Litigation Seeking Insurance Funds for Minnesota Catholic Church Sex Abuse Survivors Will Move Forward

Burns Bair attorneys representing the trust for abuse survivors

Parting ways with the Eighth Circuit’s frequently-cited opinion denying coverage for institutions that negligently fail to prevent sexual abuse, a Minnesota state trial court has denied a motion for summary judgment by the United States Fire Insurance Company seeking to avoid coverage for stipulated judgments obtained by nine survivors of the former Rev. Thomas Adamson, one of the church’s most notorious child predators.

The stipulated judgments range in amount from $600,000 to $9 million and resolved claims that the survivors had against the Diocese of Winona-Rochester for failing to prevent Mr. Adamson’s abuse between 1967 and 1973. The diocese’s knowledge of Mr. Adamson’s conduct was also at issue in the earlier insurer-touted Eighth Circuit decision.

“This is a monumental ruling for survivors,” said Tim Burns, partner at Wisconsin-based Burns Bair LLP. “In diocesan bankruptcies across the country, insurers have been quick to point to the Eight Circuit’s two-decades-old decision as strengthening their hands in sexual abuse cases because that decision wrongly applied Minnesota law to relieve insurers of their obligations to cover negligent institutions.”

The state trial court decided that it was not bound by the Eighth Circuit decision because that decision dealt with a later time period and then held that Minnesota law imposes a much higher burden on insurers to escape coverage by arguing an institution’s conduct was non-accidental than the standard earlier imposed by the Eighth Circuit.

“These survivors have been seeking some sort of recompense for literally decades. I am hopeful that we will be able to proceed to trial quickly and get them some measure of justice when it is all said and done,” added name partner Jesse Bair.

“This decision also puts to rest the insensitive notion that a survivor who has not been scraped, scratched, or bruised as part of his or her molestation has somehow not suffered bodily injury,” said Mr. Bair. “Sexual abuse constitutes bodily injury so long as it is accompanied by appreciable physical manifestations such as sleeplessness, agitation, or stress. It almost always is.”

Mr. Adamson served as a priest within the Diocese of Winona from 1958 to 1975 and was accused several times of sexually abusing minors. This led to his transfer to the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1975, until he was terminated in 1985. He died in 2019.

About Burns Bair LLP

Burns Bair has been retained in similar church sex abuse cases nationwide, including those involving the Archdioceses of Baltimore and San Francisco, the Catholic Dioceses of Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, and Syracuse, New York, as well as those in Oakland, Sacramento, and Santa Rosa, California.

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