PITTSBURGH – An upcoming Supreme Court of Pennsylvania decision connected to determining a statute of limitations for sexual abuse litigation against the Roman Catholic Church may give rise to a renewed wave of such cases.
Attorney John W. Baldante, a partner at Levy Baldante Finney & Rubenstein in Philadelphia, represents victims of sexual abuse against the Church. He is now serving as counsel for approximately 600 plaintiffs located throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey, who are now litigating abuse claims.
Baldante says older claims could be in jeopardy thanks to a ruling from Blair County that is now on appeal to the state Supreme Court.
“There is a statute of limitations and it’s sort of euphemistically referred to as the Renee Rice [statute of limitations],” Baldante explained, referring to the Rice v. Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown case, whose appeal to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania remains pending.
In that action, the Blair County Court of Common Pleas initially granted the Church judgment on the pleadings, finding that Rice’s claims were barred by the statute of limitations – since the last instance of alleged abuse occurred in 1981, when Rice was only 14 years old.
With a two-year statute of limitations beginning to toll upon her 18th birthday, the Blair County trial court said the statute of limitations for her claims expired in 1987 and was therefore compelled to dismiss the lawsuit.
On appeal, a three-judge panel of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania disagreed and reversed the decision in June 2019.
“Rice does not allege that the conspiracy’s only harm was the molestation she suffered in the 1970s and 1980s. She claims to have suffered a host of new injuries upon learning of the Diocesan defendant’s intentional, tortious conduct from the [2016] Grand Jury Report,” Superior Court Judge Deborah A. Kunselman said.
“These alleged facts and resultant harms, if proven at trial, indicate the statute of limitations for her count of civil conspiracy did not begin to run until January 2016, at the earliest. If Ms. Rice proves all of this to a jury, she filed her lawsuit well within the two-year statute of limitations for civil conspiracy on June 21, 2016.”
Attorneys across Pennsylvania, including Baldante, consider that decision a game-changer and are awaiting the state Supreme Court’s ruling in the matter, with the Church having appealed the Superior Court’s reversal last year.
Baldante said he expects a decision in the Rice case by 2021.
“In light of that decision, which is still unsettled law, a lot of attorneys including myself, took all of our cases that dealt with sexual abuse that occurred in the dioceses that were called out in the 2018 Grand Jury Report and said, ‘You know, our clients might be within the statute of limitations,” Baldante said.
“In some instances, I filed complaints and I have some very strong cases with those complaints. And not that these other cases aren’t strong, I just don’t know if they’ll qualify for a claim under the statute of limitations. We filed writs in about 40 cases in Pittsburgh.”
Given the potential implications of the Rice decision, Baldante estimated he recently filed a total of about 80 such cases in Pennsylvania.
Baldante added he has about 120 additional cases based in Philadelphia, but they would not be covered by the Rice decision, since the Grand Jury Report pertaining to the Diocese of Philadelphia was released back in 2005 and that particular statute of limitations has already expired.
“There’s a truce being called by the plaintiffs’ lawyers and the various dioceses, to basically put these cases on hold, pending the Supreme Court decision in the Rice appeal. Depending on the Supreme Court’s opinion in that case, the cases that we’ve all filed suit on will either proceed forward – or if the Supreme Court overrules the lower court decision, then those cases will not be deemed to be within the statute of limitations, and we’ll all have to voluntarily withdraw those claims. That’s kind of where it sits right now,” Baldante said.
Another factor that Baldante termed a “wildcard” in this process, was the passage of a bill in November 2019, which created a two-year window for victims who were sexually abused as minors to file cases.
Republican leaders in Pennsylvania questioned the constitutionality of such a bill, and alternatively proposed amending the state constitution instead.
However, Baldante said that such a circumstance, an amendment which retroactively bestows rights upon a plaintiff, is not happening through constitutional amendments in other states.
Baldante continued that reparations programs were set up by various dioceses in the hopes of settling as many cases for as little cost as possible. Despite this, some dioceses file for bankruptcy protection, as the Diocese of Harrisburg did in February.
Further, Baldante said, the Church created the concept of corporate structural hierarchy in order to shield itself and its assets from liability, viewing the dioceses as subsidiaries of a parent corporation, the Roman Catholic Church’s headquarters in Vatican City.
“That’s why we sue the dioceses in these lawsuits, rather than the Vatican. The claim is that these dioceses are subsidiaries of a corporation, so if you get to the Vatican, you kind of have to pierce the corporate veil,” Baldante said.
“The Catholic Church is not poor. The inside baseball reason why the Catholic Church files bankruptcy is because the Catholic Church, behind the scenes, is trying to get their insurance companies to pay for these lawsuits, or at least pay for a part of these lawsuits.”
According to Baldante, the insurance companies then disclaim insurance coverage and say, “We’re not paying for this, because this is a criminal act and we don’t provide insurance coverage for intentional criminal acts.”
Baldante added the Church argues these coverage denials, saying that charges it’s facing in these lawsuits often boil down to forms of negligence, which are typically covered by insurance policies – and that the bankruptcy filings are an attempt to have their insurance companies to “do the right thing and step up,” in the Church’s view.
For the moment, Baldante concluded that “a lot remains in the air” as to the rights of the Pennsylvania litigants and awaits the Supreme Court’s forthcoming ruling.
From the Pennsylvania Record: Reach Courts Reporter Nicholas Malfitano at nick.malfitano@therecordinc.com