Court Opinion

ID: 9883374
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-10-06 01:41:14.143443+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:48:22.948064
License: Public Domain

GARDEBRING, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The majority in this case continues the evisceration of the “delayed discovery” statute of limitations in sexual abuse cases begun in Blackowiak v. Kemp, 546 N.W.2d 1 (Minn.1996). I disagreed then and I disagree now. For the reasons stated in my dissent in that case, as well as the reasons below, I would affirm the court of appeals in this case.
The language of the statute is clear:
*683An action for damages based on personal injury caused by sexual abuse must be commenced within six years of the time the plaintiff knew or had reason to know that the injury was caused by the sexual abuse.
Minn.Stat. §. 541.073, subd. 2(a) (1996) (emphasis added). Thus, the event that triggers the running of the statute of limitations is not the occurrence of either the sexual abuse or the personal injury, but rather the knowledge that the one caused the other. To assert, as the majority did in Blackowiak and does again here, that “as. a matter of law, one is ‘injured’ if one is sexually abused,” ante at 681 (citation omitted), simply begs the question. The key inquiry must be, “When did the injured party know or have reason to know that the injury was caused by the abuse?”
However, in contradiction of the statute, the majority states that “because the [sexual abuse and personal injury] al’e intertwined, the victim is immediately put on notice of the causal connection between the abuse and injury.” Ante, at 681 (emphasis added). The majority reads out the central element of the statute — knowledge of the link between the abuse and the injury — in favor of an analysis nowhere supported by the legislature’s chosen language. This we may not do.
The majority is equally mistaken in its view that only some legal disability, such as the victim’s age or repressed memory of the abuse, suspends the running of the statute. First, Minn.Stat. § 541.15 (1996) already provides, as a matter of general law applying to all statutes of limitations, that a disability such as youth or mental disability suspends the running of the period of limitation until the disability is removed. Thus, there would have been no need for the legislature to adopt Minn.Stat. § 541.073 if it meant to add nothing to what was already provided in existing statutes. Second, there is no language in the statute that supports the majority’s view on this point: no reference to repressed memory, no reference to mental disability, no reference to the age of plaintiff. If the legislature had intended such a restrictive view of this issue, it would have so provided. It did not. Instead, it provided, in the plainest language possible, a special scheme directed to the unusual psychological circumstances that exist for- victims of sexual abuse, especially young victims; that is, they simply may not realize that psychological or emotional difficulties manifested many years after the fact, may be the result of sexual abuse occurring years earlier.
Finally, as I stated in Blackowiak, the majority’s action is especially troubling where the issue is the propriety of summary judgment in an action brought by a sexual abuse victim against an alleged abuser. Analysis of the “knew or should have known” factor of the statute is under an objective, reasonable person standard and is generally a question of fact for the jury. Blackowiak at 3.
Here, the plaintiff W.J.L. argues that she did not recognize that she had been sexually abused or that the abuse had caused her injury until years later. She offered, in support of her position, the affidavit of a treating psychologist, to the effect that a reasonable person in W.J.L.’s position would not have been able to recognize the cause of the emotional injuries until she was able to obtain psychological distance and the support of therapy. In addition, she presented her own testimony that at the time of the abuse she trusted Bugge, who repeatedly told her that their relationship was healthy and therapeutic. She also testified that she discussed the events with no one until 1992; At that time, her recognition of the past sexual abuse was triggered by reading certain passages from a novel. She then sought counseling and became aware that her sexual experiences with Bugge some 14 years earlier were indeed abusive and were the source of later emotional difficulties.9
Based upon the controlling standard, and taking the evidence offered in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, W.J.L., I conclude that there remains a question of material fact as to when W.J.L. knew or *684should have known that she had been abused. Summary judgment is not proper, and I would affirm the court of appeals and remand to the district court.

. This fact pattern is even stronger than that in Blackowiak because here the abuser attempted to persuade the victim that their relationship was therapeutic, thus seeking to thwart any perception by the victim that abuse had occurred.