Albany Diocese Reaches $8 Million Settlement of Child Victims Act Lawsuits

The landmark settlement announced Friday by plaintiffs' counsel Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC marks the first settlement in a group of seven lawsuits where a bankruptcy stay has been lifted so that individual cases could proceed to trial against the diocese.

The first lawsuit under New York's Child Victims Act that was ready for trial against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany resulted in a "landmark" $8 million settlement, a win for survivors with claims in more than 400 other pending claims.

The settlement was announced Friday by plaintiffs' counsel Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC on behalf of Michael Harmon. The New York man alleges he was subjected to years of abuse during the 1980s by a vice chancellor who was removed decades later from the ministry, after leaders acknowledged he sexually abused minors.

The law firm said the resolution is a landmark in that it marks the first settlement in a group of seven lawsuits where a bankruptcy stay has been lifted so that individual cases could proceed to trial.

New York’s CVA provided a one-year lookback window from August 2019 to August 2020—later extended to August 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic—during which survivors could file civil lawsuits regardless of when the abuse occurred.

Since then, more than 400 cases have been filed against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2023, resulting in automatic stays of the pending state court cases.

The Harmon settlement was reached on the eve of a jury trial. His case had been scheduled to start trial on Monday.

According to court filings, Harmon offered to settle his claim in March, but the diocese’s insurance companies didn't respond. Attempts to reach a diocesan spokesperson on Friday were unsuccessful. Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott, counsel for the diocese, didn't return an email message.

Harmon filed the lawsuit in March 2020 in the state Supreme Court of Albany County, with the diocese and St. Catherine’s Center for Children, where Harmon was a resident, named defendants.

The complaint for negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress said Father Edward Pratt used his position as priest to groom and sexually abuse Harmon when Harmon was 11 to 16 years old between 1980 and 1985. Pratt held the position of vice chancellor of the docese at the time of the abuse, and he would later admit to molesting boys.

Pratt wouldn't have been available to testify due to his age and declining health, according to a stipulation in the case file.

In November 2018, the diocese released a list of 46 priests—including Pratt—that it determined had been credibly accused of sexually abusing children.

“We commend Michael’s bravery in coming forward, in standing up to the Diocese, in uncovering the magnitude of what the Diocese knew about its priests using their positions to sexually abuse children, and for his willingness to take his case to a jury trial for the benefit of all of the survivors in the Diocese of Albany,” said Mallory Allen, a partner at PCVA Law, which represents hundreds of survivors who were sexually abused as children throughout New York who filed civil claims under the CVA.

“We are hopeful that the Diocese’s decision to settle this case on the eve of trial means that it—and even more importantly, its insurance companies—will step up and do what is right for the hundreds of others who were abused as children in this Diocese and who are still waiting for justice,” Allen stated.
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“This settlement, though certainly substantial, does not erase the trauma that Michael Harmon endured,” said co-counsel Cynthia LaFave, of LaFave, Wein, Frament & Karic. “But Michael does know that this settlement brings to the public this horrible abuse and the people who allowed it. For him, it is believing that children today will be more protected because he was willing to go to trial is what matters the most. This is the first step in a long road ahead for all the survivors of sexual abuse in the Diocese of Albany.