CARSON CITY, Nev. (Legal Newsline) - Nevada’s highest court gave judges the power to extend the state’s two-year statute of limitations in tort lawsuits, but rejected the appeal of a woman who sued her alleged attacker more than two years after she reported the sexual assault to police.
Saying it was time to expand the doctrine of equitable tolling to personal injury suits, the Nevada Supreme Court ruled that under certain circumstances plaintiffs can sue more than two years after they suffer an injury. The court said equitable tolling is acceptable in cases where the plaintiff was prevented from suing earlier due to “extraordinary circumstances” beyond their control.
The new rule didn’t apply in the case of a woman who sued the man she says attacked her after a night of drinking with the man and his wife. The threesome gathered to celebrate “a professional accomplishment,” the plaintiff said, but the took advantage of her “intoxicated state” to sexually assault her.
The alleged attack took place on New Year’s Eve in 2016. The woman went to a doctor for a rape examination the next day and reported it to police a few days later. But she didn’t sue until February 2019, after the state gave her the results of tests on the rape kit and the clothing she had been wearing the night of the attack.
That was six months after the two-year statute of limitations expired. The plaintiff argued she needed the test results to prove who her attacker was but a lower court dismissed her case, saying she already knew his identity when she reported it to the police. The Nevada Supreme Court upheld the dismissal, even as it extended equitable tolling for the first time to include personal injury suits along with other categories including employment cases.
Tolling doctrine requires plaintiffs “to at least demonstrate that, despite their exercise of diligence, extraordinary circumstances beyond their control prevented them from timely filing their claims,” the high court said in a March 11 decision written by Chief Justice James Hardesty. The plaintiff in this case “was not required to have DNA evidence before filing her civil complaint, and she could have amended her complaint, if necessary, after receiving the rape kit results.”
The court said equitable tolling should be available “when justice demands it” and judges can invoke the doctrine on their own, without statutory authority. The court went on to say it might apply in sexual assault cases where the plaintiff is “unable to confirm the identity of the assailant” in time to meet the two-year deadline.
Statutes of limitations are designed to protect defendants against having to disprove claims where evidence has disappeared, witnesses are no longer available and memories may have grown faint. Some states have extended the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases, however, under the theory victims may have been too frightened to report the crimes at the time or repressed the memory. The Boy Scouts face tens of thousands of lawsuits accusing the organization of failing to eject Scout leaders accused of sexual abuse.