Michigan State paying out $500 million - Is it excessive? That's $10,000 per student

It doesn’t end there wrote:

But no... the former University President (Lou Anna Simon) who knew about the complaints in 2014 did nothing except to try and sweep it away. Don’t want to upset the money from boosters, alumni etc. sound familiar (Penn State). She is an open lesbian. This shouldn’t matter but in this case... how ironic... she likes women and turned her head to the fact that women were getting abused while she was in charge. How despicable is that?

I don't know where you're getting this idea that Simon is a lesbian. Her husband, Roy, was a high-level administrator at MSU and still has some sort of nebulous but highly-paid admin job. That sort of rank nepotism was typical of Lou Anna's regime.

Karl Hungus wrote:

1) Yes. If I was the insurance company lawyers I'd be going over the policy and seeing if there's any way out of it.

2) Yes.

3) The lawyers will find a way to make money off of this - it's what they're good at. But assume a third of the $500 million will get to attorneys.

Also assume that victims won't see the money for at least a few years. This will drag on for a while.

Nuke East Lansing from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Can we nuke the entire state of Michigan? Trump voters, DeVos, Flint water, auto bailout, etc......

WEJO:

A few questions.

1) Can the insurance company object to the settlement?

2) Can individual victims object to the settlement?

3) Who determines what percentage the lawyers get? How about a flat fee per hour spent on the case?

WEJO - if it were a class action, then the court would have to approve the legal fees to be awarded to the lawyers. While it sounds lame - the lawyers will have to identify all potential claimants, corroborate the viability of the claim, and handle the fund that will be established to pay them (and future claimants. Is it worth 1/3 of this total settlement - arguably not. But they'll get a good amount for their efforts

1) The insurance company was presented with a number of claims and if the claims have validity, they must be paid. Since this is an excess exposure, the insurance company isn't going to object because no matter what happens, they're paying their policy limits. I am really curious though whether Michigan State will try to argue that multiple annual policies should be stacked on this because the molestation occurred over such a long period of time. HOWEVER - if it's just a claims-based policy (meaning when the molestation happened is irrelevant, but when the claim is filed is what is important) - then you could argue there are only one or two policies.

2) If it's a class action, individual victims can opt out. It can be hard to do this, and certainly will be annoying to prosecute this. To sue the university, they have to conduct the discovery and perform an awful lot of work.

3) The school and the class administrator propose the amount to the Court, which will review everything and approve or disprove. The attorneys will have to justify how they arrived at their fee. Court doesn't rubber stamp this.

Her contract was a masterstroke of university corruption/douchebaggery. So basically she gets the title of President Emeritus, steps down to a full professor, makes 70% of her Univ pres salary as an academic - (twice what the next person gets, and he deserves it because he's a rock star physicist.) And she's not a STEM prof, so she can go sit on a cactus.

I wish we were more like the Japanese and would have seppuku.

And according to the redoubtable Dvora Myers from Deadspin (she and Diane are the only reasons to read that site):

This is why it will drag on. Take a big check and shut your mouth. Meanwhile the cancer at MSU remains.