Ruling May Affect L.A. Abuse Suits

A decision upholding a state law allowing lawsuits for older cases of sexual abuse was hailed Friday by lawyers for hundreds of people who have used it to sue the Roman Catholic Church.

The decision, the first involving the Catholic Church, could influence similar cases pending in Southern California. It comes just two weeks after lawyers for Los Angeles Cardinal Roger M. Mahony sought to legally challenge the same law on broad constitutional grounds.

“It should send a message to the church and its insurance carriers that any hope they had that the statute would be wiped out -- and that all of these victims are going to be once again abandoned by the system they believed in -- is not going to happen,” said attorney Raymond P. Boucher, who represents hundreds of people suing the Catholic Church in Southern California for alleged negligence.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Ronald M. Sabraw tentatively ruled in cases filed against the Oakland Diocese that the Legislature did not exceed its authority in 2002 when it temporarily lifted the one-year statute of limitations for childhood sex-abuse cases. State lawmakers unanimously amended the law on the heels of the national clergy abuse scandal.

Acting under the authority of the law, more than 800 Californians then sued the church before the deadline at the end of last year.

The judge also found that the law in some cases may unconstitutionally deny the due process rights of defendants if they are “precluded from presenting a reasonable defense.”

Church lawyers have argued that they cannot properly defend older claims when the accused priest and his supervisors are dead and old documents have been destroyed.

The judge also broadly interpreted the law’s requirement that church officials must have been “on notice” that a priest was molesting children. The decision upholds potential liability by the church even if alleged victims lack documented evidence that church officials knew of earlier abuses.

Sabraw ruled that a jury should determine in two Oakland cases involving Father Arthur Ribeiro “whether the church had a practice in the early 1960s of reassigning (but not removing) priests who may have been accused of molesting children.”

Sabraw is expected to decide next week whether Mahony must submit to a deposition in a lawsuit involving Oliver O’Grady, a former priest whom he supervised two decades ago while he was bishop of Stockton.

“I don’t think there’s any question that it will influence the Southern California cases,” said Stockton lawyer Laurence Drivon, who represents 450 people claiming damages from the Catholic Church in California. “I would expect other judges to take notice of what this court has done.”

Attorney Donald F. Woods Jr., who represents Mahony, said Sabraw’s ruling should not have any effect on the cardinal’s motion to intervene in a San Diego case.

“Obviously, we think the statute is unconstitutional on its face and as applied,” he said. “We’d like to have our shot at it.”

In the San Diego case, Mahony stated in court papers that he has a special interest in the issue because “the hurdles created by [the law] threaten to ruin the archdiocese economically and to impose unprecedented and punitive stigmatization upon the church.”