NEW ORLEANS (Legal Newsline) - A Louisiana law that suspended the statute of limitations for childhood sex-assault plaintiffs didn’t help a man who sued the Catholic Church over abuse he says he suffered in the mid-1960s.
The plaintiff sued under a law that wasn’t passed until long after the alleged abuse, making his claims subject to the existing deadline of one year, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled.
The high court reversed a decision by a trial judge that found the suspension of the statute of limitations unconstitutional, saying there was no reason to get to the constitutional question since the plaintiff’s complaint was invalid. That drew a dissent from the court’s Chief Justice, who said the majority should have tackled the constitutionality of the law suspending the statute of limitations.
The plaintiff, identified as T.S., alleged he was assaulted by a priest in the dormitory of Holy Cross College in 1964 and 1965, when he was 11. Holy Cross argued the lawsuit was governed by the one-year statute of limitations in place at the time for personal injury claims. If that argument failed, Holy Cross said Louisiana Act 322, which lifted the statute of limitations for three years beginning in 2021, was unconstitutional because it disturbed the “vested property right” of the church.
A trial court agreed with Holy Cross and ruled Act 322 unconstitutional. T.S. appealed, and the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed in a June 27 decision, while still delivering a victory for Holy Cross on different grounds.
T.S. had the bad luck to sue in August 2021, before the legislature amended the law to include any allegation of childhood sexual assault that had previously been barred for any reason. That meant his case was governed by then-existing law, and the statute he cited dated only to 1993.
“The face of the petition shows that T.S.’s claim was not filed within one year of the alleged sexual abuse,” the court ruled. The majority also rejected a judge-made principle of law allowing courts to “soften the occasional harshness” of statutes that prevent plaintiffs from suing. That principle is normally used only where the plaintiff was prevented from suing or couldn’t have known of the tort until later.
In this case, T.S. first contacted Holy Cross in 2008, giving him plenty of time to sue before the statute of limitations ran out, the court concluded.
Chief Justice John Weimer dissented, saying Holy Cross abandoned the statute-of-limitations defense after the trial court ruled in its favor on constitutional grounds and it wasn’t the job of the Supreme Court to revive the church’s argument to dismiss the case.
“It is clear that the constitutional issue must be addressed to resolve these parties’ dispute,” the judge wrote.