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The Franciscan Friars of California, a Roman Catholic organization devoted to serving the poor, has filed for bankruptcy after facing nearly 100 lawsuits related to decades-old sex abuse claims, Reuters reported. The Oakland, Calif.-based organization said in a Tuesday statement that it was driven to bankruptcy by a change in California state law that allowed sex abuse survivors to file decades-old complaints that were otherwise time-barred under the state's statute of limitations. The Franciscan Friars of California joins a growing wave of Roman Catholic organizations that have filed for bankruptcy to address sex abuse lawsuits. Most of the 94 lawsuits filed against the Franciscan Friars were filed in California, where a 2019 law revived older sex abuse claims and led to the bankruptcies of the Catholic dioceses of San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Rosa. All of the recent lawsuits against the Franciscan Friars of California are based on abuse that allegedly occurred at least 27 years ago, the group said in a Tuesday statement. Most of the friars accused of abuse are deceased, and the organization has long since cut ties with the six who are still alive, the group said.

Two of Juul Labs’ longtime directors — a Hyatt Hotels heir and a venture capitalist — helped bail out the e-cigarette maker when it was on the brink of insolvency, the Wall Street Journal reported. It was a deal that preserved the equity investments of Nick Pritzker and Riaz Valani, cemented their influence over the company and secured them releases from liability in thousands of lawsuits against Juul. Now Juul is fighting a lawsuit from a group of investors alleging that those two directors were looking out for their own interests, not the company’s. Among the questions in dispute is whether the bailout that allowed Juul to avert bankruptcy in 2022 benefited insiders at the expense of other investors. The allegations have come to light as the company is trying to raise new capital, become profitable for the first time and turn the page after a turbulent year-and-a-half. Juul says that it delegated decisions to independent directors and that it secured needed financing from investors who support the company’s mission of offering adult cigarette smokers a less-harmful alternative. Juul was once a vaping juggernaut and one of the most valuable startups in America. Tobacco giant Altria Group in 2018 invested $12.8 billion in Juul. Juul used nearly all of the cash from Altria’s investment to fund employee bonuses and shareholder dividends, including more than $2 billion to Valani and more than $1 billion to Pritzker. Since then, Juul has been beset by thousands of lawsuits over its marketing practices and embroiled in a dispute with federal regulators over whether its e-cigarettes can be sold in the U.S. Juul has denied allegations that it marketed its e-cigarettes to children and teens.

U.S. prosecutors said they do not plan to conduct a second trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, who was convicted last month of stealing from customers of his now-bankrupt FTX cryptocurrency exchange, Reuters reported. In a letter filed on Friday night in federal court in Manhattan, prosecutors said the "strong public interest" in a prompt resolution of their case against the 31-year-old former billionaire outweighed the benefits of a second trial. Prosecutors said that interest "weighs particularly heavily here," given that Bankman-Fried's scheduled March 28, 2024, sentencing will likely include orders of forfeiture and restitution for victims of his crimes. Jurors on Nov. 2 convicted Bankman-Fried on all seven fraud and conspiracy counts he faced. Prosecutors had accused him of looting $8 billion from FTX customers out of sheer greed. Bankman-Fried had faced six additional charges that had been severed from his first trial, including campaign finance violations, conspiracy to commit bribery, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. He had been extradited in December 2022 from the Bahamas, where FTX was based, to face the seven earlier charges.

Consulting giant McKinsey & Company agreed to a $78 million settlement in a case over its role in advising opioid manufacturers to design misleading marketing campaigns, The Hill reported. A group of U.S. health insurers and company benefit plans, referred to in court documents as third-party payors, alleged in the suit that the firm helped add fuel to the fire in the opioid abuse epidemic by advising drug manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma in crafting deceptive marketing campaigns for opioids. The potential settlement, the agreement to which was filed Friday, still requires a judge’s approval. If presiding judge Charles R. Breyer, district judge for the Northern District of California, signs off on the settlement, McKinsey has two weeks from the approval date to pay $78 million to the plaintiffs by wire. The payment would establish a fund to reimburse third party payors for some or all of their prescription opioid costs. The settlement comes two years after McKinsey paid $573 million to 49 state attorneys general, Washington, D.C. and five territories in a similar case.

Rudolph W. Giuliani filed for bankruptcy yesterday, a day after a federal judge ordered him to start paying the $148 million in damages he owes to two former Georgia election workers for spreading lies that they had tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump, the New York Times reported. Giuliani also owes millions of dollars in legal fees as well as unpaid state and federal income taxes, according to the filing. Last week, a jury ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay two former Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, $148 million for baseless accusations he had made about them cheating when they were counting votes in Fulton County, Ga., on Nov. 3, 2020. On Wednesday, the judge overseeing that case, Beryl A. Howell, ordered Mr. Giuliani to start paying the two women immediately out of concern that he might “conceal his assets” if he were allowed to wait the typical 30 days. In total, Mr. Giuliani said in the chapter 11 filing that he owes creditors $152.7 million as well as other potential damages he faces in pending lawsuits. Mr. Giuliani owed more than $700,000 in back federal taxes and almost $300,000 in delinquent state taxes. His bankruptcy filing said he also owed about $1.3 million to a law firm that has represented him in various criminal investigations in recent years. He owes another $387,000 to a firm that has shepherded him through disbarment proceedings in New York and Washington stemming from his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power.

Bankrupt pharmacy chain Rite Aid Corp. agreed to begin court-supervised mediation with lower ranking creditors, including groups that blame the company for contributing to America’s opioid addiction crisis, Bloomberg News reported. The company, backed by senior lenders, will negotiate with unsecured creditors about how to end the retailer’s insolvency case and on a potential loan package to fund the company’s exit from bankruptcy, Rite Aid attorney Aparna Yenamandra said in court Tuesday. The company will try reach a deal before the end of January, Yenamandra said. The pharmacy chain held a video court hearing Tuesday to ask US Bankruptcy Judge Michael Kaplan to approve a $3.25 billion loan package to refinance older debt and to help pay for the company’s reorganization case. Kaplan said he will sign an order approving the financing later this week after the company makes adjustments to the wording of the loan proposal documents. Rite Aid is trying to sell itself while under court protection in order to pay creditors owed billions of dollars. Should the company fail to find a buyer willing to keep at least part of the chain open, Rite Aid would be forced to liquidate. When retailers liquidate in bankruptcy, lower-ranking creditors are typically paid far less than if the company successfully reorganizes.

Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX Trading on Tuesday announced a settlement with liquidators for FTX's Bahamas unit, resolving a long-simmering dispute over whether the company's U.S. bankruptcy proceedings should take precedence over the Bahamian liquidation, Reuters reported. FTX and FTX Digital Markets have agreed to pool their assets and harmonize their approach to valuing customer claims to ensure equal treatment for customers in either country's insolvency process. The settlement will allow most customers of FTX.com's international crypto exchange to choose whether to seek repayment from either the U.S. bankruptcy or the Bahamian liquidation, according to FTX. FTX's CEO John Ray, who took control of the company from convicted FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, said that the agreement is a critical milestone in the company's effort to repay customers. "The unique challenges raised by the conflicting filings of the FTX Debtors and FTX Digital Markets have been some of the toughest the team has faced," Ray said in a statement. "But we recognized at the beginning that we have an overlapping constituency: FTX.com customers."

Final payments from a trust funded by utility PG&E to compensate victims of wildfires caused by its power lines will soon be distributed, but none will make the victims whole for their losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. The trust was created in 2020 after PG&E reached a $13.5 billion settlement with roughly 70,000 people who suffered losses and damages. The company, which had sought bankruptcy protection after the fires, used equal parts cash and stock to fund it. The trust this month sold its last block of shares, finalizing the amount of money available for distribution to victims. Its assets are worth just over $14 billion, more than the nominal value of the settlement. Victims’ claims, though, are expected to top $19 billion. They have so far received about 60% of their value, and the final percentage will likely be much lower than what some attorneys touted at the time the settlement was negotiated. “I understand and I’m very sympathetic to the fact that people had the impression they were going to get 100%, but that was never true,” said Cathy Yanni, an attorney who serves as trustee of the trust. “In bankruptcy, no one gets 100%.” PG&E, as part of its plan to exit bankruptcy, agreed to pay more than $25 billion overall to compensate for wildfire-related losses, but two other major settlements — with California governments and insurance companies — paid those parties entirely in cash. Fire victims were the only class of claimants to be compensated with shares in the company.