"Clearly, this is additional compensation that has added a significant amount of money to our clients' settlement," said one of the lawyers, Marc J. Bern of the firm Napoli Bern Ripka.
Mr. Adler said his clients won settlements in the late 1990's for incidents that had occurred when Father Cinesi was at St . Jerome Catholic Churchin Fort Lauderdale.
But one family's lawyer said he was concerned that the judge might reject his client's settlement on the grounds that the amount should be lower — even though both sides have signed off on it.
"For our clients, this settlement represents a long overdue acknowledgment of the truth of their stories of abuse, stories that until today were largely denied and belittled by apologists for the abusers".
A client of Innovative Settlements named Arline Maisel, for instance, obtained a settlement for her father after he received a diagnosis of prostate cancer.
The Blackstone Group, whose $550 million investment makes it SAC's largest outside client, views the settlements favorably, Mr. Lattman reports.
"My client found the settlement acceptable under the circumstances".
New rules being drafted by state insurance regulators would explicitly allow agents to talk to clients about life settlements, but would not insist on it.
One of Falcone's companies had been a Debevoise & Plimpton client, and the settlement White was rejecting had been negotiated by the S.E.C.'s enforcement division when it was headed by her longtime assistant in the Southern District, Robert Khuzami.
In addition, the bank said it would create a unit within its private bank to absorb legal and restructuring costs associated with reductions in its business aimed at overseas clients, including expected settlements related to tax investigations by the United States.
