$59.7 Million Penn State Global Settlement Shared by 26 Sandusky Survivors

For more than a decade, Jerry Sandusky used his position as a Penn State assistant football coach and founder of the Second Mile youth charity to gain access to boys and sexually abuse them. The conduct spanned from the mid-1990s through at least 2001. In November 2011, Sandusky was charged with 52 counts of child sexual abuse. He was convicted on 45 counts in June 2012 and sentenced to 30 to 60 years in state prison.

Civil suits against Penn State followed quickly. Plaintiffs argued the university had received warnings about Sandusky's behavior as early as 1998, when campus police investigated a complaint that went nowhere. A second incident in 2001, witnessed in a football facility shower by graduate assistant Mike McQueary, was reported up the chain of command at Penn State but never passed to law enforcement. Victims contended the university's institutional failures prolonged their exposure to abuse.

Joel Feller and Matt Casey of Ross Feller Casey took on seven clients from among the survivors, the largest number of any single law firm in the litigation. Their clients included Matt Sandusky, Jerry Sandusky's adopted son, three witnesses who had testified at the criminal trial, and the individual identified in the criminal proceedings as Victim 2, observed in the 2001 shower incident. Each case required separate negotiation, with Penn State organizing claims into tiers based on when the university first had notice of potential abuse.

On August 26, 2013, Penn State announced it had reached agreements in principle with 25 claimants in the civil proceedings. Feller and Casey confirmed all seven of their clients were among that group. Settlement amounts for individual claimants were not disclosed. By October 28, 2013, Penn State announced the global settlement figure: $59.7 million across 26 claimants, funded entirely by university liability insurance and not by tuition, donations, or public funds. Twenty-three agreements were fully executed at that point; three awaited final documentation.

Michael Rozen, the mediator hired by Penn State to manage the settlement process, noted that resolution values varied based on the timing and nature of each claim. Feller and Casey did not publicly disclose their clients' individual allocations. Penn State's total civil liability from the Sandusky scandal would eventually exceed $100 million as additional settlements were reached in subsequent years.