st clare

St. Clare’s pensioners want lawsuit against Albany Diocese restarted after bankruptcy filing

The legal team representing the St. Clare’s Hospital pensioners has filed a motion requesting the case be sent back to state court.

In March, the Diocese of Albany announced it was filing for bankruptcy. Bishop Ed Scharfenberger insisted that the diocese didn’t see any other alternative, after settling 50 of over 400 cases brought under the Child Victims Act.

The filing put a hold on the lawsuits involving 1,100 St. Clare’s pensioners who worked at the former hospital in Schenectady. They lost some or all of their retirement savings when, in March 2019, the St. Clare’s Corporation petitioned the state Supreme Court to dissolve, claiming it had run out of money.

Six months later, a group of advocates, including the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York and the AARP, filed a lawsuit against the Diocese seeking damages for the pensioners.

In late 2022 a judge ruled the pensioner’s should merge with one filed in May by the Attorney General’s office.

Meryl Grenadier is a Senior Attorney at AARP Foundation.

“Our clients are what is considered, what is called ‘unsecured creditors’ in the bankruptcy proceeding,” said Grenadier. “And in order to obtain any money out of the bankruptcy

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May 13, 2023 by ATTORNEY

Albany Diocese says pension fight not why it filed for bankruptcy

SCHENECTADY — When the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany filed for Chapter 11 last week, it noted that its outstanding litigation with state Attorney General Letitia James and others over the collapse of the St. Clare’s Hospital pension plan is not the reason why it sought bankruptcy protection.

Rather, it was the more than 440 lawsuits that have been filed against the diocese under the state’s Child Victims Act since 2019 — 50 of which have been settled — that prompted the diocese to file for bankruptcy.

The diocese does acknowledge the ongoing St. Clare’s litigation, albeit briefly, in its bankruptcy papers filed March 15 in U.S. District Court in Albany.

But the papers note that the St. Clare’s cases, which have been consolidated in state Supreme Court in Schenectady for both discovery and trial, were “not a precipitating cause” of the bankruptcy as might be assumed.

In fact, the diocese went out of its way to try and assure St. Clare’s pensioners in a press release issued last week that the pension lawsuits are “not the diocese’s purpose for filing” Chapter 11, although it will have the effect of putting the pension litigation “on hold” during the bankruptcy

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March 21, 2023 by ATTORNEY
April 2024
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