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Doe v. Archdiocese of Washington2/26/1997
1215, 84 L. Ed. 2d 336, 105 S. Ct. 1190 (1985), is also pertinent here:
The burden is on Plaintiffs to prove that they did not discover the alleged wrong more than three years before they filed suit and that this lack of discovery was not due to Plaintiffs' unreasonable failure to exercise ordinary diligence. A plaintiff who involves Section 5-203 of the Courts and Judicial Proceedings Article must "show affirmatively that he was kept in ignorance of his right of action by the fraud" of defendant, [citation omitted] and "must specifically allege and prove when and how his knowledge of the fraud was obtained, so that the court will be enabled to determine whether he exercised reasonable diligence to ascertain the facts." [citation omitted].
(Emphasis supplied.)
Appellant's Complaint is divided into sixteen separate counts, each with a title. Not one is entitled "fraud." Nor are facts alleged in any of the counts from which fraud may be inferred. For example, the conspiracy count against the Archdiocese alleges:
As evidence of this conspiracy, upon discovery of Schaefer's compulsive sexual molestation of children, the Archdiocese systematically and clandestinely participated in the transfer of Schaefer, and on information and belief, other named priests, and accepted them for placement in new parishes without reporting their criminal sexual misconduct to law enforcement authorities or revealing to new parishioners, Plaintiff or his family, Schaefer's and other sexual history and propensities for the sexual molestation of youth, holding Schaefer out to new parishes as competent, fit and moral despite actual knowledge to the contrary.
Similarly, in the negligence count against the Archdiocese, appellant alleges that the Archdiocese "negligently and recklessly assisted [the defendant priests] in suppressing public knowledge of [the defendant priests'] prior history of sexual molestation of parish youth." (Emphasis supplied.)
We reject the contention that these allegations are sufficient to toll the statute. There is not a single specific allegation of conduct on the part of the Archdiocese that kept Doe in ignorance of his claims. To the contrary, when the priests molested Doe, he was immediately on notice of potential claims against the priests as well as against the Archdiocese as their employer.
The statute of limitations begins to run when the potential plaintiff is on "inquiry notice" of such facts and circumstances that would "prompt a reasonable person to inquire further." Penwalt Corp., 314 Md. at 447. Once on notice of one cause of action, a potential plaintiff is charged with responsibility for investigating, within the limitations period, all potential claims and all potential defendants with regard to the injury . The Court of Appeals has held that "knowledge of the identity of a particular defendant is not a necessary element to trigger the running of the statute of limitations." Conaway v. State, 90 Md. App. 234, 253, 600 A.2d 1133 (1992).
Nowhere does Doe allege that, once he inquired of the Archdiocese, the Church negligently or deliberately mislead him as to what it knew about the priests. Doe's allegations are insufficient to bring the Complaint within the doctrine of fraudulent concealment. First, the Complaint alleges neither specific facts to support a claim for fraud, nor any facts from which fraud can be implied. Second, as we observed earlier, fraudulent concealment requires that the complaint articulate how the plaintiff learned of the fraud, and why a diligent plaintiff could not discover it sooner. Villarreal, 63 Md. App. at 131. Appellant's Complaint fails to satisfy this requirement. Third
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