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The Boy Scouts of America removed a $250 million sex-abuse settlement with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from the youth group’s chapter 11 plan after a bankruptcy judge rejected the proposed terms, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The Mormon Church has agreed to be treated as one of the many participating chartered organizations in the Boy Scouts’s chapter 11 bankruptcy, which would compensate roughly 82,200 claims of sexual abuse, according to an updated chapter 11 plan filed late Friday by the Boy Scouts. The Mormon institution will now be treated as any other troop sponsors that didn’t opt out of the chapter 11 plan and also didn’t settle with the Boy Scouts. The church will get legal protection for claims that occurred after 1976 because it was insured under Boy Scouts policies in that period, according to the Boy Scouts. The treatment of claims before 1976 would be less certain for the Mormon Church, which has a long history with the Boy Scouts. For one year after the youth group emerges from bankruptcy, the Mormon Church group can try to negotiate with a settlement trustee charged with overseeing victim compensation, according to the Boy Scouts. If no settlement is reached after a year, then abuse claims can be brought against the church.

A federal bankruptcy judge on Monday cleared the way for a defamation lawsuit in Connecticut to proceed against Infowars host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the Associated Press reported. The case was filed by relatives of some victims of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Jones has falsely claimed that the nation’s deadliest school shooting — which killed 20 students and six educators — was a hoax. Jones’ lawyer had sought to transfer the case to a federal bankruptcy court, rather than continue the case in Connecticut state court. That move brought the first day of jury selection to a sudden halt earlier this month. However, yesterday’s ruling by Judge Julie Manning essentially allows the plaintiffs to continue the defamation lawsuit against just Jones as an individual, without Free Speech Systems, a company owned by Jones and a defendant in the Connecticut case. “The plaintiffs’ rights to have that process continue in the Connecticut Superior Court should not be disturbed,” Manning wrote in the decision, adding that the plaintiffs’ claims for damages were ready for trial. Read more. 

In related news, “Infowars” host Alex Jones has transferred his $3 million Austin, Texas estate to his wife, Erika Wulff Jones, according to public property records, the New York Post reported. On August 5, the controversial conspiracy theorist was ordered by a Texas jury to pay more than $45 million to the parents of one of the victims of the 2012 school shooting that killed 20 children and six adults. The ruling came a day after Jones was also ordered to cough up $4.1 million in compensatory damages for claiming that the Newtown, Conn. school shooting was a hoax, designed to increase support for gun control. Andino Reynal, Jone’s lawyer, had requested the penalty be under $300,000. “You’ve already sent a message. A message for the first time to a talk show host, to all talk show hosts, that their standard of care has to change,” said Reynal. Jones had testified that any amount he owed over $2 million would “sink” Infowars’ parent company. However, a plaintiff-hired economist estimated Jones and his company were worth as much as $270 million, and that he withdrew $62 million for himself last year as he faced default judgments in lawsuits. Read more. 

The parent company of far-right website InfoWars received a U.S. bankruptcy judge's permission on Friday to make higher-than-expected payments to a vendor that ships InfoWars-branded dietary supplements and other products to customers, Reuters reported. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston approved a request by Free Speech Systems LLC, which is owned by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, to pay its shipping and fulfillment vendor a flat $20 fee per order, exceeding a cap he had set on those payments on August 3, despite saying he had concerns about the "unique relationship" between the companies. FSS had told the court that it needed more flexibility to make higher shipping payments due to a "surge" in demand for its dietary supplements and other products. FSS filed for bankruptcy on July 29, in the middle of a trial to determine how much it and Jones should pay for making false and defamatory claims that the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a hoax. A Texas jury later awarded nearly $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages to the parents of slain 6-year-old Jesse Lewis.

Lawyers for U.S. military veterans suing 3M Co. over its earplugs are trying to block the manufacturer’s plan to resolve the yearslong liability case in bankruptcy court, the Wall Street Journal reported. Aearo Technologies LLC, a 3M subsidiary that once produced the earplugs, late last month accepted responsibility for claims of hearing-loss from more than 230,000 veterans who have said they used the earplugs during their time in the military. As part of the move, Aearo absolved the Minnesota-based industrial conglomerate from liability for the earplugs. Aearo immediately filed for federal bankruptcy protection in Indianapolis. Bankruptcy provides corporate defendants, such as Aearo, leverage to settle mass liability claims. Companies in chapter 11 usually can’t be sued outside of bankruptcy court. Aearo said the bankruptcy should allow it to end trials and mediation talks between 3M and the claimants that have been under way in U.S. District Court in Pensacola, Fla., since 2019. “The verdicts were already outsized and untethered to reality,” Aearo said in its July 26 bankruptcy filing. Aearo said the case is now the largest product-liability civil case in the U.S. The prospect of a long, costly process for 3M to settle the claims is clouding the outlook for the company’s business performance and causing investors to be wary of 3M’s stock, according to industry analysts.

Endo International PLC, a pharmaceutical manufacturer facing thousands of lawsuits alleging it fueled the opioid addiction crisis, said Tuesday that it is likely to file for bankruptcy imminently, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company said that it is in negotiations with a group of senior lenders that it expects will result in an agreement for a chapter 11 filing. Endo also said that it is in discussions with opioid litigants as well as other creditors but didn’t say that it has reached a proposed deal with them. Endo, domiciled in Ireland with operations in Malvern, Pa., has been grappling for years against opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments over its painkiller Opana. The company, which has denied liability in connection with the opioid crisis, discontinued Opana in 2017 at the request of the Food and Drug Administration. Endo has reached piecemeal settlements over opioid claims with states including Florida, Texas, New York, West Virginia and Alabama. But it still faces about 3,500 lawsuits from state and local governments, private healthcare providers and individuals. The company has also been struggling under $8 billion of debt as earnings declined in part driven by the loss of exclusivity for a key drug, Vasostrict.

U.S. conspiracy theorist Alex Jones could end up owing as little as 10% of the $45.2 million in punitive damages that a Texas jury awarded to the parents of a Sandy Hook victim last week, legal experts told Reuters. A jury handed down the punitive damages' verdict on Friday and awarded the parents $4.1 million in compensatory damages on Thursday after a two-week trial in Austin, Texas, where Jones’ Infowars radio show and webcast is based. Jones was found last year to have defamed parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, by spreading lies that they were part of a government plot to stage the massacre. While juries have broad discretion on awards, Texas law caps punitive damages at $750,000 when economic losses are not involved, as in this case. Mark Bankston, an attorney for the parents, told Reuters by email that because Jones and his company face three claims each, he estimates the cap would be $4.5 million. Bankston said that he will argue the damages cap does not apply but declined to elaborate. Judge Maya Guerra Gamble must approve the final amount, a decision that is expected soon. Jones' lawyer, Federico Andino Reynal, said in court Friday that he will seek to reduce the $45.2 million punitive damages award because it does not comply with Texas law. He confirmed to Reuters on Monday that he plans to invoke the cap.

Veterans who claim that 3M Co's military-issue earplugs caused hearing damage are asking the judge overseeing their record-shattering mass tort litigation to block the company from offloading its liability onto a bankrupt subsidiary, Reuters reported. Two motions filed this week in Pensacola, Florida, federal court by plaintiffs in the multidistrict litigation made separate arguments over why the company could not escape the nearly 300,000 lawsuits by putting its Aearo Technologies subsidiary — the original maker of the earplugs, which 3M bought in 2008 — into bankruptcy. 3M has said it believes bankruptcy law allows for this strategy and has argued that the Indianapolis bankruptcy court can resolve the earplug claims more fairly than the MDL. "We are prepared to move forward and believe the applicable law supports our position," 3M said in a statement. Aearo filed for bankruptcy on July 26 and said it had committed $1 billion to resolve the earplug litigation. Out of the 16 trials in that litigation to date involving 19 service members, plaintiffs have won 10, with about $265 million in combined awards to 13 plaintiffs.

A Texas jury ordered the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on Friday to pay the parents of a child killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting $45.2 million in punitive damages for spreading the lie that they helped stage the massacre, the New York Times reported. The jury announced its decision a day after awarding the parents more than $4 million in compensatory damages and after testimony on Friday that Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of his misinformation-peddling media outlet, Infowars, were worth $135 million to $270 million. Jones was found liable last year for defaming the victims’ families while spreading bogus theories that the shooting had been part of a government plot to confiscate Americans’ firearms and that the victims’ families had been complicit in the scheme. Last week’s trial was the first of three to determine how much Jones owes the families for the suffering he has caused, and the size of the award is sure to be contested. Jurors deliberated for about four hours before reaching Friday’s verdict.

A $300,000 New York Department of Environmental Conservation grant will help keep a former Boy Scout camp in Lewiston from being developed, the Buffalo News reported. The Town of Lewiston, N.Y., will use the grant award announced this week to assist in its purchase of Camp Stonehaven, a 66.9-acre forested property the Greater Niagara Frontier Council of the Boy Scouts of America put on the market last year to help pay for its share of a proposed settlement in federal bankruptcy court for childhood sexual abuse victims. Lewiston town officials voted in March to sign a purchase agreement for the camp for $665,000, with plans to turn it into a nature preserve. The Council in May also sold Camp Schoellkopf in Wyoming County for $2.6 million. Lewiston Town Supervisor Steve Broderick said the town is waiting for word on whether it will also get a $319,000 Greenway Ecological Grant from the New York Power Authority before closing on the Boy Scout property. The Boy Scouts of America bankruptcy case has yet to be finalized, but 252 local councils have agreed to contribute a combined $519.6 million, plus a promissory note of about $100 million, toward a $2.7 billion settlement trust for more than 80,000 abuse victims. The Greater Niagara Frontier Council’s share of the settlement is pegged at $1.5 million.