Delbarton back after $5M verdict, opposing sanctions
By: William Westhoven
Morristown Daily Record
USA today Network - New Jersey
..... A former student who was awarded $5 million in a landmark clergy sexual abuse trial against the Delbarton School is back in court against his alma mater, trading replies to his recent motion to impose additional sanctions against the elite, all-boys; school and the Catholic order of monks that operate it.
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Attorneys for the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey, which operates the school and St. Mary's Abbey on the Morris Township campus, denied they withheld key evidence during the case, in a reply brief to a judge in Morris County on May 14. [2026] the notion by the former student they wrote, operates "as an improper collateral attempt to revisit and undermine, determinations that have since been formally adjudicated by both the jury and this court."
..... Attorneys for the former student, identified in court records only as T.M., field a response on May 18 [2026] to the Delbarton response, writing that the school's defense 'does not dispute that additional responsive investigative reports, in fact, exists and were withheld" during the civil trial that began in September. [2025]
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T.M. now 65, testified at the time that he was sexually assaulted at age 15 at the school by the Rev. Richard Lott, a monk, former teacher and maintenance director at Delbarton. The trauma from that might "follows me around like a dark cloud," he said. A six-member jury agreed, delivering a unanimous verdict on October 15 [2025] against Lott and the Order of St. Benedict of New Jersey. T.M.'s attorneys then urged jurors during the punitive phase of the trial to punish the school and the order for creating "a culture of abuse and a culture of silence." But after five hours of deliberation over two days, the same jury decided unanimously against imposing punitive damages in addition to the $5 million compensatory award.
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T.M.'s lawsuit was the first to go to trial among 39 pending abuse cases against Delbarton. It was also believed to be the first clergy abuse suit involving a Catholic Church entity to reach a courtroom in New Jersey, where hundreds of other cases have been field alleging the church covered up violations for decades.
A decade of historic litigation
..... Delbarton attorneys now say T.M's quest for additional sanctions is inappropriate after "a hard-fought case litigated over nearly a decade, overseen by both the courts and a Special Discovery Master of extraordinary qualification."
..... "Throughout that process, OSBNJ participated fully in the discovery process established by the Court," they argued.
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They also downplayed accusations of withholding reports produced by a private investigator hired by the order, saying they were "withheld on the basis of a good-faith assertion of privilege, a position that OSBNJ maintained consistently and in accordance with its understanding of its obligations."
..... Information in those reports, they added, was already available to T.M.'s legal team.
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"Finally, and perhaps most significantly, plaintiff has not demonstrated that the four withheld reports would have changed the outcome of trial on these issues," they wrote. T.M.'s attorneys disagreed, maintaining that the order's "conduct was both willful and profoundly prejudicial to plaintiff."
..... "The opposition filed by OSBNJ says more in what it does not say than what it does," they wrote. "Instead of meaningful addressing the core ins conduct at issue, OSBNJ raises a host of distractions and characteristically, many of which deliberately blur distinct proceedings across the consolidated maters in an effort to obscure what actually occurred in the T.M. case."
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Attorney for Lott did not respond to a request for comment. the defendants denied any wrongdoing thorough out the trial. Lott said he was serving at a Jersey Shore church on the night T.M. says the priest assaulted him.