Court Opinion

ID: 9669804
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:09:31.206235+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:26.975804
License: Public Domain

DANIEL F. FOLEY, Judge
(dissenting)
I respectfully dissent. I do not concur with the majority’s conclusion that the statute of limitations for sexual abuse suits expires when the alleged victim reaches the age of 25. The law in the area of deferred memory sexual abuse in Minnesota is unsettled. Two statutes, Minn.Stat. §§ 541.073 and 541.15 (1996), and three cases, W.J.L. v. Bugge, 573 N.W.2d 677 (Minn.1998), Blackowiak v. Kemp, 546 N.W.2d 1 (Minn.1996), and J.J. v. Luckow, 578 N.W.2d 17 (Minn.App.1998), review denied (Minn. July 16, 1998), directly bear on the issue of infancy disability and statute of limitations for personal injury suits based on sexual abuse. In my considered judgment, the statutes at issue are clear and unambiguous. They do not provide *315for extension of the statute of limitations such that a complainant has six years after reaching the age of 19 (one year after the disability of infancy has expired) to file a cause of action that arose during the period of infancy. It is important for the supreme court to revisit the relevant statutes and cases and set out in unmistakable language the effect of the infancy disability on the limitations period in deferred memory sexual abuses cases.
Minn.Stat. § 541.073, subd. 2(a), sets out the limitations period for sexual abuse suits:
An 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.
Under this “delayed discovery” rule, the six-year statute • of limitations period begins to run when the complainant knew or should have known that he/she was sexually abused, as opposed to when he/she was aware or should have been aware that the sexual abuse caused injury. Blackowiak, 546 N.W.2d at 3 (citing with approval the objective, reasonable person standard set out in ABC v. Archdiocese of St. Paul, 513 N.W.2d 482 (Minn.App.1994)). If the statute of limitations period commences during a period of disability such as infancy, however, it falls within the dictates of Minn. Stat. § 541.15. See Minn.Stat. § 541.073, subd. 2(d) (“This section [541.073] does not affect the suspension of the statute of limitations during a period of disability under section 541.15.”)
Minn.Stat. § 541.15(a) provides that infancy, one of four grounds of disability,2 “shall suspend the running of the period of limitation until the same is removed.” The only proviso to this rule is that “such period [of limitation], except in the case of infancy, shall not be extended for more than five years, nor in any case for more than one year after the disability ceases.” Id. (emphasis added). This language differs from paragraph (b) of Minn.Stat. § 541.15, which applies to actions against a health care provider and states that the infancy disability “suspends the period of limitation until the disability is removed,” but “[t]he suspension may not be extended for more than seven years, or for more than one year after the disability ceases.” Minn.Stat. § 541.15(b) (emphasis added). Paragraph (a), unlike paragraph (b), contains words of repose, which specify a presumptive number of years after which an action cannot be brought (i.e. one year after the disability of infancy ceases). Lelm by Lelm v. Mayo Found., 135 F.3d 584, 587-88 (8th Cir.1998) (interpreting Minn.Stat. § 541.15(b)). Moreover, the difference in phraseology demonstrates that had the legislature intended to suspend the limitations period in paragraph (a) until the victim reaches the age of 19, after which the six-year statute of limitations would commence, it would have drafted language similar to paragraph (b) evidencing such intent.
Nevertheless, the supreme court most recently observed that the limitations period under the delayed discovery statute would begin to run one year after a complainant reaches the age of majority and expire when the complainant turns 25. Bugge, 573 N.W.2d at 682 (citing Minn. Stat. § 541.15(a)(1)). The issue in Bugge was when an alleged victim of sexual abuse knew or had reason to know of the sexual abuse for purposes of determining when the statute of limitations begins to run. Id. at 679. The court held:
[T]he statute of limitations begins to run once a victim is abused unless there is some legal disability, such as the victim’s age, or mental disability, such as repressed memory of the abuse, which *316would make a reasonable person incapable of recognizing or understanding that he or she had been sexually abused.
Id. at 681.
After Bugge, this court interpreted Minn.Stat. § 541.15(a) in Luckow, 578 N.W.2d at 20-21. This court concluded that under the plain language of the statute and past caselaw applying the one-year rule for disabilities, a cause of action is barred if commenced after the alleged sexual abuse victim’s 19th birthday, one year after infancy ends. Id. at 20. In addition, an infancy disability provides an alleged victim of sexual abuse no advantage for an action commenced after the victim’s 19th birthday, even if the six-year statute of limitations period has not yet expired. Id. (noting that the limitation period is shorter under the one-year infancy rule than under the six-year statute of limitations). The court stated that it “was unpersuaded that [the supreme court’s contrary observation in Bugge ] represents a reinterpretation of section 541.15(a)(1) and an overturning of over 90 years of decisions on the impact of the one-year extension in the event of infancy.” Id. at 21.
In the present case, the alleged sexual abuse of both appellants occurred during their infancy. One recalls several incidents of sexual abuse beginning at the age of 9; the last incident she recalls occurred when she was 12. The other recalls that her abuse began when she was 14 and continued until she was 17. The record indicates that they knew or should have known of the abuse before they reached the age of 19. Both appellants have passed their 19th birthdays. Accordingly, under Minn.Stat. § 541.15(a)(1), the time for filing suit has already expired. Because their claims are barred by the expiration of the one-year infancy limitations rule, I would affirm the district court.
Relying on Bugge, the majority also bases its decision on a disability extension of the six-year statute of limitations for repressed memory syndrome. The majority misreads Bugge to stand for the proposition that repressed memory syndrome is a disability that automatically suspends the running of the statute of limitations. Repressed memory syndrome does not toll the limitations period. Roe v. Archdiocese of St. Paul & Minneapolis, 518 N.W.2d 629, 632 (Minn.App.1994) (applying the objective, reasonable person standard later adopted in Blackowiak), review denied (Minn. Aug. 24, 1994). As this court pointed out in Roe, if the legislature intended to include repressed memory in Minn.Stat. § 541.15, it could have done so. Id. Bugge, 573 N.W.2d at 681, merely reiterates Blackowiak, stating that the statute of limitations commences when the victim knew or should have known that abuse occurred. The facts of this case indicate that, regardless of their claims of repressed memory syndrome, both appellants knew or should have known the abuse occurred before expiration of the infancy limitations period. Hence, under Blackowiak, the district court properly determined that the repressed memory argument does not direct a different result.

. The four grounds of disability are: (1) the plaintiff is within the age of 18 years; (2) the plaintiff’s insanity; (3) the plaintiff is an alien and the subject or citizen of a country at war with the United States; and (4) when the beginning of the action is stayed by injunction or by statutory prohibition. Minn.Stat. § 541.15(a).