$7 Million Verdict In Sex Abuse Lawsuit Against Boy Scouts

December 17, 2014

WATERBURY — A Superior Court jury handed up a $7 million verdict against the Boy Scouts of America on Friday, finding that the organization was liable for sexual abuse committed by a scout leader in New Fairfield in the 1970s.

Court records show that the jury found the national organization both negligent and reckless in its failure to take steps to protect the plaintiff from repeated abuse at the hands of his scoutmaster. The jury awarded the plaintiff — identified only as "John Doe" in court records — $7 million in compensatory damages, with punitive damages to be determined by the court at a later hearing.

The jury found that the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America, the Connecticut Yankee Council, was not liable.

The verdict was the result of a two-week trial, during which the plaintiff testified that he was molested three times by a long-serving Boy Scout troop leader from New Fairfield, said Doe's attorneys, Paul Slager and Jennifer Cohen Goldstein, of Silver Golub & Teitell LLP.