Opinion ID: 1242865
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Does a series of incidents of sexual abuse constitute one tort or separate torts

Text: ¶ 38 The court of appeals treated the aggregate of incidents of abuse as one tort, while the dissent maintained that each incident of abuse constituted a separate tort and concluded that the fact that plaintiff recalled one incident does not mean that she recalledor that she should have recalled others. Doe, 187 Ariz. at 614, 931 P.2d at 1124 (Lankford, J., dissenting). The majority rejected this position, reasoning that treating each incident of abuse as a separate tort for discovery rule purposes could result in a multiplicity of actions with additional retrieval of memories. Thus, the majority imputed recollection of all repressed memories to the moment Plaintiff had her first flashback, in effect viewing the separate episodes of abuse as a single continuing tort. ¶ 39 The question of whether the separate tort, separate action theory was correctly rejected by the court of appeals' majority was neither presented nor accepted for review. Nor was it a major issue in the trial court. This case can be resolved at this stage without dealing with the difficult problem of applying an accrual ruleconstructed for the usual case, in which a single act causes a single set of damagesto the instant case, in which repeated tortious acts inflicted over a period of years have caused a universe of damage that cannot be allocated to any particular act. [12] Given this, we believe it best to follow our usual jurisprudential policy and refuse to address questions of the application of the statute of limitations on a separate tort or continuous tort theory.