Legal News

On Statutes of Limitations in Sex-Abuse Cases

By Ashby Jones

We’ll admit it. We really never thought we’d see an interesting article in a mainstream news publication about statutes of limitations, the old staple of first-year civil procedure classes. But lo and behold, the WSJ’s Suzanne Sataline has pulled it off.

In the Law Journal column on Thursday, Sataline wrestles with the question of whether statutes of limitation should be retroactively modified to allow victims of child abuse to sue their abusers. A handful of legislatures have grappled with that question, as it turns out, and said yes.

In 2002, California allowed victims one year to file cases against their abuser or the employer, no matter when the abuse had occurred. Delaware followed suit in 2007, giving people two years to bring accusations in civil court. This year, New York state legislators have been debating a one-year statute.

But is this a good thing? Some plaintiffs attorneys say that the nature of sexual abuse — which some victims, such as children, are too ashamed to report — compels state governments to give victims an added legal opportunity to confront their abusers.

But defense attorneys say many of the abuse cases that were brought in California and now in Delaware name perpetrators and religious superiors who are dead or retired. The only point, says some attorneys, is to wrench money from the Catholic church.

The California legislation ushered in more than 800 lawsuits. The archdiocese of Los Angeles alone paid a settlement of more than $660 million in 2007 to people who said they had been abused.

Matthias Conaty, 40 years old, who says he was abused by a Capuchin Franciscan friar starting when he was 9, helped lead the effort to get the Delaware law passed. Last year, Conaty sued his alleged abuser, religious orders, a school and the Diocese of Wilmington, accusing them of gross negligence.

“It’s really in the public interest because it’s about protecting children today,” Mr. Conaty says. “Some institutions have changed the way they screen people. They’ve been much more responsive to small complaints.”

LB Readers, let’s hear your thoughts on this. Statutes of limitations exist for a reason — to allow defendants “repose” after lengthy periods of time, and to avoid lawsuits in which the evidence that could be helpful to a defendant has faded. At the same time, if the abuse happened mostly to children, perhaps they — as adults — should be given the rightful opportunity to sue? Fair arguments on both sides, we think. What think you?

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).