Doe v. M.J.
| Decision Date | 22 April 2022 |
| Docket Number | 121,768 |
| Parties | John Doe H.B., an Individual, Appellee, v. M.J., Individually and in His Capacity as a Priest at St. Matthew Parish, and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, a Kansas Not For Profit Corporation, Appellants. |
| Court | Kansas Supreme Court |
Chad E. Blomberg, of Lathrop GPM LLP, of Kansas City, Missouri, and Ross Henry Stewart, of Stewart Law Office, LLC, of Overland Park, argued the cause, and Mara H. Cohara, of Lathrop GPM LLP, of Kansas City, Missouri, and Elizabeth D. Hatting, of the same firm, and Carrie E. Josserand, of the same firm, of Overland Park, were with them on the briefs for appellant.
Rebecca M. Randles, of Randles Mata LLC, of Kansas City, Missouri, argued the cause and was on the briefs for appellee.
The adult plaintiff alleges a priest sexually abused him when the plaintiff was a child and is suing the priest and the archdiocese that employed the priest for damages. The defendants sought interlocutory appeal from orders denying their motions for dismissal and summary judgment, and this court granted review of the Court of Appeals opinion affirming the district court. We find the Court of Appeals opinion to be well reasoned and agree with its conclusions.
The plaintiff John Doe H.B. (H.B.) was born on April 30, 1971. He attended Catholic schools in Topeka, where he often served as an altar boy and was frequently in the company of a priest, Father M.J. H.B. later relocated to Guam, where he currently resides.
On August 31, 2017, H.B. filed a petition in Wyandotte County District Court seeking damages from M.J. and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas. The petition alleged various torts based on sexual abuse by M.J. from the time H.B. "was approximately 9 years old until he was approximately 12 years old." These dates would have been between April 30, 1980, and April 29, 1984. The petition listed specific examples of sexual abuse and asserted that H.B. "repressed all memory of the abuse until approximately late fall 2015 when news reports of sexual abuse by priests ... in Guam hit the media." The petition further asserted that H.B. "did not discover nor could he reasonably have discovered his injury until his memory returned."
The defendants filed motions to dismiss based on statutes of limitations and repose. The district court denied the motions to dismiss and ordered limited discovery relating to the limitation and repose statutes. The parties then agreed to a videotaped deposition of H.B., which took place on October 30, 2018.
The defendants filed motions for judgment on the pleadings or, in the alternative, for summary judgment, arguing the claims were time barred. The district court denied the defendants' motions. The district court filed an amended order certifying the case for interlocutory appeal under K.S.A. 60-2102(c), expressly finding that its judgment involved controlling questions of law to which there was substantial ground for difference of opinion and an immediate appeal might materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation. The defendants then filed a timely request for immediate appeal with the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals affirmed the district court in John Doe v. M.J ., 59 Kan. App. 2d 273, 482 P.3d 596 (2021). This court granted the defendants' joint petition for review. Having reviewed the record, the parties' arguments, and the relevant statutes, we agree with the Court of Appeals analysis and affirm.
The defendants urge this court to look to statutes of repose and limitations to conclude as a matter of law that the time has expired for H.B. to bring claims for damages against them. A statute of limitations establishes a maximum time from when an action accrues during which an injured party may file for recourse, and the action may accrue when the injuries manifest themselves. See Pancake House, Inc. v. Redmond , 239 Kan. 83, 87, 716 P.2d 575 (1986) ; Hecht v. First National Bank & Trust Co ., 208 Kan. 84, 92, 490 P.2d 649 (1971). A statute of repose, on the other hand, establishes a maximum time to seek legal relief after a causative event has occurred, even if no discernible injury has yet manifested itself; it may create finality for meritorious suits even when the plaintiff is not responsible for the delay. See Harding v. K.C. Wall Products, Inc ., 250 Kan. 655, 668, 831 P.2d 958 (1992) ; McCann v. Hy-Vee, Inc ., 663 F.3d 926, 930 (7th Cir. 2011).
Before embarking on a review of the issues the defendants present, we note the posture of this case. It has not gone to trial, and full discovery has not taken place. The questions before us rest in the context of the pleadings, narrowly targeted depositions and interrogatories, and arguments by counsel. Further discovery or a full evidentiary proceeding may resolve uncertainties in favor of one or the other sides to this litigation in a manner not possible now.
The defendants initially argue that the K.S.A. 60-515(a) eight-year statute of repose and the K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 60-523 statute of limitations operate together to extinguish H.B.'s claims. Resolution of this argument rests on whether H.B. is subject to the pre-July 1992 statute of repose or the post-July 1992 statute of repose. This test rests in turn on the extent to which H.B. is bound to factual assertions contained in his petition and on when the alleged abuse occurred for the last time—before July 1, 1984, or after July 1, 1984—as well as on the question of when H.B. discovered he had injuries arising from his alleged childhood sexual abuse. The district court ruled these were factual questions that could not be resolved from the pleadings and it would therefore be inappropriate to dismiss the complaint based on the pleadings and limited discovery alone. The Court of Appeals agreed, and so do we.
We are reviewing here both motions to dismiss and motions for summary judgment. The main distinction between the handling of a motion to dismiss and a motion for summary judgment is that the former limits the trial court to a review of the pleadings, while the latter allows the trial court to consider all the facts produced during the discovery process—affidavits, depositions, admissions, and answers to interrogatories. Keiswetter v. State , 304 Kan. 362, 367-68, 373 P.3d 803 (2016).
An appellate court reviews the district court's denial of a motion for summary judgment de novo, viewing the facts in the light most favorable to the party opposing summary judgment. If reasonable minds could disagree about the conclusions to be drawn from the evidence—in other words, if there is a genuine issue about a material fact—summary judgment is inappropriate. Siruta v. Siruta , 301 Kan. 757, 766, 348 P.3d 549 (2015).
K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 60-256(f) extends to the district court the discretion to deny a motion for summary judgment when discovery is needed. An appellate court's standard of review of such a decision is for abuse of discretion. Northern Natural Gas Co. v. ONEOK Field Services Co ., 296 Kan. 906, 935, 296 P.3d 1106, cert. denied 571 U.S. 826, 134 S.Ct. 162, 187 L.Ed.2d 40 (2013).
K.S.A. 60-515(a) is a statute of repose that sets out a general requirement that an action must be commenced no more than eight years after the date on which the events took place that gave rise to the cause of action:
"Except as provided in K.S.A. 60-523, if any person entitled to bring an action, other than for the recovery of real property or a penalty or a forfeiture, at the time the cause of action accrued or at any time during the period the statute of limitations is running, is less than 18 years of age, an incapacitated person or imprisoned for a term less than such person's natural life, such person shall be entitled to bring such action within one year after the person's disability is removed, except that no such action shall be commenced by or on behalf of any person under the disability more than eight years after the time of the act giving rise to the cause of action."
For most tort claims, then, an injury suffered by a child at the age of, say 8, would no longer be actionable by the time the child turned 18. But K.S.A. 60-515(a) carves out an exception for K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 60-523 injuries resulting from sexual abuse.
K.S.A. 2020 Supp. 60-523 extends the limitation on actions to no more than three years from when the plaintiff discovered that injuries resulted from childhood sexual abuse:
"(a) No action for recovery of damages suffered as a result of childhood sexual abuse shall be commenced more than three years after the date the person attains 18 years of age or more than three years from the date the person discovers or reasonably should have discovered that the injury or illness was caused by childhood sexual abuse, whichever occurs later."
This statute contains another time limitation—it applies only when the last act of abuse took place on or after July 1, 1984:
The most literal reading of the above language would indicate that any action—including the present one—would be saved by the statute, no matter when the abuse occurred, so long as it was filed within three years of the discovery of resulting injury or illness. Constitutional due process concerns, however, limit application of the statute to those claims that had not been extinguished by the eight-year statute of repose at the time K.S.A. 60-523 was enacted. See Ripley v. Tolbert , 260 Kan. 491, 500-512, 921 P.2d 1210 (1996) ; see also Harding v. K.C. Wall Products, Inc ., 250 Kan. 655, 669, 831 P.2d 958 (1992) (...
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