A lawsuit filed by the Catholic Diocese of Spokane against the lawyers who led it through a 2004 bankruptcy related to sex abuse lawsuits is set for a February trial.
Bishop Blase Cupich (SU-pitch) quit using the legal team at the Paine Hamblen law firm after he arrived in 2010.
He has since pursued a malpractice complaint that accuses the firm of failing to use a strategy that could have saved the diocese millions of dollars and prevented a new round of priest sex-abuse claims.
The Spokesman-Review reported Friday that those claims reached 230 in the past year. However, more than 150 of the 230 people who filed future claims had their cases rejected by a former federal judge tasked with reviewing the claims and awarding payouts.
