school and several foundation there were claims against the school and devereaux for supervisory negligence and for breach of future duty with regard to the conduct of claudia nicholas both in the original complaint and in the first amended complaint we alleged that the school knew that claudia nicholas was a bad actress and that  conduct of stephen nicholas her husband because we had no evidence and no notice that we could say they had with regard to his conduct with the young ms hodges who was thirteen or fourteen years old when she was sexually and if you look at the complaint physically abused by claudia nicholas who was the primary perpetrator here so there is no claim seventy s and we will she contacted us in boston we're boston firm and we engaged a firm we've worked with before and it's a good firm in connecticut because when you go down the states the service rules change and we relied on them and they made the simple rules in federal court and on its face it says the action commences so they thought by filing a thirty year period would stop that is not what the what the lawyer is under irrate and we served after that so to bring a claim under that statute were out and when we saw the defendant's motions to dismiss we looked at the cases w there right but what we played in the original complaint and it shouldn't have been a surprise to defendants given the more nellie case that was out there we alleged originally that in and you find in the record appendix eighteen saying that she wasn't aware of the facts in other words she was aware wasn't she that she had been placed in imminent and reasonable apprehension of harmful  offense of contact that comes from from you or europe and they complain she was aware the acts occurred but she was thirteen years old when this started it ended when she was fourteen and what we have to try to explain both the district court and more fully here in his when you're thirteen and fourteen years old you have to develop coping mechanisms and we're not the only ones to say that are the courts it was a matter of policy it seems to me there's more of a question but that's why as a matter of policy connecticut has given people in her position thirty years from the age of majority that's true but  causal connection to harp and what what other jurisdictions have found is when this happens to a child they don't understand that it causes harm to stand that but that is exactly what animates the explained when that when the statute was seventeen years they said a couple of things and marginally bench said a couple of things first that when it's a longer statute of limitations there is less harm if if there's a fraudulent concealment because it's not extending a short period of time for which the that is that is thought more valued and in so in mar that's so there is the fortune concealment out as you've argued but as i understand it under connecticut law it's not just that the defendant's concealment was purposeful it's got to be that's got to be a  told the district court was we could amend the complaint to say that notice was given to the school at that time about claudia's conduct and she was fired and and with the intent of this being covered up and that the plaintiffs never being noticed they never reached out to the family that i know the extent of the problem here so she could get therapy then so that for the next thirty years she didn't have this problem and i ask you this if i might i understand that in your reply brief you make the causal connection argument yes could you help me i can't find in your opening brief or in the in the record itself in any single instance where you make that causal connection argument which you make in the reply brief am i missing  something we explained the facts to the judge we may not have laid it out as neatly as as we could have and this is why if we had been given an opportunity to amend the complaint and fully briefed before the district court wide there's a causal  here and why she did not understand she she didn't discover the cause of the problems she had for those thirty years was this first what she thought was a love relationship children have to put this in some five ninety five roger we consume that statute and you plead the reasons why that statute provides you relief right i know there's a dispute here about whether this report was correct in saying that martin only has been adopted by the connecticut courts but the cases including martin earlier summary judgment cases the pleading cases in the federal courts see it doesn't seem to have the side of that issue who's got the burden of pleading the elements of fifty two five ninety five but even if even if it's on the divan that you pled those allegations in paragraph twenty eight the specific allegations while you benefit from that statute so can we look at those allegations to see if you've made as fission basis for invoking that statu yes and also what we offered the district court in terms of how we could amend the complaint the second time second why would you imagine a second time in the way it worked was you filed a complaint the senate said statue of limitations you said ok defensively against an affirmative defense but given that five seven seven during the thirty years that you could not apply here we've conceded that then the only way this case survives is if there was fraudulent concealment all the way fraudulent concealment can apply here as a number of other jurisdictions have found and under connecticut's discovery rules with regard to the need to understand that your harm was caused by this and connecticut has not developed for instance i'm very familiar with massachusetts we used the two sixty four c we cite used to be a three year rule so there were a number of cases that said what does the the victim make the connection to understand they were harm because that's what it accrues and that developed over a number of years and so i'm very familiar with that in connecticut instead of a three year rule for a long time that seventeen years and thirty years so people weren't bringing the cases the law wasn't developing a the only case that really touched on this was more nellie and this now because of the way it was filed again and the facts of this case indicate that it is fraudulent concealment because when you abuse sexually abuse a thirteen and fourteen year old they have to they have to cope with that in some way and what that results in is there's no understand landing that all the psychological problems she has next thirty years were caused by this until she tells her friend in two thousand and thirteen you know i had this relationship with the school nurse how old were you thirteen then he tells her that's abuse she had no understand  concluded that you needed to plead with a little bit more specificity the nexus between the forging the concealment and the litigation so the reason the school concealed was to percent of the cases they never really forget it but they never understand the causal connection in the suppression cases and other jurisdictions have found well they can't accrue because you have no appreciation of the course of the harm and so what happens here is you have a thirteen and fourteen year old brutally sexually abuse doesn't just put it aside as well that was my first relationship my first sexual relationship and until somebody tells at thirty years later does she make the causal connection and that's really how we see the case and as i started at the very beginning this was not this was not something new were fabricated because we allege they had hid it from her in the very first complaint but we didn't think we had a plead for concealment when we of whether there was a psychological or emotional injury as a result of the alleged facts the facts on selves on the face are horrific facts however there's also allegations of physical abuse physical actions that occur whether there is an understanding of emotional or psychological damage there absolutely was understanding of physical injury from those acts and so the causal connection of understanding or delayed understanding of the emotional or psychological impact does not dispute that the appellate missed the stature of the patients in this case and there's no dispute that she was aware of the necessary facts to bring that case because she did in fact bring the complaint to the court and filed it with the facts the underlying  use only after special occasions had been discovered to have run the bring the fraudulent concealment claim to the attention by pleading it in paragraph twenty eight as a result of that the next question is when did she learn of those facts when did she marinelli i don't believe it has been adopted and i don't believe that the connecticut's court has allowed has agreed that there should be a burden shift but separate from that your honor those allegations do not speak to the t nature of the allegations that is alleged in the complaint as to what occurred between the squad in the cols and massages there in the vagueness relates specifically to the inappropriate relationship with others and notably absent from that allegation is with minors yet the plain of does include the word minors and other allegations concerning what miss nichols behavior and her reputation was by claiming that she was a danger to minors therefore that absence i think speaks volumes i don't think that's a mistake your honor others as judge understood pointed out in his decision they could have been adults in fact they very well may have been and that does not necessarily put anyone on notice that there's a danger to minors the issue that someone is a danger to minors is a conclusion restatement there's no facts to specifically identify why someone of an employer situation should expect or believe that a nurse would be a danger to minors what is it the question looms what is it that she did or didn't diagnoses under and some were just merely difficult people who were difficult children who had behavior issues because of experiences they may have had the home but there was no particular psychological mental health diagnosis there was a specialist school for addressing those kinds the other allegations in the complaint such as a boundary violations do not identify what that is mr nichols was a nurse boundary violations is a term that would be used concerning medical malpractise would be a violation of passing initial opportunity to allege the facts when they filed their man the complaint they had the opportunity to propose amendments during oral argument and after oral argument after hearing what judge underhill requested of them and actually invited them to propose additional before he reaches decision a motion could have been filed seeking to further amend and add the allegations that essentially they claim they understood mr hodges is in the position to know what those allegations work i'm curious about one thing you said kersey the supreme court that the burden shift was mentioned by the federal court and the second circuit however it did not pass whether or not it was going to adopt the federal prediction of of whether or not  specifically said that they were not commenting on it at that time at during that opportunity the supreme court could have raw forth their thought process or could of in the foot no even identified that there may be certain facts or certain fact patterns where it and the second circuit's ruling on that issue the supreme court in connecticut has still not adopted it knowing that it happened and that's essentially as of today eighteen years later so given that opportunity we know that i think that prediction  frankly i think was probably not right although accurate at the time i think we now know more and that the state court would have adopted plaintiff strains plausibility that the plaintiff would not have at least been on what the judge called inquiry notice and the judge also pointed out that even at the time that she was a minor when there nicholas left the employee employer of the school so if there had been anything at that time there would have been no question that some action would have been brought even before the considering all the facts that were brought out considering the questions the judge underhill asked of players counsel if you were to amend your complaint if you had anything lacking what would you include in it and the end result of it reading judge under his decision was that these proposed amendments were not sufficient there was a and apparent attempt to save the case having been served beyond the statute even the marshal didn't get it in time under connecticut law and as judge underhill pointed out that where you have a connecticut law of statute of limitations that's contingent or on specific dates and the reason why we're in federal court here is because of diversity in federal courts will bow to connecticut law on this issue but in a before the court the evidence or claim that there were additional there was additional information regarding this case that he had learned of after the first complaint after the complaint was error in your brief you say on page twenty three the plaintiff does not allege that the defendants knew that the nicholas's that sexually abused her but isn't your actually contacted the school the allegations made in the first amended complaint do not indicate that that these allegations or this inquiry if that's what it was involved in the sexual contact whatsoever now these alleged in the complaint about that all that was alleged was that there were she inquired about some concerns that her daughter had nothing is brought out in the complaint and here's the other prong of this problem one is the plausibility factor because on the fraudulent concealment case the could see a woman had to be a facts that were not known to the plaintiff and the concealment had to be intentional and it had to be purposeful concealment for the purposes of letting the statute of limitations looking at the time factors after this midnight or late night journey to the plaintiff's house appears to have been no further contact between the two for the thirty years that passed the thirty four years that passed from that moment so that there is no indication in the plaintiffs complaint there are no factual statements that would indicate that there was an intentional purpose to avoid the statute of limitations jeff nicholas for the nicholas law firm for steven nicholas i just wanted to touch on a few brief points with regard to the fraudulent concealment allegations as  nicholas according to the plaintiff dismissal is appropriate only if are allegations negated the elements of fraudulent concealment as to stephen nickell as they do i believe judge underhill in his  reasoned decision when he will point at the plaintiffs proposed amendments at oral argument and they gave her claim a fraudulent concealment against even nicholas that was in the proposed amendment at the district court argument where there the claim that there was a letter discovered between her and claudia nicholas meaning the plaintiff in claudia nicholas that and that he showed it to a super very authority and that undermines the assertion that stephen nicholas attempted to keep conceal anything now the proposed amendment is kind of a catch twenty two because you can't have it both ways and it  she hasn't really reconciled the new account of steve nicholas as the discoverer of the abuse with the fact that he's the discoverer of the abuse he then brought to the school's attention and and he participated in himself it just isn't plausible we don't believe that she's adequately alleged or the lack of knowledge of the abuse the allegations were made with her if facility they were physical they were emotional they were sexual she had her head allegedly put in the toilet and was advised she would be further harmed if she told anybody and i think this would lead to any thirteen year old eighteen year old twenty five year old forty six year old to know she was abused the acts were over and i don't see how they can be concealed from her and i don't believe it's plausible that she just figured it out when she was forty six years old i think this is the type of claim that ninety claims are designed to resist if fraud is so easily alleged into account the possibility of a press memory i think that the repressed memory isn't an effort to just shoehorn this case and i think it's word salad and semantics i don't know that consistent as i understand it with the connecticut policy to prolong the period from three to seventeen now thirty years to account for the possibility that someone who's undergone that type of experience at a young age might have repressed the memories for i believe  i agree with your questioning earlier where you had put in and talked about one thirty years now the thirty year statute is taking into account that she had all of this time  repressed memory being alleged here with specificity so i don't understand what we're talking about it it's not alleged there's no allegation in the complaint or the an amended account complaint with regard to repressed memory what the school is missing is what is the knowledge that child hodges had to have and what we say is she did not discover the causal connection that's what the laws in connecticut  in the cases that were cited in the briefs she did not understand this caused her harm and the school's argument that somehow engaging in oral sex and sexual intercourse with a thirteen year old is not physical injury is done enough in these cases that's not so their sexual abuse is some one of the some of the most fundamental that she should have been aware of that physical abuse in domestic abuse cases we have adults who can't process the abuse because of the relationship when you have a child there is just there aren't the mechanisms there this is not a reasonable person who's going through reasonable life this is a reasonable person exposed on reasonable conduct and so the mind gets affected it affects the ability to appreciate that this conduct caused harm and that we would contend is how this this man in the course of action does not accrue you agree pretty sure  you're the clock does not start taking until someone reaches the age of majority and so there are eighteen for the five seventy seven d the thirty years statute yes and  t again you still have to understand to bring your action that you can cause harm and in connecticut we do this work people come to us and  and we know are the lawyers to do this if you look at it and you say well it's beyond the thirty years it's a very expensive proposition to bring these cases for they don't develop in connecticut for instance where they did in massachusetts when there was a very short statue of limitations and you had to push this issue you didn't in connecticut so the law was not that developed except that if you look at the theory of the lord the connecticut supreme court as articulated with regard to medical malpractise there is an understanding of what does the course of action accrue to hamilton v smith case where he knew he had cancer years before and they said well that wasn't enough even though we had been told he had an infection so there is an understanding in connecticut of the need for the action of crew for the clock to start and that did not happen in this particular case thank you ok thank you all for your arguments the court reserve decision