I agree that it's everyday lawyering, but it's really stupid everyday lawyering.
As I pointed out above, because the Church specifically encourages trust in priests and because the Church admittedly covered up for abusers and knowlingly placed them in positions where they had access to children, the Church is hardly in a good legal position to tell victims and their parents they 'should have been more careful' about priests. What the abusers themselves did was a crime, the Church's cover up may or may not be a crime, misprison of felony. The question of civil liability is judged on a different standard. In civil actions, you cannot use your own fraud and bad faith as a defense to your liability for the consequences of your actions. That's what the Church is trying to do. I'm astounded that the Church's lawyer's can't see what any first year law student would consider a 'gimme' issue on his torts exam.
One parish priest says he will never forget the day he realized his former boss, an East coast bishop (now retired) [anyone know who this might be?], was a true man of God. 'We had to meet with a family whose child had been abused by one of our priests. When we sat down face to face with them and the lawyers, we told them that the bishop had said his first priority was to do the right thing. We told them our investigation had found that the priest was guilty, but that he had never been in this kind of situation before. We had removed him from any further parish involvement. We told them that we didn't believe we had been neglectful, but we wanted to help the family in any way we could, because we recognized lives had been damaged, and we were profoundly sorry. And that was the bishop's position."I looked across the table, and the family was crying," the priest recalled. The father said, "Thank you. We never wanted to persecute anybody. That was all we wanted to hear."
I understand Law's lead attorney is a father and a grandfather of, I think, six. He practices with his son.