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Ault v. Jasko8/31/1994
uring physical evidence and potential reliance on expert psychiatric testimony to prove liability and damages. However, we find that application of the discovery, rule will not cause defendants undue prejudice, as plaintiffs still bear the burden of proving their claims. Also, defendants will be able to present expert testimony to rebut testimony offered by plaintiffs. Furthermore, application of the discovery rule is fair to defendants in light of the hardship that would be visited upon plaintiffs by refusing them a remedy for an injury they were unaware existed until after the expiration of the statute of limitations. Plaintiffs with valid claims should not be denied the opportunity to prove that repression of memory precluded them from bringing their claims within the statute of limitations period. Thus, in balancing the equities between defendant and plaintiff, we find that the burden placed on the defendant is much less than the greater injustice that the plaintiff would suffer. See Oliver, supra.
We conclude that the discovery rule applies in Ohio to toll the statute of limitations where a victim of childhood sexual abuse represses memories of that abuse until a later time. The one-year statute of limitations period for sexual abuse in Ohio begins to run when the victim recalls or otherwise discovers that hsor she was sexually abused, or when, through the exercise of reasonable diligence, the victim should have discovered the sexual abuse.
Accordingly, the court of appeals properly concluded that the trial court's granting of defendant's Civ.R. 12(B)(6) motion to dismiss was improper. Based on the complaint, appellee filed her action within a year of her discovery that she had been sexually abused by her father.
Judgment affirmed.
A.W. SWEENEY, DOUGLAS, RESNICK and PFEIFER, JJ., concur.
MOYER, C.J., and WRIGHT, J., separately dissent.
ALICE ROBIE RESNICK, J., concurring. I concur since I am satisfied that sufficient scientific evidence verifies that incidents of repressed memory in child sexual abuse cases do occur. Therefore, this court should not dismiss the phenomenon out of hand. At the same time, it is appropriate to approach the subject with caution.
I emphasize that this case comes to us to review a trial court's granting of a Civ.R. 12(B)(6) motion to dismiss. Therefore, we are required to accept the allegations of the complaint as true. In her complaint, Kathy Ault claims that she repressed memories of the sexual abuse perpetrated upon her by her father during her minority until she began to recover the memories in 1990 and verified them on October 23, 1990, and demands judgment against her father for that abuse. By granting the motion to dismiss, the trial court found that plaintiff could prove no set of facts entitling her to recovery, even though she brought suit within one year of her alleged recovery of memory. If we were to uphold the trial court's judgment, it would mean that repression of memory of sexual abuse as a child by a plaintiff over the age of nineteen could never overcome the statute of limitations. I am not prepared to totally slam the door to our courtrooms shut on all plaintiffs claiming repressed memory of sexual abuse who seek redress after their nineteenth birthday. We must leave the courthouse door ajar for the plaintiff with a valid claim who repressed his or her memory.
Even if one is troubled by the potential unreliability of recovered memories, as I am, this case is not one for the expression of skepticism. We are not finding that accrual of the cause of action must be delayed in every case alleging that splaintiff h
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