By JIM BUTLER
Counsel for the Diocese of Alexandria, responding to what it terms an unnecessary demand, intends to withdraw a proposed payment allocation protocol for accepted sexual abuse claims.
Some insurers in August filed a motion to compel the diocese to produce the plan’s details though told it did not affect their interests.
The Diocese pointed out in its testy response that none of the insurers involved in the motion have accepted coverage for filed abuse claims.
Only putative claims allowed would be affected by the allocation outline, the Diocese noted.
The allocation protocol did not address other debtor interests in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy declared last October by the Diocese, which advised the court this month it would move to withdraw the protocol, making the motion to compel moot.
In doing so counsel attached the draft plan to its response.
It proposed a points system for evaluating putative claims by abuse survivors, based on economic damage.
The draft noted no distribution would be made solely because of bodily injury and/or emotional distress or mental anguish attributable to the bodily injury.
Categories in the proposed evaluation process included nature of abuse (duration, frequency, degree of intrusiveness, etc.); impact (school problems, legal troubles as minor, loss of faith, etc.); adult and current functioning issues. Each current and future claim would be assigned a point total. The point totals of all acknowledged claims would be combined.
That total divided into the amount of money in the plan trust would yield a claim award value per point.
The protocol used as an example 50 total claims with overall total of 10,000 points. Assuming $4,000,000 in the trust each point assigned a claim would be valued at $400.
The Diocese in July submitted two alternates for creating the trust, establishing funding mechanisms of $4-5 million.
Its most recent operating report showed a cash balance of $2.24 million on July 31. Equity/net worth was listed at $4.4 million.