There's the old adage: Sure you can win the case but at the same time you could lose your company to bankruptcy and take a major hit to your reputational capital. There's now a new version of that. And that's that you can lose the case and also lose plenty more.
That might be the situation the Connecticut Diocese of Bridgeport is in. It lost its motion to keep the discovery documents from the 23 clergy sex abuse lawsuits which were settled sealed. It took that request from courts in Connecticut all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And in the U.S. Supreme Court, it presented the request in various forms three times. Since the work was done by a major law firm on a fee-paid basis, submitting those motions was expensive.
Recently the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the Diocese's request to keep the documents sealed. And last week, a Superior Court Judge in Connecticut ruled that the sealed documents had to be made available to the media by December 1, 2009. That media includes THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WASHINGTON POST, THE HARTFORD COURANT, and THE BOSTON GLOBE. The latter, whose parent is The New York Times Company, broke the clergy sex abuse story.
Here is what the Diocese of Bridgeport says about this matter on its website. Soon enough we will find out what public opinion says about the delay in releasing the 12,000 pages of discovery and what's in those documents. Also, human beings tend to register their points of view through their pocketbooks. We will find out at the end of 2009, how the fundraising for the Diocese of Bridgeport went during this period of high-profile legal wrangling. Heading up that mission are public relations leader Bob Dilenshneider and his wife Jan, both residents of Darien, Connecticut.
Could this mess have been prevented by even an average dose of emotional intelligence [EI]? Here is a complimentary copy of my ebook on EI which has already had more than a million downloads Download CUsersjasneDocumentsjg. A number of its readers contend that it put their failing organizations, nonprofit and profit, back in the black.
Full Disclosure: For a few months in 2004, I did freelance consulting and writing for the Diocese of Bridgeport. On and off from the mid 1990s until 1Q '09, I freelanced for The Dilenschneider Group.
Breaking News: My comedy of manners "The Fat Guy From Greenwich" has just been published. Here are the first two chapters Download FGFGchapters1,2. Here you can order the novel from Amazon.com. The plot line follows devout Roman Catholics and not so devout ones.