Doe v. Boy Scouts of Am.
| Decision Date | 30 September 2016 |
| Docket Number | No. 1–15–2406.,1–15–2406. |
| Citation | 66 N.E.3d 433,408 Ill.Dec. 641 |
| Parties | John DOE No. 2, John Doe No. 3, John Doe No. 4, John Doe No. 6, John Doe No. 7, John Doe No. 8, John Doe No. 9, John Doe No. 10, John Doe No. 11, John Doe No. 12, John Doe No. 13, John Doe No. 14, John Doe No. 15, John Doe No. 16, John Doe No. 17, and John Doe No. 18, Plaintiffs–Appellees, v. BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA, a Congressionally Chartered Corporation, Authorized to Do Business in Illinois; Chicago Area Council, Inc., Boy Scouts of America; and Chicago Area Council, Boy Scouts of America, Inc., Defendants–Appellants. |
| Court | United States Appellate Court of Illinois |
Robert Marc Chemers, Scott L. Howie, John J. Walsh III, and Edward J. Aucoin, Jr., of Pretzel & Stouffer, Chtrd., of Chicago, and Dana C. Crowley, of Dana Crowley & Associates, of Barrington, for appellants.
Christopher T. Hurley and Evan M. Smola, of Hurley McKenna & Mertz, of Chicago, for appellees.
¶ 1 In 2013, plaintiff John Doe 2 joined an existing lawsuit against defendants Thomas Hacker, Boy Scouts of America (BSA), and the Chicago Area Council (CAC), as 1 of 18 plaintiffs alleging that they were sexually abused as children by Hacker, their former scoutmaster in the Boy Scouts.1 THE PRESENT APPEAL involves the claims of plaintiff doe 2 only (plaintiff). In addition, Hacker was voluntarily dismissed as a defendant from the lawsuit, so that only the Boy Scout defendants remain.
¶ 2 In the current third amended complaint, plaintiff alleges that defendants BSA and CAC (the Boy Scout defendants) knew that Hacker had sexually abused Boy Scouts as a scoutmaster long before his abuse of plaintiff, but they nevertheless allowed Hacker to serve as the scoutmaster for plaintiff's troop, where he sexually abused plaintiff from 1983 to 1986. It is undisputed in this lawsuit that Hacker abused plaintiff at official Boy Scout events and outings between 1983 and 1986. Plaintiff alleges counts of negligence, fraudulent concealment of claims, and equitable estoppel against the Boy Scout defendants.
¶ 3 The Boy Scout defendants moved for summary judgment against plaintiff, claiming that plaintiff's action against them was time-barred under the two-year statute of limitations for personal injury actions. In response, plaintiff argued that his claim was timely under the fraudulent concealment statute (735 ILCS 5/13–215 (West 2012) ), where the Boy Scout defendants had concealed their knowledge of Hacker's conduct, thereby concealing their liability for Hacker's actions. The trial court denied the Boy Scout defendants' motion for summary judgment, but upon their motion, certified a question for interlocutory review to this court under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 308 (eff. Jan. 1, 2015).
¶ 4 The trial court certified the following question to this court:
"Does the fraudulent-concealment statute of limitations permit a plaintiff to maintain an otherwise time-barred action for child sexual abuse when he testifies that he knew, before the action was time-barred, that he had sustained a physical injury from the abuser's conduct and that the abuser had been arrested and tried for similar crimes?"
¶ 5 The word "permit" means "to allow" or "to make something possible." Merriam–Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/permit (last visited Sept. 29, 2016). Thus the question asks to decide whether a suit is possible under the stated conditions.
¶ 6 In sum, a "no" answer to the above question would mean that, as a matter of law, a plaintiff's knowledge that he had sustained a physical injury and that his abuser was arrested and tried for similar crimes, would bar a plaintiff from invoking the fraudulent concealment statute under all circumstances and against any party who could be potentially liable. We cannot agree with this proposition.
¶ 7 As a result, and for the following reasons, we answer "yes" to the certified question.
¶ 10 In 2013, shortly before turning 40, plaintiff joined this existing case as an additional plaintiff. The current third amended complaint, filed May 28, 2015, includes counts of negligence, fraudulent concealment of claims, and equitable estoppel against the Boy Scout defendants. In the complaint, plaintiff alleges that defendant BSA knew that Hacker was a serial pedophile by 1970, when he was first banned from scouting. Nevertheless, defendant BSA allowed Hacker to register with defendant CAC in 1984, where he sexually abused plaintiff. Plaintiff alleges that the Boy Scout defendants were aware, long before plaintiff entered scouting, that there was a longstanding and widespread problem of adult scout leaders sexually abusing minor scouts and that their system for banning pedophiles (the IV files) was not working. Plaintiff alleges that the Boy Scout defendants negligently failed to protect him from Hacker's abuse, fraudulently concealed all of the above knowledge, and represented to plaintiff that scouting was a safe activity for boys. Plaintiff further alleges that defendant BSA stood in a special, fiduciary relationship with him, such that the Boy Scout defendants had a duty to disclose this knowledge and their culpability for his abuse.
¶ 11 The Boy Scout defendants moved for summary judgment against plaintiff on September 12, 2014.2 Claiming that plaintiff had acknowledged knowing of the wrongfulness of his abuse and at least some of his resulting injuries at the age of 14, the Boy Scout defendants argued that his two-year limitations period for filing suit had been tolled only during the time he was a minor. Because it began to run when he turned 18, the Boy Scout defendants argued, the limitations expired when plaintiff turned 20, nearly 20 years before he filed his claim.
¶ 12 In response, plaintiff argued that the Boy Scout defendants had fraudulently concealed his cause of action, which had tolled the statute of limitations until late 2012. Plaintiff argued that the Boy Scout defendants' affirmative representations that they did not know of Hacker's past history of abuse constituted fraudulent concealment. Plaintiff further argued that, even in the absence of these affirmative acts, defendants' silence constituted fraudulent concealment because they were in a special relationship with him while he was a boy scout and had thus been obligated to inform him of "his cause of action." Because of this fraudulent concealment, plaintiff argued that his claim was timely, as the five-year limitations period provided by the fraudulent concealment statute had started running only in late 2012, shortly before he first learned of his cause of action after viewing publicized Perversion Files.
¶ 13 The trial court denied the Boy Scout defendants' motion for summary judgment on January 8, 2015. The report of proceedings shows that the trial court concluded that there was a genuine issue of material fact as to whether defendants were in a special relationship with plaintiff, such that they had been required to tell him of his potential claim against them. CAC filed a motion to reconsider denial of its motion for summary judgment on April 20, 2015, which the trial court denied.
¶ 14 The Boy Scout defendants filed a motion to certify a question for interlocutory review under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 308 (eff. Jan. 1, 2015) on June 12, 2015. On June 30, 2015, the trial court denied the Boy Scout defendants' motion to certify a question for interlocutory review without prejudice. On July 10, 2015, the Boy Scout defendants filed an amended motion to certify a question under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 308 (eff. Jan. 1, 2015). On August 17, 2015, the trial court granted the Boy Scout defendants' amended motion. On August 31, 2015, the trial court certified the following question to this court:
"Does the fraudulent-concealment statute of limitations permit a plaintiff to maintain an otherwise time-barred action for child sexual abuse when he testifies that he knew, before the action was time-barred, that he had sustained a physical injury from the abuser's conduct and that the abuser had been arrested and tried for similar crimes?"
The same day, defendants filed a petition for leave to appeal to this court. We granted the petition on September 30, 2015. As noted above, defendant Hacker was voluntarily dismissed from this lawsuit, and the only remaining claims are against defendants BSA and CAC for negligence, fraudulent concealment and equitable estoppel.
¶ 15 On May 12, 2016, plaintiff filed a motion to strike portions of the Boy Scout defendants' brief and to supplement the record on appeal. In this motion, plaintiffs argued that a significant portion of the Boy Scout defendants' brief in support of its Rule 308 appeal contains argument without any factual support or citation to the record, in violation of Illinois Supreme Court Rule 341 (eff. Jan. 1, 2016). Specifically, plaintiff argued that the Boy Scout defendants' brief references cases of other boy scouts against defendants to argue that plaintiff should have known of his cause of action earlier but that the Boy Scout defendants refuse to disclose the identity of such cases. We granted plaintiff's motion to strike on May 19, 2016, and struck all portions of the Boy Scout defendants' brief not supported by the record on appeal.
¶ 16 Below we provide only a summary of the extensive discovery and exhibits that are part of this record on appeal.
¶ 18 According to defendant BSA's charters and bylaws,3 defendant BSA is organized with a national office in Irving, Texas (the National Council). The National Council grants charters to local councils in every state, and these councils oversee Boy Scout operations on a regional basis. Defendant CAC is one such local council and was responsible for the scouting program in a large part of the...
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