it faces while the company negotiates with plaintiffs and tries to reorganize. Because it isn’t in bankruptcy, J&J would normally not be able use those protections. In this case, the company is arguing that because it has contractual ties to Imerys, J&J has the right to force any cases that could involve both companies to be adjudicated in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. J&J is facing more than 14,000 claims that its talc products caused ovarian cancer or mesothelioma, a rare cancer linked to asbestos exposure. The company has denied that its products are harmful. The case is In re Imerys Talc America Inc., 19-00103, U.S. District Court, the bankruptcy case is 19-10289, U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Both cases are in the District of Delaware (Wilmington).

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D) plans to file later this month an expanded lawsuit against Purdue Pharma and its owners, whom the state accuses of fueling the opioid crisis with deceptive and aggressive marketing of pain drugs such as OxyContin, the New Haven Register reported. The complaint was filed last December by Tong’s predecessor and fellow Democrat, George Jepsen, but Tong has made the litigation a top priority since being sworn in last January. Connecticut comprises one of more than 30 states to sue Purdue and stands with Massachusetts and New York as the states that have also named, as defendants, eight members of the Sackler family who own the company and, until recently, served on the company’s board. “It’s going bigger and wider and deeper, and we’re going to be focusing on more specific acts of misconduct by the company and its officers, directors and shareholders, who are named as defendants,” Tong said. Purdue and the Sacklers have denied the lawsuit’s allegations.

Harvey Weinstein’s former companies and their officers and directors were dismissed from a federal lawsuit filed by 10 women, who claim the firms and executives aided the alleged sexual misconduct that led to the movie mogul’s ouster, Bloomberg News reported. The women —  actors and screenwriters who claim they were assaulted or mistreated by Weinstein after meeting with him for auditions or to pitch projects — sued in December 2017, alleging Weinstein Co., its officers and directors and Miramax, the studio Weinstein formerly ran, enabled his conduct. U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein yesterday threw out most of the suit’s claims, including those alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, leaving only one of many claims to remain against Harvey Weinstein himself, for violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act. Judge Hellerstein said that while Weinstein Co. “undoubtedly benefited” from Harvey Weinstein’s employment through revenue from his movies and influence, it did so in spite of his alleged predatory acts, “which caused many women not to work with TWC, diverted company resources towards supervision of H. Weinstein and away from business activities and exposed TWC to potential liability.” The suit “does not allege that H. Weinstein secured TWC’s alleged complicity in his sexual violence as a condition of his employment,” said Judge Hellerstein, whose ruling echoed that of late U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet. Judge Sweet allowed a separate suit against Weinstein, filed by an aspiring actress, to proceed on similar grounds in August.