Source: https://www.chicagoaccidentlawblog.com/illinois_childhood_sexual_abus_1/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 15:55:39+00:00

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Illinois childhood sexual abuse victims were given a chance to bring their claims for injuries by an opinion by the Illinois Appellate Court, Fifth District that was released March 7, 2008, Doe v. Diocese of Dallas, 379 Ill. App. 3d 782, 885 N.E. 2d 376. Essentially the court held that the statute of limitations for bringing a claim for childhood sexual abuse that became effective on July 24, 2003, and which in summary increased the statute of limitaions to 5 years from “the date the person abuse discovers or through the use of reasonable deligence should discover both (i) that the act of childhood sexual abuse occurred and (ii) that the injury was caused by the childhood sexual abuse, 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, could apply to a claim that the previous statute of limitations had already barred. The Illinois legislature passed this legislation in direct response to an opinion by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2000 which held that there is no requirement that a plaintiff must know the full extent of his injuries before the statute of limitations begins to run, and further held that Illinois law presumes an injury from an allegation of sexual abuse, Clay v. Kuhl, 189 Ill. 2d. 603, 727 N.E. 2d 217 (2000).
In 2006 two different Illinois Appellate Court decisions intrepretting 735 ILCS 5/13-202.2, reached the same conclusion “once a statute of limitations has expired, the defendant has a vested right to invoke the bar of the limitations period as a defense to a cause of action. That right cannot be taken away by the legislature wothout offending the due process protections of our state’s constitution.” Kuch v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 366 Ill. App. 3d 309, 313, 851 N.E. 2d 233, 236 (2006); see also Galloway v. Diocese of Springfield, 367 Ill. App. 3d 997, 857 N.E. 2d 737 (2006). Both cases cited to a 1997 decision by the Illinois Supreme Court that held that once a statute of repose has extinguished a cause of action, defendant has a vested right under the due process clause of the State Constitution to invoke the statutory repose period, even after the repose period was abolished by the legislature. M.E.H. v. L.H., 177 Ill. 2d 207, 685 N.E. 2d 335 (1997).
735 ILCS 5/13-202.2(e) clearly states: “The changes made by this amendatory Act of the 93rd General Assembly apply to actions pending on the effective date of this amendatory Act of the 93rd General Assembly as well as actions commenced on or after that date.” The Doe court in a thoughtful opinion by Justice Chapman recognized that the Illinois Supreme Court had already adopted an approach to the conflict between the “vested rights” and “legislative intent” approaches to dealing with statutory retroactivity by formally adopting the approach taken by the U.S. Supreme Court in Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U.S. 244 (1994), see Commonwealth Edison Co. v. Will County Collector, 196 Ill. 2d 27, 749 N.E. 2d 964 (2001).
This opinion is very encouraging news for victims of childhood sexual abuse! It also is a very lucid analysis of a judicial approach that deals with statutory retroactivity that harms neither the victims nor our state constitution. On March 20 2007, I posted on this blog about the unfairness and inflexibility of the “vested rights approach”, and I remain hopeful that the Illinois Supreme Court when it addresses this issue will follow the Doe court’s lead.

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