FILE - Sign with logo for Boy Scouts of America in the Silicon Valley, Foster City, California, April 11, 2020. DOVER, Del. - More than two years after the Boy Scouts of America sought bankruptcy protection amid an onslaught of child sex abuse allegations, a judge will determine whether to confirm its proposed reorganization plan in a trial beginning Monday.The trial in U.S.
Bankruptcy Court in Delaware is expected to stretch over several weeks as attorneys and witnesses battle over a host of complex issues, including insurance rights, liability releases, the value of some 80,000 child sex abuse claims and how such a huge number of claims came to be filed.RELATED: Wave of child sex abuse lawsuits threatens Boy Scouts of AmericaThe Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020 in an effort to halt hundreds of individual lawsuits and create a fund for men who say they were sexually abused as children involved in Scouting.
Although the organization faced 275 lawsuits at the time, it found itself the subject of more than 82,000 sexual abuse claims in the bankruptcy case.The reorganization plan calls for the Boys Scouts and its roughly 250 local councils to contribute up to $786 million in cash and property and assign certain insurance rights to a fund for abuse claimants.
In return, the BSA and councils would be released from further liability.The BSA’s two largest insurers, Century Indemnity Co.