Twenty-five men who claim to have been
sexually abused by former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky are, still, at this writing, on a glide path to large monetary settlements with Penn State.
A 26th is still in full-fledged negotiation, according to attorneys on both sides, though some university representatives said Friday that they are still optimistic about the prospects of a deal.
?We?re not at a total impasse and we?re not at a resolution, that?s for sure,? Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson told the Associated Press this week, referring to the status of that pending case.
And then there are five other cases that, at this writing, appear nowhere close to settling right now.
What separates them from the rest?
In three words, credibility and money, according to Penn State?s representatives.
For three of them, the claims are, politely, seen as non-starters.
?They just aren?t credible based on what we?ve seen,? said Michael Rozen,
one of the attorneys hired by Penn State last year to mediate the Sandusky claims.
One of the cases that Penn State officials have opted not to make an offer on, for example, was reportedly advanced by a federal prison inmate with a history of making civil claims against deep-pocketed targets.
That claimant was unsuccessful, sources said, in finding a lawyer to represent him in the Penn State mediation process.
Rozen and his partner, Ken Feinberg, have been looking for some markers of authenticity in all the submissions, and these three, Rozen said, simply don't have any.
For the other two claims, the facts of the cases are largely undisputed. In fact, both involve men who testified against Sandusky at his criminal trial in Bellefonte last June.
But Rozen said in these cases his team is simply dealing with claimant expectations that ?differ dramatically from both my and the university?s impressions of what is fair and reasonable under the circumstances.
?And,? he added, ?we now have ample evidence of what is reasonable to a lot of other people. These are outliers.?
The two cases in question involve some of the star witnesses of the Sandusky trial.
There is
Victim 6, the youth whose May 1998 shower encounter with Sandusky became what is still appears to be the first of the molestation cases to ever get to law enforcement before the state attorney general's probe opened in late 2008.
And then there is
Victim 9, one of the last witnesses to be added into the criminal case. This youth alleged dozens of sexual assaults by Sandusky from about 2005 through 2008.
Victim 6?s claims against Penn State, the Second Mile and Sandusky are currently being pursued in federal courts in Philadelphia, before U.S. District Judge Anita Brody.
According to court documents filed in that case, it would not go to trial before 2014 at the earliest.
His lead attorney, Howard Janet, declined to comment for this story.
Victim 9?s case, meanwhile, has not been filed as a lawsuit to this point. Stephen Raynes, Victim 9?s attorney, did not return messages seeking an interview for this story.
The university has stated that it would like to settle with all of Sandusky?s victims, both to rid the university of the specter of years of civil litigation that could keep the scandal?s wounds public and fresh; and also as a matter of acknowledging its role in the scandal and taking responsibility for it.
Trustees have authorized
up to $60 million for the cases with settlement offers now on the table.
The problem with the 1998 case, as central to the Sandusky scandal as it was, is that it was the first time that allegations against Sandusky would have come to the attention of Penn State officials.
The case was investigated by university police and state child welfare authorities and eventually was reviewed by then-Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar, who deemed it not to be a criminal matter at the time.
And neither
the trustee-commissioned investigation by former FBI Director Louis Freeh into the Sandusky scandal or
the state Attorney General?s criminal probe has turned up any hard evidence that Penn State officials actively interfered with that probe.
So Penn State trustees can look at this case, and the others before it, and feel that they have relatively less liability and their settlement offer has been made in that context.
The plaintiff, meanwhile, contends that the university's and Second Mile's non-response to the incident - which evidence suggests top administrators at least knew about - essentially "ratified" Sandusky's conduct going forward.
In Victim 9?s case, no one argues that this claimant suffered sustained, repeated and serious abuse at the hands of Sandusky for at least two years. And it happened after university officials themselves failed to report a separate eyewitness account of a February 2001 assault by Sandusky to law enforcement or child welfare agencies.
But then again, none of these cases occurred on Penn State?s property. And as Rozen noted, financial markers have been set for other claimants from the post-2001 period.
All of these issues with the latter two cases may sort themselves out in time.
But for now, these cases are on slower tracks.
"We?d really like to settle (with these claimants),? Rozen said Friday. ?We just can?t do it yet.?
