WASHINGTON
The Spokesman-Review
John Stucke The Spokesman-Review
A multimillion-dollar lawsuit pitting the Catholic Diocese of Spokane against the lawyers entrusted to shepherd it through its 2004 bankruptcy is set for a February trial.
Bishop Blase Cupich quit using the legal team at the Paine Hamblen law firm after he arrived in 2010. He has since directed a malpractice complaint that accuses the firm – and specifically attorneys Shaun Cross and Greg Arpin – of failing to use a strategy that could have saved the diocese millions of dollars and prevented a new round of priest sex-abuse claims from continuing to threaten Eastern Washington parishes.
Those claims reached 230 in the past year, according to court documents, and bring urgency to the dispute.
That’s more than double the number of victims who came forward during the initial phase of the bankruptcy. More importantly, in terms of the malpractice suit, the number of so-called “future claims” vastly outstripped what the diocese’s lawyers made accommodations for in the original settlement.
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