Arkansas appeals court stymies lawsuits over decades-old sexual abuse
The Arkansas Supreme Court building in Little Rock. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)
The Arkansas Legislature cannot revive legal claims whose statutes of limitations have expired, even if the claims are against alleged sexual abusers, the Arkansas Court of Appeals said Wednesday.
The court's ruling was on a specific case brought by plaintiffs who say they were sexually abused as teens by James Darrell Nesmith, a former physician. But it effectively derails many other cases against alleged abusers under the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act, a law passed by the state Legislature in 2021.
Act 1036 of 2021 gave child sexual abuse victims then under the age of 55 a two-year window in which to file suit against their alleged abusers or others who enabled the abuse, even if the typical timeframe for filing those claims had expired long ago.
The Nesmith case was brought in July 2022 by four men who say the then-doctor sexually abused them in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The parties agreed that the plaintiffs' timeframe for filing these claims had expired at some point prior to 2021.
But the 2021 law, sponsored by Sen. David Wallace (R-Leachville) and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway (R-Paragould), gave them the opportunity to sue. The law's two-year window applied regardless of any other statute of limitations and regardless of whether the victim had previously reported the abuse to law enforcement. (Nesmith was never charged with a crime in connection with any of the four plaintiffs, though he pleaded guilty in 2018 to second-degree sexual assault for molesting another teenage boy.)
Nesmith filed a motion for summary judgment in Pulaski County Circuit Court, arguing that Arkansas case law prohibited the Legislature from reviving expired legal claims. Circuit Judge Tim Fox agreed and entered judgment in Nesmith's favor, and the plaintiffs appealed.
Oral arguments in the appeal took place less than two weeks ago. The Court of Appeals on Wednesday said the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act could not be used by plaintiffs to bring a lawsuit against an abuser if the statute of limitations on the abuse had already run out prior to the law's passage. This was true regardless of the purpose behind the legislation, the court said.
Remedial statutes may 'operate retroactively so long as they do not disturb contractual or vested rights, or create new obligations.' […] Again, the Arkansas Supreme Court has consistently held that the bar created by a statute of limitations is a 'vested right.'
This court acknowledges that James Nesmith's conduct as alleged in the complaint is abhorrent. However, we are bound by over a century of supreme court precedent prohibiting legislative attempts to revive expired statutes of limitation, and we are 'powerless' to overrule this precedent.
The case is styled as H.C., et al., v. Nesmith, CV-23-328. The Court of Appeals' opinion is available here.
The 2021 law also enabled multiple lawsuits against the Lord's Ranch, a now-defunct northeast Arkansas behavioral health facility, and its owner, Ted Suhl. Similar cases have been filed against the Dardanelle School District, Central Baptist Church in Magnolia, and a rehab facility in Saline County called Timber Ridge Ranch, all based at least in part on the revival of expired claims under the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sexual Abuse Act.
This article first appeared on the Arkansas Times' Arkansas Blog and is republished here by permission.
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