A Manhattan judge told an attorney for the scandal-plagued Horace Mann school Thursday that the elite institution was likely to lose its $1.1 million case against its insurance company to recoup payouts to two sex-abuse victims.
“They’ve got some good defenses here,” Judge Charles Ramos told Horace Mann attorney Howard Epstein, giving a nod to the insurers’ lawyer.
The whispered sidebar at the judge’s bench was loud enough to be overheard by reporters in the courtroom.
During pretrial oral arguments, the judge, an alumnus of the Bronx prep school who took the case despite a defense motion he recuse himself, tripped up Epstein in an apparent lie.
Ramos had asked Epstein if school trustees knew about a 1993 letter from a senior telling administrators about a serial molester and music teacher, the late Johannes Somary.
“There’s no evidence of that,” Epstein stated.
Moments later, Ramos leafed through the case file and revealed, “There was a meeting with trustees regarding the BB,” the judge said, referring to the victim, Ben Balter, who committed suicide in 2009 at age 32.
“Well, some trustees,” Epstein admitted.
“One will do,” the judge replied, noting that the school had an obligation to tell its insurance company of the reported abuse when trustees learned about Balter’s letter.
The three insurance companies that are defendants in the case are all divisions of giant AIG. They are refusing to compensate Horace Mann for claims related to the settlements, accusing the school of negligence for failing to prevent the abuse.
Twenty-five victims were paid off last spring to keep quiet about the abuse that stretched from the 1970s through the 1990s.
The $41,000-a-year school counts former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and publishing titan Si Newhouse as alumni.
Epstein defended the school’s inaction. “The letter merely states that a particular teacher committed inappropriate behavior. That’s all the letter says and it ended there,” Epstein said.
Balter’s mother, Dr. Kathleen Howard, a teacher at the school, told The New York Times that Somary passionately kissed her son during a class trip to Europe.
The music teacher, who died in 2011, allegedly molested 11 students, according to a survivor’s group.
Epstein also dodged questions by the judge about whether the trustees conducted an investigation when they learned of the abuse allegations in 1993.