California
San Francisco Archdiocese agrees to pay $395 million to settle child sex abuse lawsuits
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese has agreed to pay $395 million to settle more than 500 lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by church officials, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will have to write an apology letter to each survivor as part of the settlement.
The settlement also requires the archdiocese to implement a series of child protection and transparency reforms, including creating a list of clergy accused of abuse, said Jeff Anderson, an attorney representing dozens of child sexual abuse victims.
The settlement comes three years after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy and will cover approximately 530 survivors of child sexual abuse, Anderson said. It is the latest agreement over clergy sexual abuse claims. In 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to a record $880 million settlement.
Several archdioceses in California filed for bankruptcy after facing hundreds of lawsuits brought under a California law approved in 2019 that allowed decades-old claims to be filed by Dec. 31, 2022.
Cordileone, the archbishop, said in a statement that he believes the settlement provides “a path toward fair compensation for survivors who have borne the weight of this abuse for a lifetime.”
“The hope is that this proposal will allow us collectively to move forward,” he said.
“We accept full responsibility for what happened, and I sincerely apologize to all those who have been harmed,” Cordileone added.
Margie O’Driscoll sued the archdiocese alleging she was sexually abused almost 50 years ago by a priest while she was a student at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, a community north of the Golden Gate Bridge. She said the settlement was hard-fought and puts the responsibility on church officials, not survivors.
“I, like every survivor, have carried this pain and shame along like a ball and chain for a very, very long time,” O’Driscoll said during a news conference. “Ashamed and confused about what happened, scorned by the archdiocese, and sometimes not even believed by family and friends, and I think today shame is gonna change sides.”
The San Francisco Archdiocese serves about 440,000 Catholics in the counties of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo.
Anderson said a committee of survivors who spent thousands of hours over the last three years negotiating with Cordileone is empowered with establishing protocols on how to distribute the funds. He said every survivor will be given an opportunity to submit their story of abuse to an allocator hired by the committee to receive what Anderson said would be “an equitable distribution based on the unique circumstances of that survival.”
Besides the funds, the archdiocese will be required to follow 14 child protection and transparency demands that include maintaining and making public a comprehensive, up-to-date list of all accused clergy that details allegations and the outcomes of investigations. The archdiocese will also be banned from imposing confidentiality agreements that silence survivors.
“I’ve been working with survivors for decades and I’ve never heard of anything quite as significant, as rigorous, as robust as what is being required of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” Anderson said.
Ghana
Rights lawyers sue over third-country deportation deal with the U.S.
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — An international coalition of human rights lawyers and advocates sued Ghana on Tuesday, accusing the government of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to the home countries they had fled in violation of their rights.
It’s the latest legal case targeting an African country over a deal it signed with the Trump administration to accept deportees who aren’t its own citizens.
The lawsuit was filed at a regional court, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. The coalition includes the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a network of lawyers and advocates.
It’s the first case ever brought under a 1979 regional treaty that guarantees free movement across West Africa.
The case represents 27 people among the at least 60 the U.S. has deported to Ghana since September 2025 as part of an agreement between the governments. Ghana agreed to take in deportees, hold them and arrange their onward removal, despite most of them having received orders of protection by U.S. judges against being deported to their home countries, according to a statement by the coalition.
According to Tuesday’s statement, most of the 27 people were flown from Ghana to their home countries within hours or days of arriving, despite telling Ghanaian authorities about their U.S. protections. Some described being shackled during the flight from the U.S. Once in Ghana, they said they were held under armed guard in military camps, hotels and airport holding cells, often in poor conditions.
The coalition accuses Ghana of violating non-refoulement, which is the international legal principle barring countries from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.
A spokesperson for Ghana’s government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ghana is one of at least nine African nations to strike third-country deportation deals with the U.S.
Under the often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say, as part of the U.S. crackdown on immigration. Immigration lawyers say the administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum-seekers back to their home countries.
Medical evaluations cited in the new lawsuit found signs of post-traumatic stress and severe depression in several of the 27 people involved.
The lawsuit asks the regional court to stop further transfers, force Ghana to release the deal’s terms, award damages and bar the country from making similar agreements in the future.
Earlier this month, rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea, another African country that signed a deal with the U.S., before Africa’s top human rights body, accusing the country of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to their home countries in violation of their rights.
New York
Blake Lively wants $8M in legal fees after ‘It Ends With Us’ dispute
NEW YORK (AP) — Blake Lively is seeking $8 million in legal costs from actor and director Justin Baldoni after resolving their dispute over the acrimonious production of their 2024 film “It Ends With Us.”
Lively’s lawyers disclosed the amount, covering nearly $7.5 million in attorney’s fees from two law firms that represented her and about $500,000 in other expenses, in a court filing Tuesday.
Lively and Baldoni settled last month just before a trial was to start in federal court in Manhattan on Lively’s claims that he engineered an effort to damage her public reputation and credibility after she accused him of sexually harassing her while shooting the movie.
Baldoni, who directed the dark romantic drama and starred in it with Lively, denied her claims.
Lively received no money in the settlement, but a judge subsequently ruled that she is entitled to recover some legal costs she incurred after Baldoni filed a countersuit against her. The judge must still approve the amount she is seeking.
One of Lively’s lawyers, Michael Gottlieb, wrote in a court declaration that he charged her an average hourly rate of $2,187 — a discount from his usual $2,795 per hour. He said he billed 224 hours for work on her defense to Baldoni’s countersuit, totaling $457,000 in fees.
Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, “employed scorched-earth litigation tactics designed to drain Lively’s resources,” her lawyers wrote in their filing.
“They could have ended it (and offered to reimburse Lively) at any time. Having refused to do so, they should be ordered to reimburse Lively for all of the costs, attorney’s fees, and expenses they improperly forced her to incur,” they wrote.
A message seeking comment was left for Baldoni’s lawyer.
Lively, 38, sued Baldoni, 42, and Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, accusing them of conspiring with publicists to preemptively destroy her reputation after she privately accused him of sexual harassment on the “It Ends With Us” set.
Weeks later, Baldoni sued Lively, accusing her, her husband — “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds — and their publicist of defamation and extortion.
Baldoni denied harassing her or orchestrating a smear campaign. He claimed the complaints about his behavior were made up by Lively as part of an effort to seize creative control of the movie.
Judge Lewis J. Liman threw out Baldoni’s countersuit last year and then dismissed Lively’s sexual harassment claims, saying she could not bring them because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee on the movie set.
In allowing Lively to recover legal costs, the judge cited a California law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits meant to intimidate and silence victims.
Liman said the law requires that the plaintiff must pay the defendant’s legal fees and costs if a defamation claim made in response to a lawsuit is dismissed, even if the facts of the case have not been developed through the gathering of evidence.
Liman said an exception would be if Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, could prove malice fueled Lively’s claims, but that they had produced no evidence to show that.
In their court filing, Lively’s lawyers said $4.5 million should be paid to Gottlieb’s firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and about $3 million should go to the firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.
The judge rejected Lively’s claims to triple any damages and pursue punitive damages as well under the California law, saying that they did not fall within “carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel about a relationship devolving into domestic violence, was released in August 2024 and exceeded box office expectations.
Lively appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”
Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.
San Francisco Archdiocese agrees to pay $395 million to settle child sex abuse lawsuits
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The San Francisco Catholic Archdiocese has agreed to pay $395 million to settle more than 500 lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse by church officials, plaintiffs’ attorneys said Monday.
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will have to write an apology letter to each survivor as part of the settlement.
The settlement also requires the archdiocese to implement a series of child protection and transparency reforms, including creating a list of clergy accused of abuse, said Jeff Anderson, an attorney representing dozens of child sexual abuse victims.
The settlement comes three years after the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy and will cover approximately 530 survivors of child sexual abuse, Anderson said. It is the latest agreement over clergy sexual abuse claims. In 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to a record $880 million settlement.
Several archdioceses in California filed for bankruptcy after facing hundreds of lawsuits brought under a California law approved in 2019 that allowed decades-old claims to be filed by Dec. 31, 2022.
Cordileone, the archbishop, said in a statement that he believes the settlement provides “a path toward fair compensation for survivors who have borne the weight of this abuse for a lifetime.”
“The hope is that this proposal will allow us collectively to move forward,” he said.
“We accept full responsibility for what happened, and I sincerely apologize to all those who have been harmed,” Cordileone added.
Margie O’Driscoll sued the archdiocese alleging she was sexually abused almost 50 years ago by a priest while she was a student at Marin Catholic High School in Kentfield, a community north of the Golden Gate Bridge. She said the settlement was hard-fought and puts the responsibility on church officials, not survivors.
“I, like every survivor, have carried this pain and shame along like a ball and chain for a very, very long time,” O’Driscoll said during a news conference. “Ashamed and confused about what happened, scorned by the archdiocese, and sometimes not even believed by family and friends, and I think today shame is gonna change sides.”
The San Francisco Archdiocese serves about 440,000 Catholics in the counties of San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo.
Anderson said a committee of survivors who spent thousands of hours over the last three years negotiating with Cordileone is empowered with establishing protocols on how to distribute the funds. He said every survivor will be given an opportunity to submit their story of abuse to an allocator hired by the committee to receive what Anderson said would be “an equitable distribution based on the unique circumstances of that survival.”
Besides the funds, the archdiocese will be required to follow 14 child protection and transparency demands that include maintaining and making public a comprehensive, up-to-date list of all accused clergy that details allegations and the outcomes of investigations. The archdiocese will also be banned from imposing confidentiality agreements that silence survivors.
“I’ve been working with survivors for decades and I’ve never heard of anything quite as significant, as rigorous, as robust as what is being required of the Archdiocese of San Francisco,” Anderson said.
Ghana
Rights lawyers sue over third-country deportation deal with the U.S.
ACCRA, Ghana (AP) — An international coalition of human rights lawyers and advocates sued Ghana on Tuesday, accusing the government of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to the home countries they had fled in violation of their rights.
It’s the latest legal case targeting an African country over a deal it signed with the Trump administration to accept deportees who aren’t its own citizens.
The lawsuit was filed at a regional court, the Community Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States. The coalition includes the Global Strategic Litigation Council, a network of lawyers and advocates.
It’s the first case ever brought under a 1979 regional treaty that guarantees free movement across West Africa.
The case represents 27 people among the at least 60 the U.S. has deported to Ghana since September 2025 as part of an agreement between the governments. Ghana agreed to take in deportees, hold them and arrange their onward removal, despite most of them having received orders of protection by U.S. judges against being deported to their home countries, according to a statement by the coalition.
According to Tuesday’s statement, most of the 27 people were flown from Ghana to their home countries within hours or days of arriving, despite telling Ghanaian authorities about their U.S. protections. Some described being shackled during the flight from the U.S. Once in Ghana, they said they were held under armed guard in military camps, hotels and airport holding cells, often in poor conditions.
The coalition accuses Ghana of violating non-refoulement, which is the international legal principle barring countries from sending people to places where they face persecution or torture.
A spokesperson for Ghana’s government did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Ghana is one of at least nine African nations to strike third-country deportation deals with the U.S.
Under the often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say, as part of the U.S. crackdown on immigration. Immigration lawyers say the administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum-seekers back to their home countries.
Medical evaluations cited in the new lawsuit found signs of post-traumatic stress and severe depression in several of the 27 people involved.
The lawsuit asks the regional court to stop further transfers, force Ghana to release the deal’s terms, award damages and bar the country from making similar agreements in the future.
Earlier this month, rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea, another African country that signed a deal with the U.S., before Africa’s top human rights body, accusing the country of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to their home countries in violation of their rights.
New York
Blake Lively wants $8M in legal fees after ‘It Ends With Us’ dispute
NEW YORK (AP) — Blake Lively is seeking $8 million in legal costs from actor and director Justin Baldoni after resolving their dispute over the acrimonious production of their 2024 film “It Ends With Us.”
Lively’s lawyers disclosed the amount, covering nearly $7.5 million in attorney’s fees from two law firms that represented her and about $500,000 in other expenses, in a court filing Tuesday.
Lively and Baldoni settled last month just before a trial was to start in federal court in Manhattan on Lively’s claims that he engineered an effort to damage her public reputation and credibility after she accused him of sexually harassing her while shooting the movie.
Baldoni, who directed the dark romantic drama and starred in it with Lively, denied her claims.
Lively received no money in the settlement, but a judge subsequently ruled that she is entitled to recover some legal costs she incurred after Baldoni filed a countersuit against her. The judge must still approve the amount she is seeking.
One of Lively’s lawyers, Michael Gottlieb, wrote in a court declaration that he charged her an average hourly rate of $2,187 — a discount from his usual $2,795 per hour. He said he billed 224 hours for work on her defense to Baldoni’s countersuit, totaling $457,000 in fees.
Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, “employed scorched-earth litigation tactics designed to drain Lively’s resources,” her lawyers wrote in their filing.
“They could have ended it (and offered to reimburse Lively) at any time. Having refused to do so, they should be ordered to reimburse Lively for all of the costs, attorney’s fees, and expenses they improperly forced her to incur,” they wrote.
A message seeking comment was left for Baldoni’s lawyer.
Lively, 38, sued Baldoni, 42, and Wayfarer Studios in December 2024, accusing them of conspiring with publicists to preemptively destroy her reputation after she privately accused him of sexual harassment on the “It Ends With Us” set.
Weeks later, Baldoni sued Lively, accusing her, her husband — “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds — and their publicist of defamation and extortion.
Baldoni denied harassing her or orchestrating a smear campaign. He claimed the complaints about his behavior were made up by Lively as part of an effort to seize creative control of the movie.
Judge Lewis J. Liman threw out Baldoni’s countersuit last year and then dismissed Lively’s sexual harassment claims, saying she could not bring them because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee on the movie set.
In allowing Lively to recover legal costs, the judge cited a California law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits meant to intimidate and silence victims.
Liman said the law requires that the plaintiff must pay the defendant’s legal fees and costs if a defamation claim made in response to a lawsuit is dismissed, even if the facts of the case have not been developed through the gathering of evidence.
Liman said an exception would be if Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios, could prove malice fueled Lively’s claims, but that they had produced no evidence to show that.
In their court filing, Lively’s lawyers said $4.5 million should be paid to Gottlieb’s firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, and about $3 million should go to the firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.
The judge rejected Lively’s claims to triple any damages and pursue punitive damages as well under the California law, saying that they did not fall within “carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”
“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel about a relationship devolving into domestic violence, was released in August 2024 and exceeded box office expectations.
Lively appeared in the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” and the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012 before starring in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”
Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book challenging traditional notions of masculinity.
