With all of the attention focused on Philadelphia, last week, we missed a couple of notes coming from Los Angeles:

A rather complicated decision from a court, ruling that while summaries of priests’ malfeasance worked out in confidential mediation processes could not be released to the public, that did not mean that the underlying files themselves could not be released.

Lawyers for both plaintiffs and the Church ask for trials, blaming insurors for delays and the failure to reach a settlement:

Lawyers asked a judge Friday to order nine clergy-abuse cases against the Los Angeles Archdiocese to trial within the next nine months.

Attorneys for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony and for their opponents, who represent more than 560 people suing the archdiocese for allegedly failing to protect them from predatory priests, teamed in the request, saying efforts to settle the lawsuits had stalled.

The two sides, along with the archdiocese’s insurers, have been at the negotiating table for nearly three years, trying to hammer out a global legal settlement that could approach $1 billion.

Both the archdiocese’s and the plaintiffs’ attorneys blame the impasse on the insurers, which have sued, demanding that the archdiocese hand over documents about the alleged sexual abuse by priests.

"We are not able to get anywhere near the levels of sincere participation from our carriers," said attorney J. Michael Hennigan, who represents Mahony.

"Unfortunately, we haven’t made, frankly, any progress at all over the past nine months," plaintiffs’ attorney Raymond P. Boucher told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Haley J. Fromholz. An insurance representative could not be reached for comment.

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