PORTLAND (OR)
The Oregonian
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
STEVE WOODWARD
On the eve of crucial settlement talks, lawyers for nearly 70 priest sexual-abuse plaintiffs say intractable differences with the Archdiocese of Portland are threatening the court-ordered mediations.
"Over the last week or so," plaintiffs' lawyer David Slader said in a Tuesday hearing on the stalemate, "I feel like a bride who showed up at the wedding, and the groom had brought a girlfriend along and had a different idea of what commitment was."
In a Tuesday letter to the judge overseeing the archdiocese bankruptcy, the church's attorney Thomas V. Dulcich contended that the plaintiffs' lawyers, after many months of discussion, had, in essence, caught them off-guard with new demands.