July 25, 2024
Contact: press@justice4survivors.com | 978-807-7950
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Survivor alliance calls out DFS Superintendent’s close ties to CHUBB’s trusted advisor, demands answers to Department’s refusal enforce Child Victims Act
NEW YORK – The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation (CJCC) – an independent alliance of survivors of child sexual abuse, their representatives, and advocates seeking full restitution for child sexual abuse survivors – sent a letter Thursday to Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal, and Assemblymember Tony Simone calling for a hearing to examine the Department of Financial Services’ (DFS) continued refusal to hold insurers accountable for refusing to cooperate fully with the intent of the Child Victims Act. The letter also drew attention to DFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris’ previous employment by CHUBB’s longtime legal counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and ties to CHUBB’s trusted advisor at Sullivan & Cromwell, Rodgin Cohen, whom Harris has described as her friend and mentor.
The text of the letter, sent to key lawmakers offices that survivors and advocates have met with on this issue reads in full:
Thank you again for listening carefully to our concerns on behalf of survivors and advocates regarding the insurance industry’s egregious and harmful attempts to circumvent the Child Victims Act (CVA) by refusing to pay out claims in thousands of child sex abuse cases. We’re writing today to reiterate these grave concerns and to call for a legislative hearing around the Department of Financial Services’ (DFS) continued refusal to hold insurers accountable for defying DFS’ guidance instructing them to “cooperate fully with the intent of the Child Victims Act.”
The Department is charged with regulating and supervising financial institutions, including insurers, yet it has not made any effort to enforce its own guidance against a multi-billion dollar industry that is failing its responsibility to pay out claims in cases of childhood sexual abuse — cases that involve the most vulnerable abuse victims. Alarmingly, we have learned that DFS Superintendent Adrienne Harris was previously employed by CHUBB’s longtime legal counsel, Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and has deep ties to CHUBB’s trusted advisor at Sullivan & Cromwell, Rodgin Cohen, whom Harris has described as her friend and mentor.
CHUBB, as you may know, is the largest publicly-traded property and casualty insurance company in the world, and is currently refusing to pay a single claim in child sex abuse cases involving the Archdiocese of New York. Make no mistake – CHUBB is far from the only insurance company waging a devastating campaign of delays and denial to protect their billions in profits at the expense of survivors of childhood sexual abuse. But CHUBB has authored the “industry playbook” to minimize payouts and dodge responsibility in insurance cases involving vulnerable institutions like schools, counties, religious organizations, hospitals, and nonprofits. Their cynical tactics for evading claims have unfortunately become a template for insurers, not just in New York, but across the entire country.
We have serious ethical, moral, and legal concerns about DFS’s failure to supervise the insurance industry, and Commissioner Harris’s ties to CHUBB’s longtime advisor. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their advocates deserve to know:
- Why isn’t DFS enforcing its own guidance?
- Why is DFS allowing insurers to defy the CVA with impunity by refusing to pay claims in cases involving religious institutions, schools, hospitals, and other entities?
- What is the extent of Superintendent Harris’s ties to CHUBB and its counsel? Are those ties influencing the Department’s duty to regulate and supervise the insurance industry?
- Why have nearly 100 letters to DFS from survivors across New York State calling for a crackdown on the insurance industry’s behavior been ignored?
More than five years after passage of the CVA, thousands of New York survivors of childhood sexual abuse are still waiting for justice. DFS has the power and authority to help, but so far has done absolutely nothing – thereby inflicting further trauma and harm on survivors. We need your immediate help to get the Department to finally take action, and to send a message that Big Insurance is not above the law. Survivors have been through enough – many of them for several decades. We are calling on DFS to do its job and ensure Chubb does its part to deliver to survivors the long-awaited restitution that is being denied to them.
Sincerely,
Stephen Jimenez
The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation
David Catalfamo
The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation
Kathryn Robb, Esq.
Executive Director, Children’s Justice Campaign
Enough Abuse
Richard Tollner
Pro Bono Child Sex Abuse Lobbyist serving since 2006
The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation
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The Coalition for Just and Compassionate Compensation (“CJCC”) is an independent alliance of survivors of child sex abuse, their representatives, and advocates seeking full restitution for survivors of child sex abuse. Among members of the coalition are author and journalist Stephen Jimenez, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and longtime advocate who helped pass the Child Victims Act (CVA), and attorneys James Marsh, Founding Partner at Marsh Law Firm, Jeff Herman, Founder of Herman Law Firm, and Hillary Nappi, Partner at Hach Rose Schirripa & Cheverie, who represent thousands of sexual abuse survivors in litigation against public and private entities.