Catholic Church Set to Battle New Law

An unusual legal battle is shaping up between the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Legislature over a new state law that lifts the statute of limitations for a year in certain molestation cases.

Beginning Jan. 1, the law gives victims a year to sue any institution for employing a known molester who went on to claim another victim. By suspending the usual statute of limitations, it opens the door to cases that may be decades old.

Church officials and lawyers predict the law will spur hundreds of suits against the church next year, and a letter to be read by priests across California today warns parishioners of the expected legal onslaught.

While legal scholars say it’s difficult to predict whether the archdiocese will succeed in striking down the law, many say the church is fighting an uphill battle.

The church’s strongest argument, several experts said, is against the law’s retroactive nature. Under current state law, victims of childhood sexual abuse may sue up to their 26th birthday or within three years of discovering that their emotional problems are linked to a molestation.

“To reopen that door is very constitutionally questionable,” potentially violating due-process and other guarantees, said John Eastman, a professor at Chapman University School of Law in Orange who specializes in constitutional law. “But it’s a very close line. [The Legislature] is changing the rules after some people may have sat on their rights for many, many years.”

G. Robert Blakey, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, said the new law is analogous to playing draw poker on the Mississippi River and the dealer telling the players on the last round of cards that, “by the way, deuces are wild.”

“You’d get shot for that,” Blakey said. “What the Legislature has done is pander to the victim community.”

Eastman also pointed out that once the statute of limitations passes for an institution, it’s not reasonable to believe that it would save records and other potential evidence that could bolster its case.

Other scholars disagree, saying the flexibility of civil law, as opposed to the more rigid criminal law, allows for retroactive statutes like this.

“The legislature even has the power to pass laws year after year creating new limitation periods that open new windows of liability exposure,” said Wendy J. Murphy, a former prosecutor who now represents victims of sexual abuse and is a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School.

Another argument for the retroactivity is that because some cases were thrown out of court because of statute-of-limitations problems, the evidence was never weighed.

“There wasn’t a final outcome on the merits,” said Steven Lubet, a professor at Northwestern University Law School. “So nobody’s getting a second chance to prove their case; they’re getting a first chance.”

Retroactivity is far from the only issue, lawyers say. Another is whether the law was unfairly written with only one target in mind. Lawmakers passed it earlier this year at a peak of the church’s yearlong sexual abuse scandal.

The legislation is “aimed squarely at the Catholic Church,” said attorney J. Michael Hennigan, who represents the archdiocese. Although the law applies to any organization, the church is likely to be most affected, he said.

But many scholars are critical of this objection.

“That’s a nonstarter,” said Steven Lubet, a professor at Northwestern University Law School. “The fact that the law itself applies equally across the board makes it constitutionally sound.”

Lubet said many of the nation’s laws were inspired by scandals of a particular company or institution -- for instance, the design flaws of the Ford Pinto. But the statutes then were applied across the entire industry.

“In terms of what inspired it, that’s a silly argument -- maybe not silly at the dinner table, but in a court of law,” Murphy said.

Hennigan adds that the law forces the church to defend against allegations so old that witnesses are dead and evidence is gone.

For instance, church officials say they’ve recently received a claim from a man now in his 80s who alleges he was molested by a priest in 1936.

Even some legal experts who believe the law is valid are sympathetic to this objection.

“The statute of limitations is designed to protect people from having to litigate old claims on old evidence,” said Gerald Uelman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, adding that it makes it difficult to mount a proper defense. “This is why this law should not have been enacted, but it’s within the constitutional power of the Legislature.”

Lubet agreed: “The law may be imprudent or unwise, but that doesn’t allow the court to invalidate.”

Arguments that the law is unfair might have been more effective with the Legislature than with the courts, some legal scholars said. But the church voiced no objections when it was passed.

Blakey said the church’s silence during the debate on the bill puts it in a weak position.

“They sat on their rights and now are going to cry to a court to protect them from democracy,” he said. “This problem is substantially one of their own making.”

Some wonder if the archdiocese plans to challenge the law only to discourage victims from filing suit.

Murphy, for example, said prolonging the lawsuits will serve to delay payouts and discourage victims who don’t want to weather a protracted legal battle. “As a strategic move, it’s a card to play,” Murphy said. “But they may be making a very bad gamble. This may well be hurtful to some victims.”

But church officials said the law is so flawed that it left them with no choice.

“We face the prospect of horrific litigation,” Hennigan said, in many cases where “we don’t have ability to gather any evidence on the subject, period.”