By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

BURLINGTON - A judge set an Oct. 25 trial date for the nation's first class-action lawsuit over alleged abuse by Roman Catholic priests after two months of negotiations failed to produce a settlement.

Class-action attorney Bob Steinberg of Cincinnati said the case had already dragged on for more than a year as he pushed for a trial date.

"I would think that the one thing that would facilitate settlement in this case would be a firm trial date," he said. "Without one, I think settlement is unlikely."

Diocese attorney Carrie Huff of Chicago told the judge she would continue to pursue a settlement "in good faith" with Steinberg.

Senior Judge John Potter of Louisville urged the attorneys during a Feb. 5 hearing to try to reach a compromise, but Tuesday he seemed resigned to an eventual trial. He asked both sides to present plans on how they envisioned a trial to proceed, and set a July 12 preliminary hearing.

Filed on behalf of alleged molestation victims in the Covington Diocese since the 1950s, the lawsuit contends the diocese mishandled claims against its clergymen.

More than 30 people sat in the gallery as attorneys wrangled over several motions during the 31/2-hour hearing in Boone Circuit Court. The plaintiffs' lawyers want to force the diocese to turn over psychological records of priests - records it considers privileged. Several alleged victims also want to opt out of the class-action suit, though the deadline has passed, to negotiate on their own.

There were five lawyers representing the plaintiffs, two lawyers representing the diocese and two more lawyers representing additional victims who have reached out-of-court settlements with the diocese, or who want to enter into settlement talks.

An additional attorney hired recently by the Northern Kentucky plaintiffs was Ann Oldfather, whose Louisville-based firm was part of a legal team that negotiated a $25.7 million settlement in August on behalf of 243 plaintiffs suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Louisville.

She joins Steinberg of the Cincinnati firm of Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley, and Michael O'Hara of Crestview Hills. O'Hara helped represent John Secter, who won a $750,000 judgment against the diocese in 1995 over abuse by former priest Earl Bierman.

Lexington attorney Angela Ford, who negotiated a $4.4 million settlement for 24 sex-abuse victims who had sued the Covington Diocese in Lexington, also attended Tuesday's hearing. She opposed an attempt by class-action attorneys to get confidential settlement documents from her clients.

"These documents were required to be held in the strictest of confidence for a variety of reasons," Ford said. "First, (my clients) did not wish to establish a link, publicly, between the amount of their settlement and the seriousness of the abuse suffered, for a myriad of personal reasons." Releasing the amount of individual settlements and drawing contracts between various amounts, even without specific names, would clearly provide revealing information and would tend to cause speculation about the nature of abuse."

The Rev. Leonard Nienaber abused 20 of the 24 who settled in Lexington while he was pastor at Mary Queen of the Holy Rosary in Lexington. The abuse occurred during the 1960s and 1970s, when Lexington and Eastern Kentucky were part of the Covington Diocese. As a result, the Covington Diocese was held liable.

The Lexington Diocese, which was not created until 1988, was dismissed from the lawsuit in May, a decision that the plaintiffs had appealed.

Attorney Barb Bonar of Covington attended the hearing to ask the judge to allow seven people to be released from the class-action suit so they could enter settlement talks with the diocese.

E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com