J. Michael Reck

Archdiocese of Los Angeles

Reck was one of four plaintiff liaison counsel in the 2024 agreement resolving 1,353 childhood-sexual-abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for $880 million.

Mediation began in fall 2023. The agreement created a common fund while preserving an allocation process independent of the archdiocese. That process evaluated each claimant’s history, evidence, and damages without giving the archdiocese control over individual awards.

The settlement also required supplemental production of clergy files that plaintiff counsel said had previously been produced incompletely. Funding, claimant-specific allocation, and document production remained separate obligations within the resolution.

As liaison counsel, Reck helped coordinate a large group of survivors and lawyers, negotiate the common obligation, preserve differences among claimant histories, and define how additional files would be produced after agreement.

The archdiocese completed its final settlement payments in April 2026. The completed framework included the funded obligation, the independent allocation system, and procedures for producing additional organizational records.

Rockville Centre

In 2015, Reck and Jeffrey Anderson represented a New York survivor who sued the Diocese of Rockville Centre and related parties. The complaint alleged abuse and concealment and sought damages together with disclosure of information concerning accused clergy, their histories, and their locations.

The complaint framed the continued withholding of information as a public nuisance that created a present risk. The theory addressed the limitations issue by alleging that continued secrecy was an ongoing public danger requiring current relief rather than treating the suit only as a claim about past abuse.

The court allowed the public-nuisance theory to proceed past a motion directed at the claim. The ruling opened discovery into the diocese’s possession, organization, and treatment of information concerning accused clergy.

The requested records included names, locations, personnel information, assignments, internal investigations, prior warnings, transfers, and reporting decisions. Those materials could connect what officials knew to the decisions that followed.

The requested remedies addressed two different interests. Monetary recovery concerned the individual claimant’s loss, while disclosure could assist other families, support later investigations, and clarify how diocesan officials responded to warnings. Reck used discovery to connect particular records, what officials knew, and the decisions that followed.

Fifty Thousand Documents

Reck played a role in litigation that forced the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to release more than 50,000 previously secret documents concerning clergy abuse. The disclosures included records capable of identifying previously undisclosed accused clergy and tracing how allegations, assignments, and internal decisions were handled.

He also helped secure a settlement for hundreds of survivors involving the Irish Christian Brothers after the organization entered bankruptcy. His diocesan docket has included matters involving the Archdiocese of New York, the Dioceses of Brooklyn and Syracuse, the Archdiocese of Newark, the Dioceses of Bridgeport and Providence, and the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, among others.

In a Los Angeles filing under California’s Child Victims Act, Reck traced a priest’s assignments from the Philippines into Southern California. The filing used the assignment history to place alleged abuse within the church decisions that moved the priest between communities.

Records as Evidence and as an Outcome

Reck represents survivors in cases involving churches, schools, the Boy Scouts, and other youth-serving organizations. The recurring record questions include who received warnings, how accused adults moved between assignments, what investigations occurred, which files were retained, and what information was disclosed.

Organizational files may show notice, assignments, internal investigations, reporting decisions, transfers, and the operation of written policies. Authentication and chronology determine what a document can prove: a record created after an event cannot establish what an administrator knew beforehand, while a contemporaneous entry may connect a warning to a later staffing or reporting decision.

Reck uses organizational records as evidence within a case and, where available, as information delivered through a remedy. Defined production categories make records usable in discovery, motion practice, settlement administration, and later disclosure.

The work includes identifying who controls the information, establishing its relevance, defining the production method, and preserving access to records after monetary terms are reached.

Current Practice

Reck practices from Jeff Anderson & Associates’ Los Angeles office and represents survivors in civil claims involving churches, schools, the Boy Scouts, and other youth-serving organizations.

His work includes organizational records, notice, assignments, investigations, reporting decisions, coordinated negotiations, claimant communication, settlement allocation, and document-production terms.

A file may establish notice, explain a transfer, support claim valuation, or become part of the relief itself. In these matters, the same document could help establish what officials knew and later be produced as part of the remedy.

Reck is admitted in California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas and before the Supreme Court of the United States.

He earned a Bachelor of Science in biology from the University of California, Irvine in 1997 and his Juris Doctor cum laude from Whittier Law School in 2000, where he served on law review and published.

He also trains advocates through the National Crime Victim Bar Association and has appeared in national reporting on litigation involving abuse within organizations.