In an ongoing battle over who will be financially responsible for payouts to survivors of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of clergy, an insurance company suing the Archdiocese of New York filed a suit against the New York attorney general’s office Monday.
Chubb, an insurer of the Archdiocese of New York, filed papers in New York Supreme Court in Albany seeking a judgment to overturn a decision made by Attorney General Letitia James’s office to withhold legal documents the insurance company says they are entitled to.
In 2018, then-AG Barbara Underwood issued subpoenas to every Catholic diocese in New York State, kicking off a mass probe into the church’s handling of the abuse allegations.
In February, lawyers for Chubb filed a Freedom of Information Law request for documents uncovered during the investigation of the Archdiocese. In April Chubb received a rejection from the AG’s office saying the records were “exempt from disclosure”, according to correspondence included in Monday’s court filings.
Shutterstock
“The documents requested were compiled for law-enforcement purposes and would, if disclosed, interfere with law-enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings”, the response continued, citing a section of New York’s Public Officers Law.
When an appeal was filed by Chubb in May, a lawyer for the insurance company argued that the refusal under Public Officers Law didn’t apply because the risks of releasing the documents were not outlined and the documents already produced by the archdiocese to the attorney general’s office in the investigation should be fair game.
The appeal also pointed out that some of the records would include information on members of clergy who had already been convicted of sex abuse or had died.
In return, the FOIL appeals officer wrote that releasing the documents would tip the office’s hand by revealing legal strategy and bring “unwanted publicity to the investigation and the ADNY’s response to it, interfering with the OAG’s ability to pursue the investigation in the manner it deems most effective,” according to papers filed in court.
A “small number of documents” were later produced by the AG’s office, “none of which were substantively responsive to Petitioner’s interest,” read Monday’s filing. People familiar with the FOIL request said the documents turned over included lists of archdiocese employees, policy manuals and employee guides.
After the New York Child Victims Act of 2019 — signed by then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the newsroom of the Daily News — went into effect, allowing survivors of childhood sexual abuse to sue abusers and the institutions that harbored them, the floodgates opened for past victims seeking justice.
According to court filings, the Archdiocese of New York has been sued by over 3,000 claimants under the Child Victims Act. Chubb is the insurer on about 60% of the unsettled claims that went to litigation, said sources, which are valued at $859 million.
Chubb has their own citation of the Public Officers Law in their suit, claiming that the AG’s office should foot the bill for Chubb’s lawyers because the documents are being withheld improperly.
Monday’s suit by Chubb argues the Attorney General’s investigation is not reason enough to hold back the documents. Lawyers for Chubb wrote that they were not provided with “even a scintilla of evidence that any investigation is ongoing.”
“The public has endured six years of silence since the OAG announced its ADNY investigation to great public fanfare. The public has a right to know — and to see — what information the OAG obtained from the ADNY in connection with an investigation that did not go anywhere and has run its course,” reads the filing.
Avi Schick, one of the lawyers who filed the suit, says Chubb wants the documents released so they can determine what the archdiocese knew about the abuse and when they knew it.
“Any victim that has a valid claim deserves to get compensated. The question is from whom that compensation should come? And to make that determination, one needs to see contemporaneous documents,” Schick told the Daily News.
“We’re talking about documents that the archdiocese provided to the Attorney General six years ago. And so the Attorney General disclosing those documents would only expedite the process by which the victims can get compensation.”
Chubb filed suit against the archdiocese in Manhattan Supreme Court in June 2023, arguing that the payouts to survivors are outside the scope of what insurance should actually cover, and that policies were not designed to cover abuse the church covered up.
In October, the archdiocese tried to have the case dismissed. Lawyers from firm Blank Rome, representing the archdiocese, wrote that “Chubb’s heavy-handed conduct highlights that this lawsuit is a tactical maneuver in what appears to be a nationwide corporate decision to walk away from sexual abuse claims from California to New York”.
Supreme Court Justice Suzanne Adams dismissed the case in December, but a unanimous ruling in state appellate court on April 23 found that the insurance company can proceed in its case against the archdiocese.
