MINNEAPOLIS (MN)
Pioneer Press
June 8, 2018
By Marshall H. Tanick [The writer is a Twin Cities constitutional and employment law attorney.]
LAST OF THE BIG SETTLEMENTS?
The historic $210 million settlement last week by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis was a testament to the persistence and resilience of the 443 victims of clergy sex abuse, the skills of their St. Paul attorney Jeff Anderson and his estimable legal team and the elongation of the statute of limitations by the Legislature five years ago.
But one key feature in forging the deal was the ability of the victims to pursue their claims in civil lawsuits. The varied litigation they brought propelled the archdiocese into bankruptcy, which provided a vehicle, albeit a slow-moving one, to reach the record-breaking resolution.
But arrangements of this size, or of any magnitude at all, for victims of massive wrongdoing may be an endangered species as a result of a ruling the previous week by the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices, by a narrow 5-4 vote, ruled that members of labor unions may be barred from pursuing lawsuits in a collective manner, or class actions, and required to arbitrate their disputes with management.
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