Victims’ lawyers celebrate Baltimore Archdiocese decision to waive charitable immunity

Listen to this article

The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore faced high risk and significant upside in pursuing the doctrine of charitable immunity. Ultimately, it appears to have deemed the risk too great.

On Wednesday, the archdiocese and the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors, which represents more than 900 survivors of sexual abuse within the archdiocese, were scheduled to conclude a three-day trial over the issue of charitable immunity.

Instead, the parties reached an agreement last week to avoid the trial, with the archdiocese stipulating that it would not attempt to use the defense to protect its assets from abuse victims in its bankruptcy case.

The doctrine is intended to protect charities from civil liability, based on the premise that donors want their money to support a charity’s mission, not litigation costs. The People’s Law Library of Maryland specifically describes it as a “judge-made rule” that “protects charitable organizations from civil lawsuits when the organization has no liability insurance coverage for the underlying harm or injury.”

The archdiocese argued the doctrine provided a “complete legal defense” to claims not covered by insurance, preventing it from having to put its own money toward a settlement agreement with survivors.

But the potential cost to compensate abuse victims was the very reason the archdiocese declared bankruptcy in 2023, just before the Child Victims Act took effect. That law removed the statute of limitations for victims to sue the institutions that employed abusers. Bankruptcy prevents civil lawsuits against debtors and sets a bar date by which creditors must come forward. The 900-plus victims had to file their claims by May 31, 2024.

The victims’ committee filed a motion to dismiss the case if the archdiocese was found to be immune. It argued that if victims’ claims were covered by insurance and the archdiocese didn’t owe anything, then it wasn’t in debt and shouldn’t be in bankruptcy court.

But if the case were tossed from bankruptcy court, “they lose their bar date,” said Jonathan Schochor, who represents many victims in the case, including one member of the seven-member creditors’ committee. Had that happened, more people could have come forward, and the archdiocese likely would have faced significant litigation costs in civil court.

“By going into bankruptcy, the (archdiocese) got themselves an artificial statute of limitations,” Schochor said.

‘A win for survivors’

Schochor was one of several victims’ lawyers who applauded the archdiocese’s decision to waive the defense and expressed hope that settlement negotiations might become more serious.

Teresa Lancaster, a survivor-turned-lawyer who was featured in the 2017 Netflix documentary “The Keepers,” said she was “delighted to learn there will be no battle on that.”

“It’s important because it would have taken months to argue this issue,” Lancaster said. “Then longer in appeal.”

The Daily Record also reached out to several lawyers representing the archdiocese’s insurance companies; all either declined to comment or did not respond.

In a joint statement, Emily Malarkey and Ryan Perlin, who represent a “sizeable portion” of the victims and two members of the committee, celebrated the decision.

“This is a win for survivors, and it is the result of a long fight and very strategic actions by the Survivors’ Committee,” they said.

“We hope on behalf of all of our clients that the (archdiocese) will now turn its efforts towards bringing the bankruptcy matter to a swift and fair resolution in the form of a settlement that adequately compensates survivors of sexual abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

Frank Natale, senior litigation counsel at the Baltimore office of Slater Slater Schulman, said the decision was “meaningful.”

“It’s an acknowledgment that survivors’ claims deserve to be addressed directly, not through procedural defenses,” Natale said in a statement. “Not only does this remove a barrier that was standing in the way of survivors being able to pursue the healing and justice they’re owed, we’re hopeful it signals the church’s commitment to the process.”

Christian Kendzierski, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said the end of the dispute “allows progress to continue towards the goal of compensating victim survivors as quickly as possible.”

“The Archdiocese has a longstanding commitment to supporting abuse survivors, beginning decades ago with unlimited counseling services, and continuing for nearly two decades with voluntary cash settlements to over 100 survivors, all provided because it was the right thing to do, not because the law required it,” Kendzierski wrote in an email.

Next steps

The next step in the bankruptcy is a hearing on Jan. 5. There will also be further litigation over hundreds of objections to claims recently filed by the archdiocese. Some objections seek to remove duplicate claims or claims filed by people who were adults when they were abused. The archdiocese also wants to remove people who previously received settlements.

Lancaster is one of the victims with a claim in the bankruptcy case who previously received a settlement — she said it was about $28,000. She argued that the previous settlements shouldn’t preclude survivors from coming forward; if anything, she said, their previous settlement should be deducted from whatever they end up receiving in this case.

She said she expects them to attempt to “wiggle out of this any way they can.”

“I don’t think they’re done,” Lancaster said. “I think they’ve got a lot of evil in them, and they’ll keep trying, because, frankly, they don’t care about survivors.”