Abuse Cases Could Go to Trial in ’06

After three years of failed settlement talks, a judge Monday placed 44 civil cases accusing the Los Angeles Archdiocese of failing to protect children from sexual abuse on track for trial sometime next year.

The cases are the first involving Los Angeles priests to make it this far toward jury trial. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley Fromholz’s order raises the prospect of the first detailed public airing of charges that church officials moved around priests who were accused of molestations rather than turning them over to authorities or warning parishioners.

Plaintiffs’ attorneys have estimated that the cases could cost as much as $1 billion to resolve. For nearly three years, more than 560 abuse cases against diocesan personnel have been handled entirely behind closed doors as Cardinal Roger M. Mahony vowed to settle all the cases.

The action Monday, which was requested jointly in September by attorneys for the church and alleged abuse victims, also means that the church may be forced to turn over internal documents that would show how officials handled alleged abusers. The church has fought releasing the files to the grand jury for almost three years.

The cases Fromholz set for possible trial include allegations against 14 clerics and one teacher. The allegations range from fondling to rape, and date from 1958 to 1985. They were selected by both sides as representative of the total accusations, both in the severity of abuse and the strength of evidence. Attorneys have agreed to winnow the cases to nine jury trials, which may begin sometime next year. Lawyers for both sides said settlement efforts would continue.

In making the request to go to trial, Raymond Boucher, the liaison counsel for the plaintiffs, and J. Michael Hennigan, lead counsel for the archdiocese, said they had reached an impasse, which they blamed on the unwillingness of the church’s insurers to come to the table.

“It turned out we were overly optimistic,” Hennigan said of hopes that all parties could come to an agreement in the 562 cases without going to trial. “The insurance companies are not satisfied that they know the cases well enough.”

Insurers were unable to “tell sheep from goats,” he said. “I can’t entirely blame them for feeling we pushed them a little too hard.”

But some plaintiffs’ attorneys say it is the church that has dragged its heels. “Anybody who is blaming the insurance companies are singing the cardinal’s tune,” said Costa Mesa attorney John C. Manly, referring to Mahony, who has led the Los Angeles Archdiocese since 1985.

Manly called the settlement talks “a big lie designed to wear down victims and their lawyers” and questioned why church officials had not liquidated real estate assets and put the cases behind them.

Manly also questioned why none of the cases selected by Hennigan and Boucher to move toward trial involve alleged abuse that occurred during Mahony’s tenure.

The claims under consideration for trial include some of the highest-profile cases against the Los Angeles Archdiocese:

* Father Michael Edwin Wempe, 65, who is awaiting trial on criminal charges of molestation from 1990 to 1995 while he was a chaplain at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Fromholz’s order included three civil cases against Wempe. Wempe had been charged with 42 counts of molestation involving 13 boys between 1977 and 1986 until a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2003 effectively ruled that the statute of limitations had expired in those cases. Mahony was aware of abuse allegations against Wempe when he transferred him to the hospital.

* Father Clinton Hagenbach, now deceased, a former parish priest who was accused of at least 14 cases of abuse, mostly at St. Teresa of Avila and Holy Trinity parishes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. All could go to trial. In 2002, Mahony paid $1.5 million to one of Hagenbach’s victims.

* Former teacher Paul Alphonse Kreutzer, 66, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for molesting 10 girls in the San Fernando Valley between 1968 and 1996. Three civil cases involving Kreutzer could go to trial.

News that cases were moving toward trial was met with mixed emotions by plaintiffs, their attorneys and advocates for victims of abuse by priests.

“It’s a good thing. I’m ready to move on. I’m ready to take them on,” said Steve Sanchez, who says he was molested by Hagenbach from 1969 to 1978. “I’m really ready to tell my story at halftime at a Lakers game. I’m not going to be intimidated.”

David Clohessy, national director of the advocacy group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the move toward trials meant that the “real truth about clergy sex crimes and cover-ups -- not Mahony’s carefully spun, highly sanitized tidbits of truth -- is one step closer to being unveiled.”

“If even one of these trials takes place, Mahony and other high-ranking church officials may finally be put under oath and forced to tell how much they knew and how little they did about clearly dangerous serial offenders,” he said.

How much money it will take to settle the cases -- and who will pay it -- remain open questions. The Archdiocese of Orange settled 90 cases for $100 million last year, an agreement that many believed probably would set precedent for the Los Angeles talks.

But Hennigan on Monday said trials were needed to determine the appropriate settlement amounts in Los Angeles. The new approach is similar to one that has been used in Northern California, where a round of initial trials set the values for settlements in many cases.

Hennigan said the chosen cases excluded those most vulnerable to legal challenges, such as problems with paperwork or claims that had previously been thrown out because too much time had passed.

“Our hope is if we selected well, there will be some 2s and 3s and some 8s and 9s as well as many in the middle,” Hennigan said, referring to the church’s system of assessing each case’s potential using a number system. Ones are the weakest for the plaintiffs, and 10s have “the best” prospects for large verdicts at trial, he said.

Manly, who represents 70 plaintiffs, urged Mahony to “stop talking about it and do something,” saying that the cardinal “came up with $300 million” to build the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which was completed in 2002, the year before settlement talks began.

At least until now, plaintiffs’ attorneys had alleged negligence on the part of the church rather than an intentional pattern of misconduct that would open the door to punitive damages.

In contrast, several of the church’s insurers sued the archdiocese earlier this year, asking for confidential church documents they contend would allow them to establish a pattern of behavior by church officials that would void their insurance coverage.

Fromholz scheduled a status conference on that lawsuit for today.

Legal experts say the alliance between the church and plaintiffs’ attorney is not unexpected.

Robert Rabin, a Stanford law professor who teaches civil tort law, said both parties had a keen interest in keeping the insurers at the table. The defendants, he said, want to avoid punitive damages that would not be covered by insurance. But the plaintiffs may prefer a settlement to the uncertainties of trials and appeals that could mean waiting “a long time to see the money.”

It remains to be seen if any case makes it before a jury. Veteran plaintiffs’ attorneys said settlements often come as late as the opening day of trial.

“I think it’s really simple,” said attorney Larry Feldman, who has won major settlements and verdicts in cases such as the UC Irvine fertility clinic scandal and the first public case of molestation allegations against Michael Jackson.

“In litigation the thing that brings about settlements is a trial date and the prospect of defendants looking at a jury.”