Riverside Church Verdict: $11.3 Million Child Victims Act Award, and Why 'Reckless' Matters

The Riverside Church verdict came in on Wednesday, October 7, 2026, when a six-person Manhattan jury ordered the Riverside Church in the City of New York to pay $11.3 million to a former Riverside Hawks basketball player, identified as J.M., who was sexually abused as a 14-year-old by program director Ernest "Ernie" Lorch in 1978. The jury found the church "reckless," awarding $7.5 million for past and $3.8 million for future pain and suffering. It is the first verdict among 27 Child Victims Act lawsuits pending against one of New York's best-known institutions.

The number is the headline, but the adjective is the story for practitioners. In New York, a jury's finding that a defendant acted with reckless disregard is the gateway to an exception to the state's several-liability rule for non-economic damages, and it changes the settlement math for the roughly two dozen Riverside cases still on the docket. This analysis covers what the jury heard, what the recklessness finding does and does not do, how the award compares with other Child Victims Act verdicts, and what comes next for the church, the remaining plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs' bar.

How much was the Riverside Church verdict?

The Riverside Church verdict totals $11.3 million, all of it compensatory. Reports of the verdict describe two line items and no punitive award:

Component	Amount	Note
Past pain and suffering	$7,500,000	Covers 1978 to verdict, about 48 years
Future pain and suffering	$3,800,000	Remaining life expectancy of a 63-year-old plaintiff
Total compensatory	$11,300,000	No separate economic-loss award reported
Punitive Damages	None reported	Not part of the reported verdict
Deliberation	About five hours	Six-person jury, New York County Supreme Court
Liability finding	"Reckless"	Failure to supervise Lorch

Two features of the breakdown stand out. First, the award is weighted toward the past, which is typical in revived childhood-abuse claims where the harm stretches across decades of a plaintiff's adult life. Second, the absence of a punitive component means the entire award is the kind of non-economic damages that New York's Article 16 apportionment rules address, which is why the "reckless" finding carries so much weight (see below).

J.M., now 63, grew up in a single-parent household in the Bronx and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to trial coverage. His lawyer, Lucas Franken, said after the verdict that his client found it "gratifying to be heard" after so long, and that the jury believed him despite the passage of time.

What did the jury hear at the Riverside Church trial?

J.M. testified in state Supreme Court in lower Manhattan that Lorch abused him "eight or nine" times in the spring of 1978. He described Lorch as the dominant figure in the gym, a man to whom everyone deferred, and testified that Lorch used that status to rape and sexually assault him. He also described lasting effects, including a mistrust of religion.

The plaintiff's case against the church, as opposed to against Lorch, turned on notice and supervision. That framing traces back to how the Riverside complaints were pleaded. In an earlier decision in the companion case brought by Daryl Powell, D.P. v Riverside Church in the City of N.Y., 2023 NY Slip Op 30868(U) (Index No. 950624/2021), Justice Laurence L. Love addressed claims under CPLR 214-g for negligent supervision, negligent retention, negligent failure to warn, negligent failure to provide a safe and secure environment, and negligent failure to train coaches and staff. The court also treated the Riverside Church and the Riverside Hawks, which shared a corporate headquarters, as one and the same for purposes of the motion, defeating any argument that the basketball program was a separate entity.

Evidence developed across the Riverside cases and aired at the January 2026 Powell trial, as reported, included:

• Lorch's institutional role. Lorch began coaching the Hawks in 1961 and served on Riverside's board of deacons and board of trustees and on church committees. The church's own newsletter repeatedly touted the Hawks' success.
• Coaches who saw warning signs. Former assistant coach Deron "Sheeb" Johnson testified that he left Riverside in 1985 after finding Lorch with a young player whose shorts were pulled down, and that on his way out he asked a pastor whether he knew what was going on with the children in the program. Another former coach, James "Turtle" Williams, said in deposition testimony that he suspected Lorch's abuse.
• Other survivors. Plaintiffs lined up testimony from multiple other former players alleging abuse by Lorch.

Riverside's defense was consistent across both trials: the church had no actual or constructive notice of the abuse, Lorch was an unpaid volunteer, and, as defense counsel put it in the Powell opening, if the abuse happened it was "100 percent" Lorch's fault. In a June 2025 ruling denying the church's summary judgment motion in Powell's case, Justice Sabrina Kraus held that Riverside had not shown that it "lacked actual and/or constructive notice" or that it "properly supervised Lorch," sending the notice question to a jury. The J.M. jury has now answered it against the church.

Why did the jury find Riverside Church reckless?

The jury found Riverside reckless because, on the evidence presented, the church had reason to know of the risk Lorch posed and failed to act on it. Trial coverage reports that the jury found the church "reckless" for not supervising Lorch. That is a step beyond ordinary negligence: under the standard New York courts apply, recklessness requires acting in conscious disregard of a known or obvious risk so great that harm was highly probable, not merely a failure to exercise reasonable care.

The plaintiff's evidence fits that structure. A volunteer who sits on a church's governing boards is not a stranger to the institution. Coaches who leave because of what they saw, and who raise it with clergy on the way out, are a classic source of constructive notice. And a program that the church celebrated publicly for four decades is hard to recast as something leadership never looked at. The defense's reply, that no player ever complained to a person of authority, did not persuade the jury in J.M.'s case.

Does the reckless finding make Riverside liable for the full $11.3 million?

Potentially, yes, and that is the most important legal consequence of the verdict. New York's CPLR 1601 provides that when a defendant is found 50% or less at fault, its liability for non-economic loss (pain and suffering) is capped at its own equitable share. CPLR 1602 then lists exceptions to that cap, and CPLR 1602(7) removes the limit for any defendant held liable for causing a claimant's injury "by having acted with reckless disregard for the safety of others." The party invoking an exception must plead and prove it by a preponderance of the evidence under CPLR 1603.

In Child Victims Act cases the interaction is direct. The abuser is almost always the most culpable actor, so an institution sued for negligent supervision will often be assigned 50% or less of the fault. Without an exception, the institution would pay only that share of the non-economic damages, and the rest would be allocated to an abuser who is typically dead, judgment-proof, or both. Lorch died in 2012. A recklessness finding is how plaintiffs keep the institution on the hook for the whole award.

Two caveats apply. The public reports of the Riverside Church verdict do not disclose whether the jury was asked to apportion fault between the church and Lorch, or what percentage it assigned. If the church was found more than 50% at fault, Article 16 would not limit its liability in the first place. And recklessness findings are a frequent target on post-trial motions and appeal: New York's Court of Appeals has set aside recklessness verdicts where no rational view of the evidence supported them, and the Appellate Division has granted new trials where the pattern jury charge understated the standard. Expect the jury instruction on recklessness to be a centerpiece of any challenge.

What is the New York Child Victims Act?

The Child Victims Act (CVA), signed in February 2019, did two things. Prospectively, it extended the Statute of Limitations so survivors of childhood sexual abuse can bring civil claims until age 55. Retroactively, it added CPLR 214-g, which opened a revival window for claims that were already time-barred, regardless of when the abuse occurred. The window opened on August 14, 2019, and was originally set to close one year later; on August 3, 2020, the legislature extended it to August 14, 2021, citing the pandemic's disruption of court operations.

J.M. filed in 2019, shortly after the window opened. The claims against Riverside concern conduct from 1978, which would have been time-barred for more than four decades without the revival statute.

The volume of revived claims was large. Advocacy group Child USA has counted nearly 11,000 CVA claims filed statewide, and a substantial share target Catholic dioceses, school districts and youth organizations. New York later applied the same model to adults: the Adult Survivors Act opened a one-year window from November 24, 2022 to November 23, 2023 for claims by people who were 18 or older at the time of the abuse. Both windows are now closed, so the CVA docket is a finite inventory that courts are working through, which is why each trial verdict carries outsized signaling value.

How does the Riverside Church verdict compare with other Child Victims Act verdicts?

Child Victims Act cases mostly settle, and many diocesan claims are being resolved through bankruptcy plans, so jury verdicts are scarce data points. The Riverside award sits in the middle of the reported range:

Case	Year	Forum	Defendant	Reported award
J.M. v. Riverside Church	Oct. 2026	N.Y. Sup. Ct., New York County	Riverside Church	$11.3M ($7.5M past, $3.8M future); reckless finding
P.S. 15 case (Herman Law)	June 2026	N.Y. Sup. Ct., Kings County	City of New York	$18M; first CVA verdict against the city
Rockville Centre youth-minister case	Reported	N.Y. Sup. Ct., Long Island	Diocese of Rockville Centre	About $11.4M to two plaintiffs; negligent hiring and retention
Thore case (Lipsitz Green)	Sept. 2022	N.Y. Sup. Ct., Erie County	Rev. Douglas Thore (individual)	$30M ($15M compensatory, $15M punitive)
Grasso case	Mar. 2024	N.Y. Sup. Ct., Monroe County	Joseph Grasso (individual)	$5.4M
Herricks district case	Reported	N.Y. Sup. Ct., Nassau County	Herricks school district	Defense verdict (no negligence)

The pattern is consistent. Verdicts against individual abusers can be large but are often uncollectible; verdicts against institutions are smaller but collectible, and the institutional cases turn on notice. The Riverside Church verdict lands just below the $18 million city verdict that preceded it by four months. Several figures in the table come from plaintiff-firm announcements rather than court records, and should be read with that in mind.

How many lawsuits does Riverside Church still face?

Riverside faces roughly two dozen more cases. J.M. was one of 27 plaintiffs who sued the church alleging that Lorch abused them as children. Powell's case, the first to trial, settled on confidential terms in January 2026 just before it went to the jury. According to state court files reviewed by Sportico in August 2026, only one more case had formally settled in the six months after Powell, and a third former player had died while awaiting trial. J.M.'s case is the second Riverside case to be tried and the first to reach a verdict.

Lorch's history outside the church also informs those cases. He directed the Hawks for more than four decades before leaving amid abuse allegations in the early 2000s; a Massachusetts grand jury indicted him in October 2010 on charges tied to a 1977-78 tournament trip, but a New York judge found him not competent to be extradited in November 2011, and he died in 2012 without facing trial.

Will Riverside Church appeal the verdict?

No statement on an appeal has been reported. Riverside has consistently denied wrongdoing by the church or its officials and has said it is prepared to defend itself in the pending litigation. The usual path in New York runs through a post-trial motion under CPLR 4404 to set aside the verdict or for a new trial, followed by an appeal to the Appellate Division, First Department.

Three issues are likely to dominate. The first is the sufficiency of the notice evidence, which the church has contested since summary judgment. The second is the recklessness charge and finding, given its Article 16 consequences. The third is the size of the award: under CPLR 5501(c), the Appellate Division may order a new trial on damages unless the plaintiff accepts a reduction where an award "deviates materially from what would be reasonable compensation," measured against comparable approved verdicts. The scarcity of CVA verdicts makes that comparison contestable in both directions. Separately, New York's 9% statutory interest rate runs on personal injury awards from the date of the verdict, which adds roughly $1 million a year to the judgment while post-trial motions and an appeal are pending.

What it means for PI firms, institutions and insurers

For plaintiffs' firms holding CVA inventories. The Riverside Church verdict is a usable valuation anchor for revived abuse claims against non-diocesan institutions in New York County. The detailed proof model, governance-role evidence plus departing-staff testimony plus multiple survivor witnesses, is replicable across cases involving the same abuser. Firms working on a Contingency Fee should note that the two Riverside trials produced a mid-trial settlement and a verdict six to seven years after the 2019 filings, so time-to-resolution in these dockets remains long.

For the remaining Riverside plaintiffs. A verdict carries the practical weight a Bellwether Trial would in a Mass Tort docket, even though no court has designated it as one. It gives both sides a reference point for the next round of negotiations, and the reckless finding, if it survives, gives plaintiffs a credible path to full recovery against the church in later trials. A Global Settlement covering the remaining cases is now more likely than a string of trials.

For institutional defendants. The volunteer defense did not work. Organizations that let unpaid coaches, mentors or directors run youth programs for years, while placing them on governing boards and publicizing their success, will struggle to argue lack of notice. Defense counsel should also weigh how hard to resist recklessness charges given the Article 16 stakes, and whether to request apportionment questions that put the abuser's share before the jury.

For insurers. Coverage for 1970s occurrences often depends on historical general liability policies whose terms are unclear, and recklessness findings can sharpen disputes over expected-or-intended exclusions and the number of occurrences. Carriers with exposure to youth-program claims will treat the Riverside award as a data point on reserves.

Frequently asked questions

How much did the jury award in the Riverside Church verdict?

The jury awarded $11.3 million on October 7, 2026: $7.5 million for past pain and suffering and $3.8 million for future pain and suffering. No punitive damages were reported.

Who was Ernie Lorch?

Ernest "Ernie" Lorch was a corporate lawyer and executive who directed the Riverside Hawks youth basketball program at Riverside Church for more than four decades, starting as coach in 1961. He served on the church's boards of deacons and trustees, was indicted in Massachusetts in 2010 on abuse charges he never faced at trial, and died in 2012.

Why was the church held liable rather than only Lorch?

The jury found the church reckless in supervising Lorch. Plaintiffs argued Riverside had actual or constructive notice of the abuse through Lorch's governance roles and coaches who left the program after seeing misconduct, and the jury accepted that the church failed to act.

Can other people still sue under the Child Victims Act?

The revival window under CPLR 214-g closed on August 14, 2021, so new claims for long-past abuse can no longer be revived under that provision. Survivors of childhood sexual abuse can still bring civil claims until age 55 under the CVA's extended limitations period, depending on when the abuse occurred.

How many Riverside Church cases are left?

J.M. was one of 27 plaintiffs. After the Powell settlement in January 2026, one more case formally settled and three plaintiffs have died while their cases were pending, leaving roughly two dozen cases unresolved.

Is the Riverside Church verdict final?

No. The church can move to set aside the verdict and appeal to the Appellate Division, First Department, where the recklessness finding and the size of the award are the most likely targets. No appeal has been announced.