If approved, it will pay victims according to a formula, said Richard D. Emery, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs.

The company emerged from bankruptcy in 1988 after a court had created a trust fund to pay victims.

"We're going to get to the day when decisions are going to have to be made about whether the church's resources should go to paying victims or ministering to the needy."

And Wyeth, the marketer of fen-phen, faces continuing legal battles with plaintiffs who opted out of a settlement program that pays victims from a $3.75 billion trust fund.

Registration fees are used by the department to pay victims who have no other recourse for a financial settlement.

His mansionin Yorba Linda will be sold to pay victims, but he appears to have few other hard assets, the authorities say.

The financial "killing" being made by the Administrators is reducing the resources [£70 million] left to pay dying victims.

The reason the archdiocese cited was that it could not pay those claims without compromising its ability to pay other victims.

It may be possible to reduce the share of oil revenue going to pay victims of Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.