Can a Statute of Limitations claim be rejected by the court?

Question

Suppose a Catholic organization in a Western country runs one or more childrens' homes. The idea is to provide good care of orphans, poor children and children of minorities. In reality there is poor nutrition for the children and there are other health issues (e.g. infectious diseases). There is physical and sexual abuse, unpaid forced labor, unusual punishment (e.g. solitary confinement) going on. The authorities are well aware of these various crimes, but do not wish to intervene.

When the victims sue the Catholic organizations many years later, the defendants and the authorities claim that the Statute of Limitations applies. They also claim that it would be "unfair" to the nuns (by now 80+ years old) to be held accountable.

Is the court forced to apply the Statute of Limitations? Or can the court decide that this would be unfair to the claimants, since the authorities deliberately denied their rights and withheld crucial information that would have helped them bring the claim many years sooner?

Answer 1

united-states

Is the court forced to apply the Statute of Limitations? Or can the court decide that this would be unfair to the claimants, since the authorities deliberately denied their rights and withheld crucial information that would have helped them bring the claim many years sooner?

The term you are searching for is "equitable tolling." Tolling, generally, is anything that pauses the statute of limitations, and equity is a broad and somewhat fuzzy category of legal doctrines that courts may use to make allowances for situations where applying the law rigidly as written would be unfair or unreasonable. When you put them together, "equitable tolling" is any situation where a court pauses the statute of limitations because applying it strictly would be unreasonable or unfair, even though the statute does not explicitly provide for such a remedy.

It should be emphasized that it is usually difficult to persuade a court to apply doctrines like equitable tolling. Courts favor finality and legal certainty, and equitable tolling goes against those ideals (by reviving claims that might otherwise be dead). Ideally, the plaintiff should be able to show that they've made an active and ongoing effort to pursue legal remedy, that they filed a defective complaint within the statute of limitations, and/or that the defendant's misconduct made it impossible or impractical to file within the statutory period. The precise set of rules vary by state, because the scenario you describe is likely to be a claim under state law. As an example, I found this 2020 opinion by the California Supreme Court which discusses the factors for equitable tolling in California.

california

In California, according to the opinion linked above (which bases much of the relevant analysis on this older opinion from 1978), you need to meet three criteria for equitable tolling to apply:

1. The defendant must have "timely notice" of the claim.
2. There must be a "lack of prejudice" to the defendant.
3. There must be "reasonable and good faith conduct on the part of the plaintiff."

In practice, (1) has been held to be met in cases where the plaintiff had either informed the defendant of their intent to seek legal remedy, or had already done so in another forum (e.g. in federal court, an administrative proceeding, etc.). I suspect that it could also be met if the plaintiff demonstrates that the defendant had actual knowledge of the plaintiff's intent to file a claim regardless of the procedural posture of the case, but I don't know that the CSC has held as much.

For (2), the obvious argument that "of course there's prejudice, you're reviving a legal claim that would otherwise fail" does not work (in the above-linked case, the CSC points out that it could not work, because then the exception would swallow the rule). There has to be prejudice arising from the lack of timeliness, not prejudice arising from the tolling itself. In other words, the defendant has to argue that the delay made it unreasonably difficult to defend the case.

And for (3), the CSC admits that "[o]ur equitable tolling cases have offered little insight on what constitutes reasonable and good faith conduct." In the 2020 case, they sent it back down to the appeals court to rule on this issue. In the 1978 case, the CSC pointed out that "courts have adhered to a general policy which favors relieving plaintiff from the bar of a limitations statute when, possessing several legal remedies he, reasonably and in good faith, pursues one designed to lessen the extent of his injuries or damage." To my mind, it appears that some kind of timely-but-otherwise-defective filing, followed shortly thereafter by an untimely-but-otherwise-valid filing, is likely to be held as "reasonable and in good faith," but other situations are still unsettled law.

One other thing I'd like to point out, not explicitly stated as a criterion in either opinion, but nevertheless potentially relevant: In both the 2020 case, and the 1978 case, the suit was only just barely outside of the statute of limitations. In the 2020 case, they missed the deadline by less than two weeks. The 1978 case had a longer delay of a few months, but only if you ignore the fact that the case was being actively litigated in federal court at the time. The 1978 plaintiffs refiled in state court before the federal action had even been dismissed (presumably, they saw the writing on the wall). Courts are generally going to be a lot more sympathetic to that fact pattern than to a situation where a plaintiff misses the deadline by multiple years. This is not dispositive or even an official criterion, just my assessment of which way the wind tends to blow.

Answer 2

germany

Something like what you described happened in Germany after the fall of the Communist regime. However, it was based on on a law rather than the decision of the court:

$315a(5) EGStGB Bei der Berechnung der Verjährungsfrist für die Verfolgung von Taten, die während der Herrschaft des SED-Unrechtsregimes begangen wurden, aber entsprechend dem ausdrücklichen oder mutmaßlichen Willen der Staats- und Parteiführung der ehemaligen Deutschen Demokratischen Republik aus politischen oder sonst mit wesentlichen Grundsätzen einer freiheitlichen rechtsstaatlichen Ordnung unvereinbaren Gründen nicht geahndet worden sind, bleibt die Zeit vom 11. Oktober 1949 bis 2. Oktober 1990 außer Ansatz. In dieser Zeit hat die Verjährung geruht.

That is, the expiry of limitations is suspended for the time of the existence of the former German Democratic Republic if the crime was not prosecuted by the communist party leadership for political reasons, or for reasons incompatible with fundamental principles of the rule of law.

The question then, is the current government and legal system of the unnamed Western country prepared to denounce the former government and legal system in this way? German reunification carefully stepped through a metaphorical minefield of correcting GDR injustice without overturning 41 years of ordinary court decisions.