BROOKLYN, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) - Lawsuits over childhood sex abuse necessarily contain details that are graphic and uncomfortable but shouldn’t be stripped from the complaint under a law prohibiting “scandalous or prejudicial matter” from lawsuits, a New York appeals court ruled in a case involving allegations against a Catholic-school basketball coach.
Saying it was addressing an untested issue under the Child Victims Act, a 2019 law that extended the time limit for filing sex abuse claims, New York’s Second Appellate Division said plaintiffs can include details about their own abuse as well as information about other victims unless the allegations relate to events long after the plaintiff’s own claims.
“Allegations of sexual abuse are, by their nature, definition, and essence, scandalous and prejudicial on some obvious level,” the appeals court ruled in a Dec. 8 decision. “At the same time, factual averments about sexual abuse are necessary in any action where those allegations form the predicate for an award of damages.”
The Catholic Church was flooded with claims after the CSA extended the time limit for childhood sex-abuse lawsuits to Aug. 14, 2021. Plaintiff David Pisula sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, claiming he was abused between 1965 and 1967 by David Gaynor, then a physical education teacher and coach at Immaculate Heart of Mary in Scarsdale.
In his complaint, Pisula included a letter from Gaynor in which he says of the then-14-year-old, “I was not unkind to him in a couple of instances as claimed but I was guilty of molestation.” Gaynor said Pisula sat on his lap to call for a ride home and the coach molested him. In that same letter, Gaynor detailed his abuse of other boys before and after Pisula’s molestation.
Pisula also described the recipient of a 2014 letter from Gaynor as “another survivor of his molestation,” although the letter doesn’t describe any abuse.
In February 2020, the Archdiocese moved to strike “scandalous or prejudicial matter” from the lawsuit, including references to the alleged molestation of “others” that it said had no bearing on Pisula’s case.
The trial court rejected the Archdiocese’s motion in August 2020, ruling the information was relevant to the plaintiff’s complaint and represented “admissions against interest” by Gaynor.
The Second Appellate Division largely upheld the order. While a New York statute bars scandalous or prejudicial matter from complaints, another law requires full disclosure of information that is “material and necessary to the prosecution or defense of an action.”
“An allegation that a defendant has abused a spouse has no apparent relevance in an action brought solely for damages arising out of an arms-length breach of contract, but such an allegation has central relevance in a complaint seeking a divorce on the ground of cruel and inhuman treatment,” the appeals court observed.
The Archdiocese argued regardless of whether the plaintiff had the right to include details of his own alleged abuse in the complaint, the rule against scandalous matter should apply to allegations involving other people, especially after the events in the plaintiff’s complaint. The appeals court disagreed, except for the single paragraph of the complaint where Pisula identified another alleged victim of abuse without providing any facts to back it up.
The court also laid down what it described as “bright lines” for trial judges to follow when they consider striking scandalous material from sex-abuse cases in future. Plaintiffs are free to include factual allegations about their own sexual abuse, prior or contemporaneous incidents of abuse involving the same defendant and the defendant’s own statements that relate to the plaintiff’s claims. Courts can strike allegations about later abuse as “scandalous or prejudicial and not necessary,” the appeals court concluded.