By Kevin O'Connor
Rutland Herald
May 14, 2008
http://www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080514/NEWS04/805140396
BURLINGTON — A jury ruled Tuesday that Vermont's Catholic Church should pay a record $8.7 million for negligence in hiring and supervising a pedophile priest.
A 12-person panel deliberated for almost five hours before finding the statewide Roman Catholic Diocese liable for charges in a Chittenden Superior Court lawsuit regarding the former Rev. Edward Paquette, who worked in Rutland in 1972, Montpelier in 1974 and Burlington in 1976.
The jury awarded Perry Babel, a 40-year-old Burlington native, $950,000 in compensatory damages and $7,750,000 in punitive damages for his civil claims that the diocese failed to protect him from Paquette. Babel's lawsuit said Paquette fondled him 40 to 100 times when he was an altar boy in fourth and fifth grades.
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| Bishop Salvatore Matano listens to his lawyer Tom McCormick speak outside of Chittenden County Superior Court in Burlington on Tuesday afternoon moments after a jury awarded a record $8.7 million to a former Christ the King Church altar boy. The 12-person panel deliberated for just under five hours before reaching its verdict in the case. Photo by Ryan Mercer |
Just before the verdict was read at 3:20 p.m., Judge Matthew Katz heightened anticipation with a warning to the public and press in attendance.
"I understand these are emotional cases, but this is a court," Katz said. "Whatever the outcome, I expect decorum will be preserved."
The verdict — met with stunned silence — is almost nine times the previous record of $965,000 paid by the diocese two years ago to settle the first and so far only other lawsuit involving Paquette to reach trial.
The ruling's ramifications could potentially bankrupt the state's largest religious denomination. Having spent six years and more than $1.57 million to resolve at least eight past lawsuits, it still must tackle 24 more involving nine past priests. Of those pending cases, 17 involve Paquette.
Vermont Catholic Bishop Salvatore Matano, who attended all of Babel's seven-day trial, responded first with regret for the plaintiff's abuse — "I apologize to him and to all victims" — before noting, for the 118,000-member diocese, "it's a very sad and tragic moment in our history."
"It's a very, very large amount of money," Matano said. "It has a very serious impact on a small, rural diocese."
The church is almost certain to appeal the verdict, its lawyers said. The diocese doesn't have insurance for priest misconduct, although it says it held a comprehensive liability policy from 1972 to 1978. But the church can't find its copy of the policy and its insurer argues it isn't liable for cases in which the holder is found negligent.
Babel, now of Denver, Colo., declined comment. But his lawyer, Jerome O'Neill, hoped the verdict rendered by eight men and four women would send a message to the larger community.
"It's not about the money," O'Neill said. "It's about the diocese being held accountable."
Before the start of jury deliberations Tuesday, Babel's lawyers had asked the judge to declare a mistrial because of church counsel Thomas McCormick's closing arguments Monday. At that time, McCormick cast doubt on the plaintiff and his call for punitive damages through talk of his sexual history, "clever lawyering" and statements like, "Vermont isn't like California — this isn't a state where lawsuits turn into lotteries."
"It was like a hate speech —the equivalent of racial baiting," O'Neill told the judge Tuesday morning. "It attacked our client unfairly. It was designed specifically to evoke prejudice. It was a manipulator's dream of what you do to enflame a jury."
The judge denied the mistrial request, noting "maybe some things were efforts to evoke prejudice, but that's why the law has a rebuttal."
Indeed, after McCormick's closing arguments, O'Neill was able to remind the jury that church personnel records showed the diocese had transferred Paquette to his client's Burlington parish without telling anyone it knew the priest had molested boys first in Massachusetts, then in Indiana and the Vermont cities of Rutland and Montpelier.
The diocese didn't dispute Babel's allegations but argued it wasn't liable, in part because it was following since-debunked advice of psychiatrists who at one point hoped Paquette could be cured through 11 sessions of electric shock therapy.
"There's something unjust about awarding penalties with the assumption that things haven't changed," McCormick said after the verdict. "Things have changed."
The jury's decision came a day after Babel's lawyers, suggesting figures such as $5,000 per incident or $10,000 per year of suffering, proposed compensatory damages of $886,000 to $2.3 million and additional punitive damages of $6 million to $12 million.
Babel's lawyers had tried to settle his case out of court but couldn't agree to a financial figure with the diocese. Neither side will say how much each requested. But Paquette's first accuser, ready to take the witness stand in 2006, received the previous record $965,000, while the most recent plaintiff in another case, not wanting to face the trial spotlight last February, accepted a church offer of $170,000.
Babel's case is the second priest misconduct lawsuit to reach a Vermont jury since news of a national child sex abuse scandal broke six years ago. Paquette, now 79 and retired in Massachusetts, didn't attend the trial against the diocese and has refused comment.
Contact Kevin O'Connor at kevin.oconnor@rutlandherald.com
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