ALASKA
KTUU
Tuesday, February 1, 2005 - by Megan Baldino
Fairbanks, Alaska -- “There is no one in this room that is anti-Catholic. The last thing anybody at this table wanted is to be here.”
John Manly is a partner with the law firm Manley and McGuire in Orange County, Calif. The firm helped win the largest clergy sex-abuse settlement in the nation -- $100 million -- against the Orange County Diocese.
Manley represented 30 of 90 clients. “Ten years ago, if you told me I was going to be doing this work, I would've laughed,” he says.
Manley says he’s a real estate lawyer, who got a call one day that changed his life. A young man needed a lawyer to sue the Orange County Diocese. That man, now a lawyer at Manley’s firm, was abused by a popular priest.
Manley says the diocese would not accept an initial offer to settle for $100,000.
“Four-and-a-half years later, they paid my client $5.2 million,” he says.
Posted by kshaw at February 3, 2005 07:24 AM