Heaps of Money

From SFGATE: The University of California has agreed to another massive round of settlements in response to sex abuse claims from hundreds of patients of former UCLA gynecologist-oncologist James Heaps, officials said Tuesday, raising the university's total payouts in the case to nearly $700 million. That total is believed to set a record for a public university in resolving such allegations.

The settlements disclosed Tuesday, according to a statement from UCLA Health, will total $374.4 million and resolve lawsuits that 312 women filed in state court. That followed a disclosure from UC this year that its Board of Regents agreed to pay $241.2 million to settle claims from 201 women who alleged that Heaps sexually abused them. (The number of plaintiffs who qualified for that round of settlement has varied slightly.) In addition, a state court last year approved a $73 million agreement reached on behalf of former patients of Heaps.

In all, UC's payouts as a result of the Heaps scandal have reached more than $688 million. That is a landmark sum for a public university. It surpassed the $500 million that Michigan State University agreed to pay in 2018 to resolve litigation in the sexual abuse scandal connected to disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar. Another major payout came in January, when the University of Michigan agreed to pay $490 million to former patients of a sports doctor who alleged that he sexually abused them over many years.

Attorneys for plaintiffs in the Heaps cases described the UC payout as the largest sexual abuse settlement for a public university...

Full story at https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Settlements-in-UCLA-sex-abuse-cases-reach-nearly-17196662.php.

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PS: If you are wondering why we have not finished our analysis of last week's Regents meetings, it's because it takes time to work through the recordings. We have so far gotten through Tuesday and Wednesday morning and posted about those sessions. We will eventually get to Wednesday afternoon and Thursday. This is a busy week for yours truly. (We have completed the mechanical process of downloading and uploading the recordings for preservation on archive.org.)