{"slug": "2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers", "title": "2 years after California Catholic diocese bankruptcy, sex-abuse accusers’ lawyers say church delaying settlement", "summary": "Two years after the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego filed for bankruptcy amid hundreds of child sexual abuse lawsuits, attorneys for survivors say the diocese has taken unprecedented steps to delay settlement by objecting to more than 160 claims. The diocese and its insurer argue the objections are standard to clarify valid claims, while survivors' lawyers call the scale of objections unusual. More than 40 survivors have accepted $75,000 each in settlements, but many others face dismissal of their claims with no compensation.", "body_md": "**Getting your**\n\n[Trinity Audio](//trinityaudio.ai)player ready...Two years after the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego [filed for bankruptcy](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/06/13/catholic-diocese-will-seek-bankruptcy-protection-from-hundreds-of-sex-abuse-claims/) to help manage its response to hundreds of child sexual abuse lawsuits, attorneys for some of the survivors say the diocese has taken unprecedented steps to delay resolving the case.\n\nMore than 480 people who say they were sexually abused decades ago by San Diego-area Catholic priests have filed claims against the diocese in the Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. But the diocese and its insurer have filed objections seeking to dismiss more than 160 of those claims. Individuals whose claims are dismissed would receive no compensation once the bankruptcy is ultimately resolved.\n\n**RELATED: Jury delivers $16 million verdict against Oakland Diocese in bellwether sex abuse case**\n\n“That many claim objections is unprecedented,” said Stacey Benson, an attorney representing some of the survivors. Her firm, Jeff Anderson & Associates, regularly works on similar Catholic diocese bankruptcy litigation nationwide.\n\n“Something to that scale has never happened before,” Benson said.\n\nA spokesperson for the diocese declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. Attorneys representing the diocese’s insurer, the Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America and the Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America, also declined to comment. Attorneys representing the diocese did not respond to a message seeking comment.\n\nIn court filings, attorneys for Catholic Mutual have argued that the number of objections is not abnormal, and that they are designed to help “reach a collective solution by disallowing clearly disallowable claims.” The attorneys have argued that the objections “will help clarify the number of allowed claims and associated insurance coverage, enable progress toward a global resolution, and bring survivor-creditors closer to receiving compensation.”\n\nSome individuals have already received compensation. Earlier this year, more than 40 of the survivors whose claims were objected to accepted settlement terms of $75,000 each, for a total of more than $3 million.\n\nCatholic Mutual attorneys wrote in court filings that they offered those payouts “as a matter of compromise (and) to avoid any claimant potentially receiving nothing.”\n\nThe diocese, which includes 96 parishes and serves more than 1.3 million Roman Catholics in San Diego and Imperial counties, [filed for bankruptcy](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/05/12/san-diego-roman-catholic-diocese-will-file-for-bankruptcy-in-november/) in June 2024. Cardinal Robert McElroy, who was then the diocese’s leader, wrote in an open letter to parishioners at that time that “bankruptcy offers the best pathway to achieve” the dual goals of justly compensating sexual abuse survivors and furthering the church’s mission of education, service and outreach to the poor and neglected.\n\nRELATED: [Santa Rosa Diocese puts churches up for sale as reserves dwindle amid bankruptcy](https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/10/27/santa-rosa-diocese-churches-sale-bankruptcy/)\n\nIt was not a new tactic. The local diocese also filed for bankruptcy in 2007, eventually settling more than 140 claims of sexual abuse for $198 million. At least a dozen other dioceses across the country have also filed for bankruptcy to help manage their response to child sexual abuse lawsuits.\n\nChapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings give a debtor time to reorganize its business, resolve debts and then restart its operations. The proceedings also trigger a halt to all lawsuits against the debtor until the bankruptcy is complete and a universal settlement of all the claims is reached through the bankruptcy process.\n\nWhen the local diocese filed for bankruptcy two years ago, it was [facing more than 460 lawsuits](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/02/10/san-diego-roman-catholic-diocese-ponders-bankruptcy-with-sex-abuse-lawsuits-pending/) stemming from alleged sexual abuse by clergy that occurred decades ago. Those suits were filed during a [three-year window that opened in 2020](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2019/10/20/california-braces-for-onslaught-of-child-sex-assault-lawsuits-under-new-law/) and temporarily removed the statute of limitations for such claims.\n\nAttorneys for the survivors, such as Irwin Zalkin, whose firm represents more than 100 victims, have long maintained that bankruptcy is a way for the Catholic church to reduce the compensation it must pay.\n\n[Zalkin has also alleged in a separate lawsuit](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/02/22/lawsuit-accuses-roman-catholic-diocese-of-fraudulently-transferring-assets-to-foil-sex-abuse-liability/) that before the three-year window opened in 2020, the local diocese fraudulently [transferred hundreds of properties to holding companies](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2023/04/10/san-diego-roman-catholic-diocese-landholdings-plummeted-in-2019-when-new-law-passed-coincidence-or-fraud/) in order to reduce its assets and thereby lower the amount of money it might have to pay as part of a settlement. That lawsuit, filed in San Diego Superior Court, has also been halted because of the bankruptcy.\n\nThe Chapter 11 proceedings in 2007 were also marred by accusations from victims’ attorneys that church officials deliberately hid assets from the bankruptcy court in order to limit damages.\n\nZalkin and Benson now allege that the diocese is using the claim objections in the bankruptcy case to delay a settlement, and that the diocese hasn’t restructured as required by Chapter 11 bankruptcy.\n\n“Here we are … two years after the filing of the bankruptcy, essentially where we started when the bankruptcy was filed,” Zalkin said Wednesday following a hearing in the case in downtown San Diego. “They’re actually making money, they’re profitable, they’re continuing to operate (and) they haven’t restructured as they should be under Chapter 11.”\n\nBenson accused the diocese of improperly using bankruptcy law to try to dismiss claims that should be considered on their merits — something a bankruptcy judge doesn’t have authority to do.\n\n“It’s another legal tactic to try to escape accountability,” she said.\n\nIn court papers, attorneys for Catholic Mutual argued that any claims rejected by the court, and the roughly 40 claims that were settled, will actually “(enhance) rather than (reduce) the prospects of a consensual (settlement) plan.”\n\nAnother issue currently roiling the survivors’ attorneys was a decision by San Diego-area U.S. Bankruptcy Court Chief Judge Christopher Latham to limit the ability of specialized bankruptcy attorneys who are also parties to the case to assist the survivors’ attorneys in responding to the objections.\n\nThose bankruptcy attorneys are appointed by the government to represent the interests of unsecured creditors — in this case, the sexual abuse survivors. The survivors and their attorneys, who are mostly state-court civil litigators unfamiliar with federal bankruptcy law, often rely on these specialized attorneys to help with bankruptcy matters.\n\n“There’s no other order in the country that we’re aware of” that limits such cooperation, said Sasha Gurvitz, one of the specialized bankruptcy attorneys from the firm KTBS Law.\n\n“In many ways, that hamstrings the state-court councils’ work dealing with these objections,” Zalkin said.\n\nAs of this week, Latham had dismissed four of the claims that the diocese and Catholic Mutual had objected to and was considering whether to dismiss others. Attorneys for one of the individuals whose claim was dismissed have already appealed that ruling in U.S. District Court.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers", "canonical_source": "https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/06/19/2-years-after-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers-say-church-delaying-settlement/", "published_at": "2026-06-19 15:15:07+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-19 15:40:16.046552+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy"], "entities": ["Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego", "Jeff Anderson & Associates", "Stacey Benson", "Catholic Mutual Relief Society of America", "Catholic Relief Insurance Company of America", "Cardinal Robert McElroy"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/2-years-after-california-catholic-diocese-bankruptcy-sex-abuse-accusers-lawyers.jsonld"}}