NCJ Number
137661
Journal
Duquesne Law Review Volume: 28 Issue: 4 Dated: (Summer 1990) Pages: 777-783
Date Published
1990
Length
7 pages
Annotation
This article examines recent attempts to expand the scope of the "discovery rule," traditionally used in medical malpractice cases, to toll the statute of limitations, and to allow alleged cases of child sexual abuse or molestation to be heard years after the abuse occurred.
Abstract
The discovery rule holds that a statute of limitations, which specifies the period of time during which charges must be brought for an offense, begins to apply not when the crime is committed, but rather when it is discovered. The discovery rule was at issue in Tyson v. Tyson (107 Washington 2d 72, 1986), in which the plaintiff, who was 26 years old at the time she filed the complaint, alleged that her father, the defendant, had committed multiple acts of sexual assault upon her when she was between the ages of 3 and 11. The plaintiff alleged that the assaults caused her to suppress any memory of those acts and that the memory was only awakened when she entered into psychological therapy some 23 years later. The Tyson court held that the discovery rule can only be applied when the risk of stale claims is outweighed by the unfairness of precluding justified causes of action and when there is objective, verifiable evidence of the original wrongful act and the resulting physical injury. The Tyson court and subsequent courts have upheld the use of the discovery rule in child sexual abuse cases brought many years after the offense only when the victim had so suppressed knowledge of it that a complaint could not have been filed within the requirements of the statute of limitations from the occurrence of the offense. In effect the statute of limitations begins to toll from the moment the alleged victim has conscious awareness of the offense and is capable of filing a complaint. There must also be some type of objectively verifiable evidence that the events in question occurred. 56 footnotes