Rival Websites Fuel NY Archdiocese-Chubb Feud Over Abuse Payouts
A few paragraphs deep in a sworn statement filed in court last month was a curious admission by the former chief financial officer for the Archdiocese of New York:
The church had been briefed in late 2023 and early 2024 on communications and fundraising by an abuse victims’ advocacy group, the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation, ex-CFO William Whiston acknowledged, without elaborating.
Since launching in 2023, the group had been publicly savaging the archdiocese’s insurer,
It slammed Chubb in a full-page ad in the New York Times, sent protesters to the Chubb-sponsored US Open, flew a banner over another Chubb event in Florida, launched an anti-Chubb website, and enlisted TikTok influencers to assail the company.
Church leaders had previously denied any ties, and Whiston’s statement repeated they had no role in funding or directing the group. Still, Chubb asserted his affidavit was “further proof that the CJCC is just an arm” of the archdiocese.
The allegations had a familiar ring. Chubb weeks earlier acknowledged it had been the anonymous operator of a different attack website — one made to look as if it represented abuse victims and advocates outraged by the church’s pace in resolving the claims.
In court filings, the archdiocese contends that website is part of Chubb’s shadow campaign against it. It has publicly accused the insurer of trying to push the church toward bankruptcy.
The back-and-forth and dueling websites reflect what longtime court observers say has become an unusually vicious and protracted fight between the powerhouse insurer and its client, one of the country’s largest Catholic institutions.
For nearly three years, the two sides have battered each other in relentless legal filings in a New York court, and their war over who should pay shows few signs of abating.
Stuck in limbo are more than 1,500 claims from alleged abuse victims that together could cost the church — or its insurer — at least hundreds of millions of dollars.
“I would say that both houses, the house of Chubb and the house of the Archdiocese of New York, have had more than enough ugly behavior and despicable behavior,” said Michael G. Dowd, a lawyer representing about 30 claimants.
Flood of Lawsuits
The underlying claims in New York aren’t vastly different from the tens of thousands of abuse-related lawsuits filed against many Catholic dioceses over the past two decades.
By 2023, six of the eight Catholic dioceses in New York had filed for Chapter 11. Together, those dioceses were named in at least 2,800 abuse claims. Half have secured court approval of their bankruptcy plans, agreeing so far to pay at least $1 billion to victims.
The Archdiocese of New York dwarfs them all. It says it’s home to more than 2.5 million Catholics, and owns or operates hundreds of parishes, schools and other sites across Manhattan, Staten Island, the Bronx, and seven suburban counties.
In 2017, the archdiocese cited the looming abuse-victim settlements as the reason it took out a $100 million mortgage on midtown Manhattan property it owned; the next year it announced it had already paid $60 million to settle some cases.
A flood of new claims followed when New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act temporarily opened a statute of limitations window that let accusers sue over decades-old abuse.
Most of the lawsuits rely on negligence-based theories, accusing the archdiocese of failing to properly vet or supervise abusers it hired — not just priests but also teachers, coaches, and other employees or volunteers at parishes and schools.
Chubb sued in 2023, arguing it had no obligation to cover such claims because its policies with the archdiocese only covered accidental “occurrences.”
The archdiocese, Chubb asserted, knew about and fostered widespread sexual abuse for nearly a century, prioritizing its reputation and financial survival over child safety, and making the resulting injuries both expected and uninsurable. Chubb has also said church leaders resisted providing information necessary to investigate individual claims.
In turn, the archdiocese accused Chubb of pursuing a nationwide corporate strategy of “reneging on and avoiding its obligations” to cover abuse claims, despite collecting tens of millions of dollars in premiums.
There’s no dispute the abuse claims had hurt the bottom line for Chubb, one of the world’s biggest publicly traded property and casualty insurance companies. Its costs between 2022 and 2024 came in $262 million above projections, largely because of so-called “reviver” statutes like the one passed in New York, its financial reports show.
Catholic dioceses and Chubb have fought similar battles across the country, including disputes with dioceses in San Francisco, Camden, NJ, and other New York-based dioceses.
The church-insurer rifts aren’t unusual, particularly with the wave of abuse lawsuits. Some bankrupt dioceses have been forced to strike deals with insurers and claimants — but not always both, opening the door for victims to sue insurers directly.
And the share that all insurers are paying to resolve sex abuse cases has been shrinking, according to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Between 2004 and 2013, when the clergy sex abuse scandal exploded worldwide, insurers on average paid 22% of the costs related to claims, the conference said in a report. That share dropped to 10% from 2014 through 2023.
Nationally, Catholic dioceses and other religious communities paid out $5 billion between 2004 and 2023.
Lawyers for the New York archdiocese, led by Blank Rome LLP’s Jim Murray, succeeded in getting Chubb’s initial lawsuit dismissed in 2023. The archdiocese argued that litigating insurance coverage while trying to resolve the underlying abuse claims would unfairly force them to simultaneously defend the church on “two fronts.”
But Chubb, whose lawyers have included John Baughman and the O’Melveny & Myers firm, appealed and the suit was reinstated in April 2024.
Soon after, a new website went live. Its name: The Church Accountability Project.
A Cackling Cardinal
The website was simple but stark. At the top were rotating newspaper headlines about the clergy abuse scandal. Below, with white and yellow text on a black background, was a bullet point-like list of accusations.
“Under the leadership of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese is deploying all of its VAST resources to deny its victims the compensation they rightfully deserve,” read one.
The page also linked to a handful of news stories highlighting the scale of sex abuse by New York clergy, the archdiocese’s expansive real estate holdings, and the cardinal’s 15,000-square foot residence. In two spots, the webpage encouraged visitors to “hold the Archdiocese of New York accountable” and register their email address to receive updates.
The site also pointed to forms for reporting abuse to church or state authorities, as well as links to prominent organizations on the topic, such as the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, and BishopAccountability.org, the similarly named independent watchdog that has catalogued thousands of claims and cases.
Within a year, ChurchAccountability.com expanded to add another page touting a “Dolan dossier” specifically attacking the archbishop. Near the top was a doctored image of Dolan cackling with $100 bills swirling around him.
“It’s time for ADNY to drop the lawsuits and fairly compensate the hundreds of victims of sexual abuse and assault NOW,” read a line toward the bottom.
Nowhere did the website explain who was behind it.
Late last year, Chubb’s secret role as its creator began to unravel, after church lawyers asked the court to compel the insurer to turn over evidence of what they called its “shadow” campaign to undermine the archdiocese.
In December, the Church Accountability Project website was suddenly rebranded with Chubb’s corporate logo in large letters at the top, above the phrase “Insurance stops where complicity begins.” The site also introduced a table seeking to compare “myths” about its role in the case against “facts” about the archdiocese’s complicity in the abuse scandal.
Archdiocesan lawyers seized on the changes as proof of the insurer’s bad faith, and in January asked the presiding New York judge, Lori Sattler, for permission to amend their suit to claim fraud and seek punitive damages from their insurer.
“Chubb has used the guise of defending as a smoke screen to delay, obstruct, and stonewall resolution of the Underlying Claims, while Chubb secretly undermines and seeks to weaken” the archdiocese, they wrote.
In filings since, Chubb hasn’t disputed its role creating the website but says its public relations efforts were “only in response to the ADNY’s systematic, years-long undertaking to hide its complicity in sexual abuse and distort the public record.”
The insurer said it wasn’t the only one waging a behind-the-scenes public relations campaign.
Astroturf Allegations
Whiston’s Feb. 19 affidavit was part of a filing intended to build the archdiocese’s case that it had no ties to the Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation, the group whose self-proclaimed mission is “holding insurers and regulators accountable.”
The former CFO’s sworn statement described the group as a separate and independent entity. It did not, however, explain why he would have received briefings on the fundraising and communications plans of the purportedly independent party.
Chubb contends the CJCC is really an astroturf group — designed to appear like an independent, grassroots advocate — guided and funded by the archdiocese as part of a guerrilla war of public smears.
It’s noted a phrase in the group’s New York Times ad — that Chubb was “welching on its promises” — echoed language that had been in the church’s legal filings.
It also pointed out that CJCC’s leadership includes David Catalfamo, a longtime New York political operative with deep ties to John Cahill, the archdiocese’s chancellor and Dolan’s former chief of staff. Both worked together under former New York Gov. George Pataki; Catalfamo was also the spokesperson for Cahill’s 2014 unsuccessful campaign for state attorney general.
Last week Chubb said in a filing that Cahill and Catalfamo together worked “hand-in-glove to use the CJCC” to advance the archdiocese’s interests, including fundraising for the effort.
The group spent nearly $1 million in its first 15 months, with about $500,000 going to a public relations consultant, its tax records show.
But as an exempt 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organization, it isn’t required to disclose its donors’ identities. Catalfamo has said they include survivors, their lawyers, and others who “care about” the archdiocese, but he hasn’t released names or details.
The archdiocese has declined comment on the allegations, but denied in legal filings that it’s bankrolling or controlling the CJCC. Catalfamo told Bloomberg Law the organization had received no funding from the archdiocese.
There’s no support for “any claim that CJCC is a Church directed or funded front organization” acting on behalf of the archbishop, James Marsh, a plaintiffs’ attorney who represents dozens of claimants against the church and a trustee of the CJCC, said in a signed affirmation.
Stephen Jimenez, another CJCC trustee and clergy abuse survivor, called Chubb’s accusations “a smack in the face.”
‘Expected and Intended’
The nonstop mudslinging and aggressive stances have surprised even seasoned court watchers.
Chubb’s bid to rally public support for its hard-line position through the Church Accountability website seems unprecedented, according to Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor who focuses on child sex abuse issues.
“There’s been no insurer across the United States that has taken an ‘I pay nothing’ tactic and then tries to reinforce its intentional argument by putting the archdiocese in a bad light,” said Hamilton, a longtime legal consultant on cases involving the church. “It’s a pretty extreme tactic to combine those two elements.”
Jeffrey Stempel, a professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, William S. Boyd School of Law, pointed out that insurers have an inherent good-faith duty to not throw their policyholders under the bus.
In the past decade, the New York archdiocese sold off real estate assets, cut staff, and reduced its operating budget to free up funds, purportedly for the sake of resolving sex abuse claims. Still, none have reached trial since the victims’ act passed in 2019.
In December, just ahead of his resignation announcement, Dolan said the archdiocese was seeking to begin a global settlement process.
Chubb has argued the church could compensate victims more quickly with its own money even while their coverage dispute is ongoing. Lawyers say that could backfire on the archdiocese if its policies include standard clauses that say it can’t pursue reimbursement if it settles a case without its insurer’s consent.
So the battle with Chubb over who owes what languishes in court.
There is no scheduled trial date, or even a prediction as to when one could be set. Sattler first has to rule on each side’s request to amend their lawsuits to add allegations over the rival public relations campaigns. And both continue to push back on every incremental decision.
As the case drags on, the greatest impact could be on abuse victims. Several have sought to intervene in the coverage dispute, contending that Chubb and the archdiocese share a common interest in delaying a resolution as long as possible. The court rejected their bid, but that decision is on appeal.
Most of the claimants are older; some have died waiting for a resolution, said Terry McKiernan, a board member for Bishop Accountability, the independent watchdog group.
“That’s important here,” he said, “because there’s a kind of heartlessness involved.”