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For the sixth time, federal bankruptcy Judge James Tancredi has extended the deadline for the Diocese of Norwich to file a bankruptcy plan to Jan. 11, 2023, The Day reported. Meanwhile, the possible funds available to pay victims may be tens of millions of dollars less, as the diocese’s insurer has said it will only pay $2.5 million of the available $21 million in coverage. In its motion seeking the sixth extension, diocesan attorneys wrote that it continues to make progress on a plan that is acceptable to its 170 creditors, including 142 people who say they were sexually assaulted by diocesan priests and clergy. The latest deadline was set to expire Friday. Federal bankruptcy court filings show that the Diocese of Norwich has spent more than $2.9 million on legal and other fees since it filed for bankruptcy in July of 2021.The total was for expenditures through Oct. 17. The total amount of legal fees spent by the diocese on the bankruptcy though are about $5 million as it had expended $980,000 in the months leading up to bankruptcy and another $800,000 from Oct. 17 to Nov. 15. In all, there have been more than 900 legal filings in the case.

A federal bankruptcy court judge has approved the sale of two downtown property by the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which filed for chapter 11 protection more than two years ago in the face of mounting lawsuits related to past child sex abuse, NOLA.com reported. Bankruptcy Judge Meredith Grabill approved the sales last week in advance of a hearing on the matter that had been scheduled for Nov. 17 but was canceled after neither side objected to the pending deals. Judge Grabill’s order means that the archdiocese can execute two purchase agreements with separate buyers it has lined up to acquire adjacent properties on the edge of the Central Business District. One property is the 12-story office building at 1000 Howard Ave., which is under contract to a Lafayette developer. The other is the parking lot at 1032 and 1042 Loyola Avenue, which is under contract to a local investor group. Together, the deals will generate nearly $10 million for the archdiocese, which, until now, has sold just one other property since filing bankruptcy — the former St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School in Kenner, which fetched $1.9 million in 2020.

The Diocese of Rochester (N.Y.) reached a $55 million deal to compensate 475 individual claims of childhood sex abuse while scrapping an earlier pact with its insurers and allowing abuse victims to pursue litigation to unlock additional insurance payouts, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The deal announced on Thursday marks a new phase in the three-year-old bankruptcy case and ends an earlier settlement between the New York diocese and its insurers, which had agreed to pay more than $107 million to compensate victims. Victims’ representatives opposed the earlier deal, saying the insurers weren’t paying enough. The new agreement unveiled Thursday “represents the fairest approach for the survivors and the most viable path forward,” Bishop Salvatore Matano said in a statement. The Diocese of Rochester’s insurers didn’t immediately return requests for comment. Some victims’ lawyers said Thursday that it should be able to wrap up its bankruptcy case within six months.

After three years in bankruptcy court and many months of negotiations, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester (N.Y.) and more than 400 sexual abuse survivors with claims in the diocese’s chapter 11 bankruptcy have agreed to terms, the Rochester Beacon reported. “There’s still a long road ahead,” predicts James Cali, chairman of the bankruptcy’s official creditors committee. Formed by the U.S. Trustee to represent survivors’ interests, the creditors committee worked out the settlement’s terms with the diocese. Anticipating a flood of claims under the New York Child Victims Act, the diocese asked for court protection in September 2019, a month after the CVA took effect. The CVA temporarily lifted a statute of limitations that had kept survivors of long-past abuse suffered as children from going after their abusers. A virtual tsunami of CVA cases filed against Catholic churches across the state followed. The Rochester diocese was the first to file for bankruptcy protection in New York. Dioceses in Buffalo, Syracuse and Rockville Center, Long Island, followed and remain to be resolved. Filed Thursday in the Western District of New York Bankruptcy Court’s Rochester Division by the diocese, the agreement calls for the diocese and its parishes to jointly contribute $55 million to a fund to compensate survivors. The bankruptcy will not be finally resolved until the diocese puts forward a reorganization plan that creditors agree to and Bankruptcy Judge Paul Warren signs off on.

CVS Health Corp. has agreed to pay about $5 billion in a landmark settlement that the company says would resolve all remaining opioid-crisis lawsuits brought by states, cities and other governments, the Wall Street Journal reported. The largest U.S. drugstore company is the first pharmacy chain to reach a settlement in the collection of lawsuits brought by governments and Native American tribes blaming CVS and rival pharmacies for helping fuel the nation’s opioid epidemic. Under the proposed deal, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to states and municipalities and $130 million to tribes over the next 10 years starting in 2023. The company said the agreement isn’t an admission of guilt and that it would continue to defend against any litigation that the settlement doesn’t resolve. Each state, local government and tribe still must decide whether to participate in the settlement. The company, in a statement, said it is pleased to have resolved the claims and outlined steps it has taken to combat opioid abuse. CVS has been in a separate legal battle with its insurers over whether they should cover some of the liability the company faces for the opioid lawsuits.

A federal appeals court upheld the chapter 11 restructuring of Windstream Holdings Inc., finding bondholder complaints about the debt-cutting plan moot because reversing it would mean unwinding transactions that have already taken place, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York backed the telecommunications company’s 2020 restructuring, which put Elliott Management Corp. and other senior creditors in control of the business while wiping out junior bondholders owed roughly $2.4 billion. The appeals court found bondholders’ appeal to be equitably moot because they didn’t do enough to prevent the bankruptcy plan from taking effect. Equitable mootness is a judge-made doctrine that protects chapter 11 plans from being unwound if doing so would affect innocent market participants that relied on it. The bondholder trustee, U.S. Bank NA, used its appeal to argue for limiting the doctrine of equitable mootness, saying it contravenes federal courts’ obligation to exercise jurisdiction over disputes stemming from corporate bankruptcy plans. But the trustee “has not suggested any principled rule by which we should limit the doctrine or determine when its application is overbroad,” the Second Circuit said. “U.S. Bank appears instead to invite us to carve out the facts of this case ad hoc. We must decline this invitation.”

The Buffalo Diocese in its settlement Tuesday with the State Attorney General’s Office made no admissions about covering up for priests who had molested children, but agreed to implement enhanced measures to prevent future sex abuse in parishes and schools, the Buffalo News reported. The settlement, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, bans two retired bishops linked to a cover-up of sex abuses from serving in any charitable fiduciary roles in New York, and requires the diocese to follow through for five years on such measures as a program to monitor offending priests. The diocese did not admit to any wrongdoing in the stipulated final order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Ronnie Abrams. The 2020 lawsuit accused diocese leaders of protecting more than two dozen priests accused of child sex abuse by not referring their cases to the Vatican for potential removal from the priesthood. It also accused Bishop Richard J. Malone and Auxiliary Bishop Edward M. Grosz of misusing charitable assets by supporting priests who they knew had likely sexually abused minors. Malone retired in 2019 under intense criticism over his handling of abuse allegations. Grosz retired a few months later in 2020. Bishop Michael W. Fisher, who succeeded Malone, expressed “deep regret” and acknowledged Tuesday that “those who presented themselves as ministers of God” had defiled their vows and “committed crimes against the most vulnerable.” Fisher also said that survivors of clergy sex abuse were not to blame for the abuse. Abuse survivors expressed skepticism about how much the settlement holds diocese officials accountable.

California regulators proposed PG&E Corp. pay $155.4 million in fines and take other corrective measures for violations related to a deadly 2020 wildfire, Bloomberg News reported. The Zogg Fire started when a gray pine tree fell onto a PG&E power line in the Sierra Nevada mountains, where it burned 56,338 acres, caused four deaths and one injury and destroyed 204 structures, the California Public Utilities Commission said Tuesday in a statement. Investigators with the commission uncovered multiple violations by PG&E in connection with the blaze, the agency said. PG&E, California’s largest utility, has 30 days to pay the penalty or request a hearing. The company said that it was reviewing the proposal. “We share the CPUC’s commitment to improve safety, and we believe any potential financial penalties should be directed for the benefit of our customers, and to keeping our hometowns safe,” PG&E said in a statement. In June, PG&E pleaded not guilty to involuntary manslaughter and other charges for the Zogg fire. The company declared bankruptcy in 2019 after its equipment was blamed for igniting a series of deadly wind-driven fires. The company emerged from chapter 11 in 2020.

Sandy Hook families said a Connecticut judge should impose “the highest possible punitive damages” for Alex Jones, suggesting by one calculation that could be as high as $2.75 trillion, Bloomberg News reported. The families said that additional damages are warranted on top of a nearly $1 billion jury award because Jones broke a state law barring the sale of products using false statements. They reached the trillion-dollar sum by multiplying the state law’s up-to $5,000 per-violation fine by the 550 million social media exposures Jones’s audience received on his Facebook, YouTube and Twitter accounts in the three years following a school shooting that claimed the lives of 20 first graders and six educators in 2012. It was the largest of several damage calculation options the families offered the judge for assessing further penalties. “The only appropriate punitive damages award in this case is the largest award within the court’s power,” the families’ lawyers said in the filing. “The defendants have acted willfully, maliciously, and evilly, in full knowledge of the harm they are causing people who had no means to fight back, except to bring this case.”