Problem #2: simply reviving 35-year-old tort claims that are otherwise barred by the statute of limitations, aside from the basic unfairness and loss of legal certainty to others, encourages fraud on and error by the judicial system.

Solution, in Ohio S.B. 17, passed in May 2006:

Since it’s not about the money, “create a cause of action for a declaratory judgment in cases in which a victim of childhood sexual abuse is barred from bringing an ordinary civil action by the expiration of the limitations period.”  The statute of limitations still bars claims for damages; but if you want access to the justice system, go ahead and get a judicial declaration that you were abused, and perhaps the Church will decide on its own to do the right thing.

Everyone’s happy–except the trial lawyers. (h/t A.K. (not the judge))

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Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States this week will be the first papal visit since the Roman Catholic Church abuse scandal broke in 2002. Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s top diplomat in the United States, expresses confidence that the pope will address the scandal while here. Trial lawyers, however, having been asking legislatures for years to address the problem in their own particular way: more lawsuits. That proposed solution, through undoing statutes of limitations and permitting new lawsuits over long-ago crimes, creates more problems than it solves, and hurts more than just the actors responsible for those crimes.

Reviver legislation is pending in six states, and has been proposed in many more.

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The controversy over whether and how to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations at the Democratic National Convention shows the danger of changing rules midstream and upsetting settled expectations. Reviver statutes not only obviate statutes of limitations, which are a critical aid to justice, by “reviving” claims that have expired or never existed, but they can also pose the danger of undoing the benefits of future prospective legislation. In evaluating laws, the issue is not merely one of retroactivity, but of the importance of promoting legal certainty. For example, the FISA Amendments Act, S. 2248, while ostensibly acting retroactively to grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s antiterror surveillance program, works to protect settled expectations.

Among matters discussed: litigation against the Catholic church over child abuse by priests and the Michigan legislature’s proposed retroactive repeal of pharmaceutical tort reform in H.R. 4045. Walter has previously discussed the subject.

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