Opinion ID: 1934304
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Weighing the Plaintiffs' Claimed Injuries Against the Alleged Prejudice to the DefendantThe Case Law Examined.

Text: The tension between statutes of limitations and the rights of adult victims of childhood sex abuse to compensation for their injuries and the rights of alleged abusers to protection from stale claims has been the subject of much recent litigation [13] and discussion in the law reviews. [14] Having considered these materials as well as our own cases, we now join those courtsapparently a substantial majoritywhich hold that where a plaintiff has alleged total repression of any recollection of sexual abuse which allegedly occurred during her childhood, her claim does not accrue until the date that she recovered her memory to the extent that she knows, or reasonably should know, of some injury, its cause, and related wrongdoing. Knight, supra, 553 A.2d at 1236. If the defendant disputes the repression, or the date on which the plaintiff recovered her memory, then the issue must be determined by the trier of fact, and cannot be resolved on a motion to dismiss the complaint. The consequences of repression of memory were recently explained by the Supreme Court of Utah in Olsen v. Hooley, 865 P.2d 1345 (Utah 1993): Memory repression is a psychological process that actively prevents a memory from being recalled. Repression goes beyond mere forgetting and cannot be ascribed to a lack of diligence on the part of the plaintiff. Repressing the memory of operative facts is, in effect, not knowing or being aware of those facts.... [I]t would be unfair to bar Olsen's action before she had an opportunity to assert it. Id. at 1348. In Olsen, a suit by a young woman alleging abuse during her childhood by her adoptive father and his sons, the court elected to follow the substantial majority of courts that have addressed this issue [and] have held that the repression of memories of childhood sexual abuse tolls the applicable statute of limitations. Id. at 1349 (citations omitted). [15] The court emphasized, as do we, that this case involves a plaintiff who alleges that she totally repressed her memory; it does not involve a plaintiff who remembered the abuse but did not realize until later that the abuse caused the psychological harm suffered. Id. (citations omitted of authorities denying recovery on such facts). [16] In Phillips v. Johnson, 231 Ill.App.3d 890, 174 Ill.Dec. 458, 599 N.E.2d 4 (3d Dist.1992), an uncle was charged with molesting his thirty-five-year-old niece during her childhood. He contended that it would be unfair to require him to defend against such old and allegedly unverifiable allegations, notwithstanding the niece's claim that she had totally repressed her memory of the abuse. The court rejected the uncle's contentions: We conclude that the manifest injustice of requiring plaintiff to know that which is inherently unknowable outweighs defendant's difficulty of proof in this case. To hold otherwise would deny a remedy to those who survive childhood sexual abuse by suppressing the memory of the abusive acts. Id. 174 Ill.Dec. at 461, 599 N.E.2d at 7. The principle that the abuser should not be permitted to profit from his own wrong has also been applied in total repression cases. In Hoult, supra, the plaintiff, who was twenty-seven years old at the time her complaint was filed, alleged that she had entirely repressed all memory of sexual abuse inflicted on her by her father during their childhood and early teens. 792 F.Supp. at 143. In applying the Massachusetts discovery rule, the court noted that, according to the affidavits submitted in opposition to the defendant's motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff could not even remember the sexual abuse itself, and that the injury caused by the defendant by its very nature prevents discovery of its cause. Id. at 145 (emphasis added; citations and internal quotation marks omitted). The court thus held, in effect, that a defendant who, through his own wrongful conduct, has caused the plaintiff to repress her recollection of that conduct, cannot avail himself of the statute of limitations to defeat her claim. We agree. Some of the other cases in which the court refused to dismiss as time-barred complaints alleging that the plaintiff's recollection of childhood abuse had been totally repressed include McCollum v. D'Arcy, supra, 638 A.2d at 799; Petersen v. Bruen, supra note 11, 792 P.2d at 20-23; [17] Osland v. Osland, 442 N.W.2d 907, 908-09 (N.D.1989); Lemmerman v. Fealk, 201 Mich.App. 544, 507 N.W.2d 226, 229-31 (1993); Evans v. Eckelman, 216 Cal.App.3d 1609, 265 Cal.Rptr. 605, 608-10 (1st Dist.1990); cf. Callahan v. State, 464 N.W.2d 268, 270-73 (Iowa 1990). Without exception, the courts in these cases have been unanimous. There is some contrary authority. In Farris I, the district court relied primarily on Tyson v. Tyson, 727 P.2d at 228-30, a 5:4 decision [18] which was promptly overturned by statute. See Wash.Rev.Code § 4.16.340 (1988), cited in Olsen, 865 P.2d at 1349. The decision in Tyson has been rejected by many of the courts to which it has been cited. See, e.g., McCollum, 638 A.2d at 799, Osland, 442 N.W.2d at 909; Olsen, 865 P.2d at 1349; Johnson v. Johnson, 701 F.Supp. 1363, 1367-68 (N.D.Ill.1988); Phillips, 174 Ill.Dec. at 460, 599 N.E.2d at 6; Callahan, 464 N.W.2d at 272. Like several of those courts, we are persuaded by Justice Pearson's dissenting opinion in Tyson. [19] Complaints charging childhood sexual abuse were also dismissed as time-barred, notwithstanding allegations of repressed memory, in Baily v. Lewis, 763 F.Supp. 802 (E.D.Pa.1991), aff'd mem., 950 F.2d 721 (3d Cir.1991); Shippen v. Parrott, 506 N.W.2d 82 (S.D.1993); Bassile v. Covenant House, 152 Misc.2d 88, 575 N.Y.S.2d 233 (Sup.Ct.N.Y.County 1991), and Lindabury v. Lindabury, 552 So.2d 1117 (Fla.App. 3d Dist. 1989). In Baily, however, the district judge based his ruling largely on a prediction that the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania would not treat the complaint as timely even where total repression was alleged because [t]he Pennsylvania courts have been unwilling to allow the incapacity of a plaintiff to toll the statute of limitations, 763 F.Supp. at 808; they would reach that result in spite of the acknowledged harshness of [this] rule. Id. In Shippen, the court observed that the legislature of South Dakota had gone even further and specifically rejected the discovery rule. 506 N.W.2d at 85. In Bassile, a decision by a trial court, the judge pointed out that, in New York, there is no delayed discovery rule generally available, because New York has a long tradition of hostility toward holding the period of limitations in abeyance pending actual discovery of the injury. 575 N.Y.S.2d at 236 (citations and internal quotation marks omitted). Finally, in Lindabury, the intermediate appellate court did not address the discovery rule or any comparable equitable doctrine at all, an omission effectively remedied in Judge Jorgenson's persuasive dissenting opinion. 552 So.2d at 1118. In light of Ehrenhaft and other decisions in this jurisdiction, we do not believe that Baily, Shippen, Bassile or Lindabury should be followed in this jurisdiction. Dr. Compton contends that if an exception to the running of the statute of limitations is to be made for cases of this kind, then the decision to make it is one of policy which ought to be made by our elected representatives rather than by the courts. The subject may well be an appropriate one for legislative action; we note that the legislature of the State of Washington promptly overruled the decision in Tyson, in which the court had held that the discovery rule does not apply even where total repression of memory is alleged. Nevertheless, Dr. Compton's argument begs the question presented to us. In the absence of clarifying legislation, it is our obligation to construe the word accrues in the existing statute, D.C.Code § 12-301 (1989). We cannot defer the performance of our judicial duty until the enactment of a new law, an event which may or may not occur. Our precedents reflect this court's interpretation of the present statutory language. We noted in Ehrenhaft, 483 A.2d at 1204, that the determination whether an action has accrued in any particular context is to be made by the court on a case-bycase basis. 483 A.2d at 1204. We adhere to that holding today. [20] Dr. Compton complains that there is no corroboration either of plaintiffs' claims that Ms. Farris and Ms. Fellez were molested or of their allegation that they repressed their recollections of their abuse. Courts have taken various approaches to the question whether, and at which stage of the proceeding, corroboration is required. [21] We do not resolve that issue here, for it would be premature to do so in the absence of a factual record. The case came to the United States Court of Appeals on appeal from an order granting a motion to dismiss pursuant to FED.R.CIV.P. 12(b)(6), see, e.g., Conley v. Gibson, 355 U.S. 41, 45-46, 78 S.Ct. 99, 101-102, 2 L.Ed.2d 80 (1957), and for the purposes of the certified question, that court has assumed that the abuse occurred and that the victims' memory of it was totally repressed. There is no evidentiary record before us; so far as we know, there has been no discovery. Without a crystal ball, no court can predict what, if any, corroboration discovery may produce, and what, if any, evidence may already be in the possession of the parties. [22] Dr. Compton has not yet been deposed. Evidence of the truth or falsity of the claims of repressed memory may (or may not) come from a variety of sources. The potential existence and quality of such corroboration cannot be determined from the face of the complaint. The judge cannot know in advance whether evidence which, as yet, has not been produced, will necessarily prove unreliable. Indeed, we agree with the statement of the court in Phillips v. Johnson, supra , that the [Illinois] trial court improperly considered the reliability of plaintiff's anticipated evidence in ruling on a motion to dismiss the complaint. Psychological evidence is generally admissible, assuming that relevancy and foundational requirements are met, and determination of credibility and weight are matters for the trier of fact. 174 Ill.Dec. at 461, 599 N.E.2d at 7 (emphasis added). [23] To uphold the sufficiency of the complaint under the discovery rule for purposes of the motion to dismiss does not deprive Dr. Compton of his opportunity to contest the timeliness of the suit at later stages of the litigation. As the Supreme Court of New Hampshire explained in McCollum, in sustaining the trial judge's refusal to dismiss a complaint comparable to the one in this case, [o]ur decision today ... does not preclude the defendants from subsequently challenging the plaintiff's allegations regarding the date she discovered or in the exercise of reasonable diligence should have discovered, the injury and its causal relationship to the defendant's alleged acts. The defendants also are not precluded, upon a showing of prejudice, from arguing that the equities in this case do not support application of the discovery rule. 638 A.2d at 800. In the case at bar, as in McCollum, a finding by the trier of fact adverse to the plaintiffs on the limitations issue i.e., what did each plaintiff know, and when did she know it (or when should she have known it)would render the suit untimely, and would therefore obviate the occasion for a decision on the merits. [24]