Case Title: Kopalchick v. Catholic Diocese of Richmond

Citation: 

Docket Number: 

State: virginia

Court: Virginia Supreme Court

Date: 2007-06-08T00:00:00Z

Document:
Present:  Hassell, C.J., Lacy, Keenan, Koontz, Kinser, and 
Lemons, JJ., and Russell, S.J. 
 
STEPHEN KOPALCHICK 
             OPINION BY 
SENIOR JUSTICE CHARLES S. RUSSELL 
v.  Record No. 061368  
            June 8, 2007 
 
CATHOLIC DIOCESE OF RICHMOND 
 
FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF RICHMOND 
Walter W. Stout, III, Judge 
 
 
This appeal requires us to construe Code § 8.01-249(6), 
which governs the accrual date of the statute of limitations 
for personal injury resulting from sexual abuse that occurred 
during the infancy or incapacity of the victim.  Specifically, 
the question before us is whether the statutory change in the 
accrual date affects the rights of a defendant that is not a 
“natural person.” 
Facts and Proceedings 
 
Stephen Kopalchick brought an action to recover damages 
for personal injury against six defendants, including “The 
Catholic Diocese of Richmond, a religious corporation.”1  His 
motion for judgment asserted that he had been sexually abused 
from 1962 to 1966, when he was between the ages of 10 and 14 
years, by two priests employed and governed by the defendant 
diocese.  He alleged that he had not been aware, until 2002, 
that the severe mental, emotional and physical injuries from 
                     
1 The motion for judgment alternatively describes the 
diocese as a “religious association.” 
 
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which he suffered were the result of the sexual abuse 
committed upon him by the priests in the 1960’s.  His claim 
for damages against the diocese was based upon theories of 
respondeat superior, negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and 
“negligent misrepresentation.” 
 
The diocese filed a plea in bar of the statute of 
limitations.  The circuit court sustained the plea and 
dismissed the case with prejudice.2  We awarded the plaintiff 
an appeal. 
Analysis 
A. Background 
 
 
The long-standing statute of limitations for personal 
injury in Virginia has been the two-year period now set forth 
in Code § 8.01-243(A).  In general, the limitation period 
begins to run when the right of action accrues, which is “the 
date the injury is sustained in the case of injury to the 
person . . . and not when the resulting damage is discovered.”  
Code § 8.01-230.  A person who is an infant at the time the 
cause of action accrued can sue upon it “within the prescribed 
                     
2 The court’s order dismissed the case as to all six 
defendants.  Four of the original defendants were never served 
with process.  The fifth original defendant, the bishop of the 
diocese, was served but later retired.  The current bishop of 
the diocese became a party by substitution for his predecessor 
in office.  The plaintiff appeals only the dismissal of the 
diocese, not the other five defendants. 
 
 
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limitation period after such disability is removed.”  Code 
§ 8.01-229(A)(1).  Thus, prior to 1991, a plaintiff who was 
injured by sexual abuse while a child could bring an action up 
until his twentieth birthday, but not thereafter. 
B. 
 The 1991 Amendment 
 
The General Assembly, by 1991 Acts, ch. 674, effective 
July 1, 1991, enacted the following provisions: 
 
In actions for injury to the person, whatever 
the theory of recovery, resulting from sexual abuse 
occurring during the infancy or incompetency of the 
person, [the cause of action shall be deemed to 
accrue] when the fact of the injury and its causal 
connection to the sexual abuse is first communicated 
to the person by a licensed physician, psychologist, 
or clinical psychologist.  However, no such action 
may be brought more than ten years after the later 
of (i) the last act by the same perpetrator which 
was part of a common scheme or plan of abuse or (ii) 
removal of the disability of infancy or 
incompetency. 
 
. . . . 
 
[T]he provisions of subdivision 6 of § 8.01-249 
shall apply to all actions filed on or after July 1, 
1991, without regard to when the act upon which the 
claim is based occurred provided that no such claim 
which accrued prior to July 1, 1991, shall be barred 
by application of those provisions if it is filed 
within one year of the effective date of this act. 
 
 
In Starnes v. Cayouette, 244 Va. 202, 419 S.E.2d 669 
(1992), we held both the foregoing provisions to be 
unconstitutional because they violated the due process 
guarantees of Article I, § 11 of the Constitution of Virginia. 
Id., at 212, 419 S.E.2d at 675.  We reached that conclusion in 
 
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the light of a series of our decisions dating back to 1876 in 
which we had held that the legislature could not, by 
retroactive enactments, interfere with either vested or 
substantive rights.  In Starnes, we concluded that the right 
to interpose the defense of the statute of limitations was a 
substantive property right, constitutionally protected from 
infringement by retroactive legislation.  Id. at 209, 419 
S.E.2d at 673. 
C.  The Constitutional Amendment 
 
In the wake of Starnes, the General Assembly in the next 
two successive years, Acts 1993, ch. 892 and Acts 1994, chs. 
405 and 818, approved and submitted to a vote of the people 
the following proposed constitutional amendment: 
 
The General Assembly's power to define the 
accrual date for a civil action based on an 
intentional tort committed by a natural person 
against a person who, at the time of the intentional 
tort, was a minor shall include the power to provide 
for the retroactive application of a change in the 
accrual date.  No natural person shall have a 
constitutionally protected property right to bar a 
cause of action based on intentional torts as 
described herein on the ground that a change in the 
accrual date for the action has been applied 
retroactively or that a statute of limitations or 
statute of repose has expired. 
 
 
The amendment was ratified by a vote of the people at the 
general election of November 8, 1994 and became effective 
January 1, 1995.  It now appears as the fourth paragraph of 
Article IV, § 14 of the Constitution of Virginia. 
 
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D.  The Present Statute 
 
Pursuant to the constitutional amendment, the General 
Assembly amended and reenacted Code § 8.01-249(6) in 1995, in 
1996, and again in 1997.  Pursuant to 1997 Acts, chs. 565 and 
801, Code § 8.01-249(6) was cast in its present form effective 
on January 1, 1998. It now provides in pertinent part:  
[The cause of action shall be deemed to accrue in 
actions] for injury to the person, whatever the 
theory of recovery, resulting from sexual abuse 
occurring during the infancy or incapacity of the 
person, upon removal of the disability of infancy or 
incapacity as provided in § 8.01-229 or, if the fact 
of the injury and its causal connection to the 
sexual abuse is not then known, when the fact of the 
injury and its causal connection to the sexual abuse 
is first communicated to the person by a licensed 
physician, psychologist or clinical psychologist. 
 
 
The plaintiff argues that a plain reading of this 
section leads to the inevitable conclusion that the 
circuit court erred in sustaining the plea in bar.  He 
argues that the priests sexually abused him while he was 
under the disability of infancy, that although he was 
injured then, he suppressed knowledge of the injury and 
did not become aware of the fact of his injury or of the 
causal connection between the sexual abuse and the injury 
until informed of them by a psychologist in 2002.  His 
cause of action then accrued, and the limitation period 
only then began to run.  He brought this action in 2003, 
and contends that it was therefore timely. 
 
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The diocese argues that the statute can only be 
construed in light of the constitutional enabling 
provision under which it was adopted.  That amendment to 
the Constitution, quoted above, read as a whole, 
restricts its application to “natural persons.”  
Therefore, the diocese argues, Code § 8.01-249(6) must be 
read as applying only to “natural persons,” a category to 
which the diocese does not belong.  Thus, the argument 
concludes, in the case of a defendant that is not a 
“natural person,” the former state of the law remains in 
effect, and a plaintiff’s right of action is barred on 
his 20th birthday.  The plaintiff in the present case 
passed that date more than 30 years before filing this 
action. 
 
A “natural person” has been defined as “a human 
being, as opposed to an artificial or juristic entity.” 
Shawmut Bank, N.A. v. Valley Farms, 610 A.2d 652, 655 
(Conn. 1992); “a human being, as distinguished from an 
artificial person created by law.”  Industry to Industry, 
Inc. v. Hillsman Modular Molding, Inc., 633 N.W.2d 245, 
249 (Wis. App. 2001).  The term “diocese” refers to a 
 
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territorial subdivision,3 now defined as “the territorial 
unit of [a] church, governed by a bishop."  Black's Law 
Dictionary 490 (8th ed. 2004).  In oral argument, counsel 
for the diocese referred to it as an “ecclesiastical 
construct.”  Plaintiff’s counsel did not contend that it 
was a “natural person,” but characterized it as an 
“association of natural persons.”  We hold that the 
diocese is not a “natural person” as the term is used in 
the constitutional amendment. 
 
The purpose of the constitutional amendment is 
clear:  To empower the General Assembly to make a 
retroactive change in the accrual date of the right of 
action for childhood sexual abuse, extending it from the 
date the injury was sustained to the date the injured 
person was made aware by a licensed professional of the 
fact of the injury and that the childhood sexual abuse 
was its cause.  Under our holding in Starnes, that was a 
power the General Assembly lacked before the effective 
date of the constitutional amendment.  As with any grant 
of power made by the people to their government, the 
people have the right to limit or circumscribe the grant 
                     
3 Derived from the Latin dioecesis, "an administrative 
division of a country."  Webster’s Third New International 
Dictionary 636 (1993). 
 
 
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as they may see fit.  In this case, the people of 
Virginia limited the grant in two ways: the circumstances 
to which it was to apply and the type of defendant who 
would be affected.  First, the people expressly limited 
the ambit of the constitutional amendment to “an 
intentional tort committed by a natural person.”  Then, 
in contemplation of the constitutional protection given 
by Starnes to a defendant’s right to interpose the bar of 
the statute of limitations in such cases, the people went 
further and removed the defendant’s “constitutionally 
protected property right to bar a cause of action based 
on intentional torts as described herein on the ground 
that a change in the accrual date for the action has been 
applied retroactively or that a statute of limitations or 
statute of repose has expired.”  Significantly, the 
people expressly limited the legislative power to remove 
that constitutional right, restricting application of the 
power to defendants who are natural persons. 
The office and purpose of the constitution is 
to shape and fix the limits of governmental 
activity.  It thus proclaims, safeguards and 
preserves in basic form the pre-existing laws, 
rights, mores, habits and modes of thought and life 
of the people as developed under the common law and 
as existing at the time of its adoption to the 
extent and as therein stated. 
 
Its interpretation and construction are to be 
made with recognition of the fact that it is based 
 
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upon and announces the fundamental theory and 
principles of sovereignty and government as 
developed under the common law. 
 
The constitution must be viewed and construed 
as a whole, and every section, phrase and word given 
effect and harmonized if possible. 
 
. . . . 
 
The purpose and object sought to be attained by 
the framers of the constitution is to be looked for, 
and the will and intent of the people who ratified 
it is to be made effective. 
 
Dean v. Paolicelli, 194 Va. 219, 226, 72 S.E.2d 506, 510-11 
(1952) (internal citations omitted). 
 
Applying those principles, we are of opinion that the 
intent of the framers of the constitutional amendment, and of 
the people ratifying it, was to empower the General Assembly 
to remove the constitutionally protected right of a defendant 
to bar a cause of action on the grounds stated in the 
amendment only in cases where the defendant is a “natural 
person.”  With respect to a defendant that is not a “natural 
person,” the pre-existing state of the law, as interpreted in 
Starnes, continues in effect. 
 
In construing a statute, it is the duty of the courts so 
to construe its language as to avoid a conflict with the 
constitution.  Jeffress v. Stith, 241 Va. 313, 317, 402 S.E.2d 
14, 16 (1991).  We attribute to the legislature the intent to 
enact laws that conform to the constitution in all respects.  
 
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Applying that principle, we construe Code § 8.01-249(6) to 
apply only to a defendant who is a “natural person,” as 
authorized by the constitutional amendment. 
Conclusion 
 
Because the diocese is not a “natural person,” Code 
§ 8.01-249(6) has no effect upon its constitutionally 
protected right to rely on the bar of the statute of 
limitations.  We find no error in the decision of the circuit 
court and will therefore affirm its judgment. 
Affirmed.