Dodgers offer compromise to Bryan Stow bankruptcy claim

The Dodgers late Thursday proposed a compromise that would let attorneys for Bryan Stow proceed with their litigation against the team.

Stow is the San Francisco Giants fan beaten and critically injured in the Dodger Stadium parking lot last year. His attorneys have said he will need lifelong medical care and cited $50 million as a “conservative total estimate” of his damages.

Stow’s attorneys filed a civil suit against the Dodgers in Los Angeles Superior Court and a subsequent claim against the team in U.S. Bankruptcy Court.

With the civil case on hold, the Dodgers last month asked the Bankruptcy Court to throw out Stow’s claim and find that the team could not be held liable because stadium security was at record levels and the attack could not have been reasonably foreseen.

In turn, Stow’s attorneys objected, arguing in part that the Dodgers were trying to use the Bankruptcy Court to execute an end run around the civil trial, where a jury would hear the case.

In Thursday’s filing, the Dodgers offered to defer to the Superior Court upon three conditions -- that Stow does not oppose the team’s emergence from bankruptcy; that Stow waits until that emergence to proceed with the civil suit; and that Stow seeks to recover damages only from the Dodgers’ insurance carriers and not from the defendants themselves. Dodgers owner Frank McCourt is one of the defendants in the civil suit.

The Dodgers are “fully insured for any liability (other than payment of a $25,000 deductible) that may exist in connection with the Stow Claim, even assuming that the Claimants’ own ‘conservative’ estimate of $50 million in potential liability is remotely accurate,” according to the Dodgers’ filing.

A hearing on the issue is set next Wednesday.

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