The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany is set to appeal a December verdict that awarded former St. Clare's employees $54 million in restitution after officials failed to secure their pension. WAMC's Aaron Shellow-Lavine and Sam Dingman spoke about the latest in the still-unfolding dispute on Northeast Notebook Live.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Editor's note: This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dingman: Aaron, let's turn now to another story you've been following. This is a group of pensioners in Schenectady County who were awarded 10s of millions of dollars in lost payments last year.
Shellow-Lavine: Right. So a little bit of background here: these are former employees of St. Clair's Hospital in Schenectady. They accuse the hospital of mismanaging its pension fund, which covers 1,100 workers; when the time came to claim their payments from that pension fund, the money just wasn't there.
Dingman: So the pension holders then sued, and last December they won, and were awarded over 54 million dollars in payments. The jury found that the diocese was responsible for the actions of bishops Howard Hubbard and Edward Schaffenberger, former diocesan employees, as well as Saint Clair's President Joseph Prophet and former President Robert Perry; the diocese has maintained it was not directly responsible. Though Senior Vice President of Litigation at the AARP Foundation, Luis Lopez, disagrees.
Lopez: We believe that's just patently wrong. The jury verdict was clear that the diocese was vicariously liable, and that alone is legally sufficient to hold it accountable to the pensioners for the harm that they suffered.
Dingman: So, Aaron, yesterday there was a new development in this story.
Shellow-Lavine: Right. I want to preface it by saying there will be lots more reporting from WAMC on this case in sort of the days and weeks to come. The sort of update is very new. Like you said, yesterday was the deadline for the defendants in the case to begin the appeal process of December's verdict.
Complicating things during this entire process, two of the defendants, including Bishop Schaffenberger and former Saint Clair's president Poffit, filed for bankruptcy. That just complicates this entire process. This is a case where the folks tasked with managing the pensions of, again, these 1,100 employees failed to notify the pensioners at all of the deteriorating status of their funds, and only made contributions to the pension for two years between 2000 and 2019. As has been previously reported by WAMC, the fund was decimated by the 2008 financial crisis. New York State did pay St. Clair's $58 million to cover the transition costs, though still only 450 pensioners received any payments, and at that they only received 70% of what their pension was worth. These are people who worked on average between 10 to 50 years for Saint Clair, Lopez says it's just plainly well past time for them to get what they're doing.
Lopez: This case really has always been about fairness and accountability. For years, sometimes even decades, nurses, technicians, and staff kept their commitments to work at Saint Clare's Hospital in exchange for their promised pensions that would give them financial security in their retirement. Many of these workers are now fighting for their future because St. Clair's and the diocese wrongly broke those promises to them. Many have had to start returning to working full time. Some pensioners can no longer afford their mortgages. They've been forced to sell their homes. Others can't pay for utilities. They've waited years, but their bills never took a break. Their health didn't wait, and their promised pensions still haven't come.
Dingman: And as Aaron said, lots more reporting to come from WAMC on that story.
