Morgan A. Stewart
Survivor Rights · School-System Claims · Collective Mediation
Negotiating the $880 Million Settlement
On October 16, 2024, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and plaintiffs' liaison counsel announced an $880 million settlement of 1,353 childhood-sexual-abuse claims. Combined with $740 million in earlier settlements, including the global settlement in 2007, it brought the total committed to survivors past $1.5 billion.
Morgan A. Stewart led the negotiations as one of four plaintiff liaison counsel, alongside J. Michael Reck, Raymond Boucher, and Spencer Lucas. The claims had been revived by California's Assembly Bill 218, which opened a three-year window for survivors whose abuse dated back decades. Time was the enemy on every side of the table. Dozens of survivors had already died; others were aging, as were the people with knowledge of what the church had known. As Stewart put it when the deal was announced: "It was time to get this resolved."
The Shape of the Deal
The mediation began in fall 2023 and produced its resolution outside bankruptcy — a deliberate achievement, not an accident. A Chapter 11 filing would have meant years of delay and tens of millions of dollars in administrative costs drawn from the same pool meant for survivors. The liaison team's task was to reach the highest number the archdiocese could fund without tipping into that outcome, and then to carry the agreement through roughly one hundred separate plaintiffs' firms and their clients for approval.
The architecture mattered as much as the amount. Allocation of the fund among 1,353 claims — each with its own history, evidence, and damages — was placed in an independent process, outside the archdiocese's control. A separate term required supplemental production of clergy files, so that compensation and access to the archdiocese's records ran on distinct tracks within the same resolution. Liaison counsel coordinated the claimant group, the mediation positions, the settlement terms, and communication across the survivor lawyers and their clients throughout.
The archdiocese completed its final settlement payments on April 1, 2026, satisfying its funding obligation while the independent allocation process governed each survivor's distribution. In the liaison counsel's words when the agreement was announced, "there is justice in accountability."
A Voice in the Criminal Case
Long before a civil settlement is possible, a survivor is a victim and witness in someone else's proceeding — the state's prosecution — with rights that go unused unless someone asserts them. Stewart serves as a Marsy's Law representative for survivors during related criminal cases, a role distinct from the prosecutor's: protecting the rights held by the person harmed, with advice independent of the government's litigation strategy.
California's Constitution gives crime victims rights to fairness and respect, reasonable protection, notice, consultation in specified circumstances, attendance, an opportunity to be heard at sentencing and other proceedings, restitution, and the return of property. Stewart puts those provisions to work — and, just as important, helps survivors understand how participation and disclosure in the criminal process can affect their privacy and a later civil claim. Early representation preserves notice, access, a contemporaneous account, and records before the criminal file hardens into its final form. The survivor keeps distinct choices and remedies in each forum, and Stewart keeps them from being traded away by default.
The Wrestling Cases and the Districts
Stewart's school-system work runs on a conviction: the coach or teacher is never the whole story. In the Torrance Unified School District matter — the "Wrestling Cases" — he represented student survivors and built the case around the district itself: its hiring, its supervision, the warnings it had received, and how it responded. The multi-victim litigation settled on the eve of trial for $31 million.
His district cases have reached across Barstow, Los Angeles, Redlands, and Riverside, with reported resolutions ranging from individual multimillion-dollar agreements to the Torrance settlement. Each district presented its own record — screening and hiring practices, prior information, campus control, reporting duties, record retention, administrative response — and each survivor presented a distinct history and set of injuries. Stewart's work joined the two: the personal account and the organizational file, matched and proved together, then resolved on the strength of the evidence developed in that specific matter.
Continuity Across Proceedings
The through-line of Stewart's practice is that a survivor should never have to start over. Marsy's Law representation protects participation in the public prosecution. Civil litigation establishes who was responsible and seeks compensation. Collective mediation and allocation distribute a common fund according to each claimant's evidence. The forums change; the survivor's account, records, and choices travel intact from one to the next, with Stewart guarding the boundaries between them.
Current Practice
Stewart is a partner at Manly, Stewart, Finaldi & Thom in Irvine. His practice includes civil survivor claims, school-system and organizational-supervision cases, Marsy's Law representation, individual negotiations, mediation, and collective settlement coordination.
He graduated from San Diego State University in 1996 and earned his law degree from Pepperdine University School of Law in 2000, and is admitted in California, Texas, and New York.