U.S. Fire Insurance has agreed to pay $30 million to 145 survivors of clergy sexual abuse connected to the Catholic Diocese of Winona-Rochester, ending a years-long standoff that forced three separate juries in Olmsted and Winona counties to decide the insurer's obligations before it would pay. The settlement, reached weeks before a fourth trial was set to begin on September 28, closes out a legal fight that stretched back decades for some of the survivors involved.
The agreement was announced by a Twin Cities law firm, according to KROC-AM News, which reported that the settlement covers claims tied to abuse allegations across southeastern Minnesota. Attorney Jeff Anderson, who represents the survivors, said U.S. Fire Insurance and the insurance industry more broadly must reckon with the cost of clergy abuse settlements. Some of the underlying claims date back to the early 1960s, and according to Anderson, certain survivors first brought claims against the diocese as early as 1982 — meaning some families waited more than four decades for this recovery.
Three Trials Forced the Insurer's Hand
The path to the $30 million settlement ran through three separate 2025 jury trials in Olmsted County Court, all stemming from abuse at Lourdes High School in Rochester and at St. Mary's Parish and School in Winona. In the first case, a Lourdes High School survivor was awarded $7.6 million in damages; a second Lourdes survivor was awarded $4.8 million. Both cases involved Father Joseph Cashman and students at the Rochester high school during the 1970s. Cashman was ordained in June 1960, served as Lourdes High School's principal from 1970 to 1977, was suspended from ministry in 1992, and died in July 2018 — with the diocese admitting legal liability for his conduct before the 2025 trials even began, per KAAL-TV.
A third case, resulting in a $4.5 million verdict after an eight-day trial in Winona County Court, involved a lay volunteer known as Brother Gene — identified as Eugene Hubert — who was accused of sexually abusing a juvenile boy at St. Mary's Parish and School in the early 1970s, when the victim was 13, according to Jeff Anderson & Associates. Combined, the three verdicts totaled roughly $16.9 million against the diocese and its parishes — money separate from what U.S. Fire Insurance has now agreed to pay.
An Insurer That Refused to Settle in 2021
This new $30 million is additive compensation, layered on top of an earlier settlement. The Diocese of Winona-Rochester filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2018 after facing 121 claims under Minnesota's Child Victims Act, making it the last of the state's six Catholic dioceses forced into bankruptcy reorganization over abuse claims, according to Catholic News Service. That bankruptcy produced a $28 million settlement fund in 2021, with $21.5 million paid directly by the diocese, its parishes, and parochial schools, and $6.5 million contributed by two other insurers, LMI and Interstate Insurance — but U.S. Fire Insurance declined to participate.
That refusal was unusual. Most Catholic diocesan bankruptcies nationwide have historically ended with consensual, multi-party agreements that release all primary insurance carriers at once, the law firm's account notes. U.S. Fire Insurance's holdout meant survivors had to keep litigating against the insurer separately for years, culminating in the three 2025 jury trials that finally produced enough pressure — and enough in verdicts — to bring the company to the table.
Settlement Lands Days Before a Fourth Trial
U.S. Fire Insurance, a subsidiary of insurance conglomerate Crum & Forster, agreed to the $30 million payout just weeks before a fourth scheduled trial over its coverage obligations was due to start September 28, according to MPR News. The timing suggests the company opted to settle rather than risk another jury verdict on top of the roughly $16.9 million already awarded across the prior trials.
The dispute in southeastern Minnesota is not an isolated one. It mirrors a growing national pattern in which Catholic dioceses — including the Archdioceses of New York and Baltimore — have taken increasingly aggressive legal action against major insurers over who ultimately bears the financial weight of historical abuse claims, per Catholic News Agency's reporting on the settlement.
A Diocese Reshaped by Decades of Litigation
The Diocese of Winona-Rochester spans 20 counties across southern Minnesota, serving nearly 115,000 Catholics across 98 parishes. In 2024, the diocese officially relocated its administrative Pastoral Center from Winona to Rochester, reflecting Rochester's status as the region's largest population center. The abuse litigation that has unfolded there over the past decade traces back to the Minnesota Child Victims Act, enacted in May 2013, which opened a temporary three-year window lifting civil statutes of limitations for old child sexual abuse claims — the same law that triggered bankruptcy filings across all six of Minnesota's Catholic dioceses.
The 145 survivors covered by the new settlement are represented by Jeff Anderson & Associates, the St. Paul law firm that Hoodline previously reported had paid a ransom after a cyberattack compromised client files tied to this same litigation last September. That breach came in the middle of the very legal battle that has now concluded with U.S. Fire Insurance's $30 million commitment to the survivors it once refused to compensate.
