EWJ Legal Leads the Charge in Billion-Dollar Boy Scouts Sex Abuse Settlement

On September 14, 2021, survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of the Boy Scouts of America (“BSA”) announced they had settled claims against one of the BSA’s insurers, Hartford Financial Services Group, for $787 million, and one of its chartered organizations, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for $250 million.

These settlements, totaling $1.037 billion, come on the heels of the record $850 million settlement the survivors reached with the BSA and its local councils this past July.

And just like in July, a co-founder and senior shareholder of Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry, P.C. was at the center of this most recent round of settlements.

Along with Stewart Eisenberg and Josh Schwartz, represents more than 16,000 of the approximately 82,000 survivors covered by the settlements—the largest group of survivors represented by any single law firm. The co-founder of the Coalition of Abused Scouts for Justice, which is made up of 27 law firms who collectively represent those 82,000 survivors.

Our Lawyer serves as one of three lead settlement negotiators on behalf of the survivors because of the number of survivors Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry, P.C. represents and the firm’s long history of fighting on behalf of sex abuse survivors.

With more than $1.88 billion in settlements secured for survivors of the BSA’s sexual abuse, our lawyer remains undaunted in his mission to secure even more settlements for the tens of thousands of survivors who seek to hold the BSA accountable for its actions and those of its representatives.

Many media outlets covered this second round of settlements and our lawyer’s role in it, including Law Weekly/The Legal Intelligencer, the Deseret News, and the Wall Street Journal. This is on top of the many media outlets that covered the first settlement and our lawyer’s role in it, including Axios, Bloomberg Law, the BBC, Law Weekly/The Legal Intelligencer, NPR, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal,  The Week, and USA Today.

In addition to battling the Boy Scouts, child sexual abuse attorneys at Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry, P.C. have successfully taken on other powerful institutions such as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the states of New Jersey. The firm has the legal experience and the extensive resources needed to aggressively advocate on behalf of survivors, and has earned a reputation for its strong advocacy on behalf of survivors of childhood sexual abuse.

Joshua B. Schwartz is a shareholder and Philadelphia personal injury attorney at Eisenberg Winkler Jeck Schwartz Schoenhaus & Sherry. Joshua has nearly 20 years of legal experience focusing exclusively on the representation of the catastrophically injured in medical malpractice, product liability, childhood sexual abuse and other complex personal injury matters. He helped obtain numerous seven figure and eight figure resolutions in medical malpractice and other catastrophic injury cases including what is believed to be one of the largest medical malpractice settlements in Pennsylvania history at $54,000,000.00. He also helped obtain the $2.46 billion Boy Scouts of America sexual abuse settlement, one of the largest sexual abuse settlements in U.S. history. Mr. Schwartz received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Communication Arts and Sciences with a concentration in Rhetorical Theory from The Pennsylvania State University and his law degree from Widener University School of Law. He is committed to the advancement of the next generation of lawyers, having served as the past Chair of the Future Leaders Section of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice and the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. He currently serves as an Officer (Secretary) and Board Member of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association and Board Member of the Pennsylvania Association for Justice.