%1

A Texas judge on Wednesday pushed back the first jury trial over how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay the families of Sandy Hook victims after his Infowars company sought bankruptcy protection this week, the Associated Press reported. The delay ordered by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble comes days after Infowars and two other companies tied to Jones filed for chapter 11 protection in Texas. Jones has lost defamation lawsuits in Texas and Connecticut over his comments that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax. The first trial over how much he should pay the families had been scheduled to begin Monday in Austin, where Infowars is headquartered. A new trial date has not been set. Attorneys for Sandy Hook families have accused Jones of trying to hide millions of dollars in assets. Creditors listed in Infowars’ bankruptcy filing include relatives of some of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school massacre in Connecticut.

A New Jersey Catholic diocese has agreed to pay $87.5 million to settle claims involving clergy sex abuse with some 300 alleged victims in one of the largest cash settlements involving the Catholic church in the United States, the Associated Press reported. The agreement between the Diocese of Camden, which encompasses six counties in southern New Jersey on the outskirts of Philadelphia, and plaintiffs was filed with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Camden on Tuesday. The settlement must still go before a U.S. bankruptcy judge. If approved, the settlement would exceed the nearly $85 million settlement in 2003 in the clergy abuse scandal in Boston, although it’s less than other settlements in California and Oregon. Details about what allegedly happened to the roughly 300 victims were not included in the proposed settlement, according to an attorney for some 70 of the victims.

Alabama on Tuesday reached $276 million in settlements with Johnson & Johnson, McKesson Corp and Endo International Plc, resolving claims that the companies fueled an opioid addiction crisis, the state attorney general said, Reuters reported. Under the settlement, drug distributor McKesson will pay $141 million toward the state's efforts to combat the opioid crisis, while drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Endo will pay $70.3 million and $25 million, respectively, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said in a statement. The three companies will also pay $40 million in attorneys' fees. The state had accused McKesson of failing to prevent the diversion of opioids for illicit purposes, and the drugmakers of engaging in deceptive marketing practices that downplayed the addiction risks of their painkillers. The companies have denied wrongdoing. Alabama was one of four states that declined to join a nationwide $26 billion settlement of opioid litigation by McKesson, two other top U.S. distributors and J&J that was finalized in February. “These three settlement agreements affirm my decision to decline participation in the national opioid settlements, which did not adequately acknowledge the unique harm that Alabamians have endured," Marshall said in a statement.

Johnson & Johnson said yesterday that it agreed to pay $99 million to settle claims by West Virginia that it helped fuel an opioid addiction crisis in the state, removing the company from an ongoing trial that began earlier this month, Reuters reported. West Virginia is still pursuing claims against Teva Pharmaceuticals Industries Ltd and AbbVie Inc's Allergan in the Kanawha County Circuit Court trial for their alleged role in the crisis. The state accused the companies of causing a "tsunami" of addiction. J&J did not admit liability or wrongdoing in the settlement, the company said. The other companies, which have previously denied the accusations, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. West Virginia previously reached a $26 million settlement with Endo International Plc, which had also been a defendant in the ongoing trial.

A company owned by far-right radio host Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy after being hit by a flurry of lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported. Infowars sought chapter 11 protection in Southern Texas, with liabilities of as much as $10 million, according to a court filing. Chapter 11 filings allow a business to keep operating while working on a turnaround plan, and pause pending civil litigation. Jones and his companies last year were found liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by relatives of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre after Jones called the shootings a hoax. A trial in Connecticut to determine the size of the damages has yet to take place. He was also found liable in similar proceedings in Texas.

The Boy Scouts of America yesterday wrapped up a month-long court hearing over its proposed reorganization plan and $2.7 billion settlement of claims by thousands of men who say they were sexually abused as children by troop leaders, Reuters reported. Bankruptcy Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein said at the conclusion of the trial that she would rule on the plan and settlement as soon as possible. Lawyers for the youth organization, which has been hit with more than 82,000 abuse claims, said it hopes the settlement will allow it to exit chapter 11 and continue its Scouting mission. Though the deal has support from 86% of abuse claimants who voted on the plan, hundreds of local councils and the Boy Scouts’ two primary insurers, the process of securing approval and emerging from bankruptcy has been contentious for the Irving, Texas-based organization. The Boy Scouts filed for bankruptcy in February 2020 to address sex abuse allegations spanning decades. The plan, if approved, will set up a $2.7 billion trust to be used to compensate survivors who filed claims in the bankruptcy — with the amount tied to the severity of the alleged abuse, and where and when it occurred. The federal government's bankruptcy watchdog, the U.S. Trustee, opposed the plan’s non-debtor releases, which protect people and entities related to the debtor that have not filed for bankruptcy themselves against future litigation. U.S. Trustee attorney David Buchbinder argued on Wednesday that the releases are being given to an overly broad group who he said have not made substantial contributions to the settlement in exchange. Buchbinder also accused the organization of relegating survivors “to a years-long administrative process” designed to be “difficult, expensive and confusing.” Boy Scouts’ attorney Jessica Lauria defended the releases, saying that they were necessary to secure financial contributions for the trust and that many other courts have upheld similar releases.

A bankruptcy judge asked the Boy Scouts of America to justify why more than 100,000 groups that have supported its mission but themselves aren’t in chapter 11 are getting legal protections through the youth organization’s restructuring, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Judge Laurie Selber Silverstein on Tuesday also asked the youth group why it needed such an “elaborate, interconnected” bankruptcy plan when at one point the nonprofit’s reorganization blueprint addressed only its own financial troubles. The Irving, Texas-based group, which filed for bankruptcy in 2020, is in the fifth week of a trial seeking court approval of a $2.7 billion compensation fund that would settle about 82,200 sexual-abuse claims. Nearly 86% of the votes cast favor the group’s plan. One “thing that’s extraordinary about this case is the sheer magnitude of the number of releases being sought here,” said Judge Silverstein, of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. She said she heard the number grew to include 100,000 partner organizations. “And then I heard 140,000,” she said. Judge Silverstein asked lawyers for the youth group to discuss those numbers and why they are justified. Boy Scouts lawyer Jessica Lauria said the group’s sponsors, known as chartered organizations, are typically nonprofits like individual churches and parishes.

Johnson & Johnson can’t use its baby powder bankruptcy to prevent a lawsuit that accuses the company of hiding evidence that its industrial talc operation exposed workers to the toxic material asbestos, a federal judge ruled. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy case of LTL Management sided with the family of a man who sued J&J in 1986. The man agreed to drop his lawsuit after the company produced sworn testimony claiming no tests ever showed J&J’s industrial talc contained asbestos, according to court documents. He died in 1994. The family now plans to sue J&J, saying that testimony was false, citing new evidence. In court papers, lawyers for the family allege that thousands of asbestos suits against J&J failed because of false information provided by the company. Asbestos is an industrial material that is known to cause fatal lung disorders. Until it was found to be toxic, the product was used in everything from insulation to automobile brakes. Since the 1980s, companies have paid tens of billions of dollars to hundreds of thousands of victims.