UNITED STATES
The Pacific Northwest Inlander
by Kevin Taylor
When doing a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization, file locally and settle globally. This seems to be the strategy in play by the Catholic Church.
Portland, Tucson and Spokane are vastly different in many ways, but in each city, the Catholic Church broke legal ground last year by filing Chapter 11 bankruptcies in federal court as a way to settle claims of child sexual abuse by clergy.
Strikingly, each diocese sought Chapter 11 protections just as a sex-abuse case was on the verge of trial. The closer a bishop gets to the witness stand, the more likely a bankruptcy filing becomes, Minnesota attorney Jeffrey Anderson told an Arizona newspaper weeks before the Portland diocese filed for Chapter 11 — successfully predicting the imminent actions of the Portland church leadership.