New Hampshire Supreme Court: Law Erasing Limit on Abuse Claims Is Not Retroactive

A 2020 Granite State law lifting the statute of limitations for sexual abuse claims is not retroactive, the New Hampshire Supreme Court has ruled.

The state’s high court found that applying the 2020 law retroactively violates the state’s constitution which frowns upon retrospective laws. The court agreed with a lower court that retroactively applying it would unlawfully take away a vested right that was granted to defendants by the previous statute of limitations.

The ruling came in the case of Randy Ball, who was sexually abused by a priest in the 1970s at Camp Bernadette and Camp Fatima, summer camps run by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Manchester. Ball sued the camps and the Manchester Bishop alleging negligent hiring, retention, and supervision of the employee who sexually abused him.

When the abuse occurred, the state’s applicable statute of limitations established that a minor had until two years after reaching the age of majority to bring a personal action. In this case, that meant Ball’s right to file a claim expired in 1986.

Ball sued in August, 2023, about three years after the state legislature amended the law (RSA 508:4-g) by removing the statute of limitations defense in personal actions alleging sexual assault and related offenses and granting a person the right to “commence a personal action at any time.”

The current law is silent as to whether it applies prospectively or retrospectively.

The defendants moved to dismiss Ball’s complaint, arguing that the statute of limitations in effect at the time of the abuse barred his claims. Ball objected, arguing that the current version of the law with no limitation should apply retrospectively to revive his time-barred claim.

Following a hearing, the trial court granted the defendants’ motion, ruling that Ball failed to pursue his claim before the limitations period expired in 1986 and that applying RSA 508:4-g to revive his time-barred claim would violate Part I, Article 23 of the New Hampshire Constitution.

Part I, Article 23 of the New Hampshire Constitution provides that “retrospective laws are highly injurious, oppressive, and unjust. No such laws, therefore, should be made, either for the decision of civil causes, or the punishment of offenses.”

Ball moved to reconsider, and the trial court denied his motion. The state Supreme Court took up the subsequent appeal.

The Supreme Court has now agreed with the trial court. The court acknowledged that there may be rare circumstances where a law may be applied retroactively and still be constitutional. But this is not such a law.

When determining whether retroactive application of a statute is constitutionally permissible, the court said it inquires whether the statute “affects substantive rights and liabilities or solely affects procedures or remedies enforcing those rights.”

Ultimately, the high court said, it must discern the nature of the rights affected by the act to assess whether its application to a particular matter offends the constitution.

Generally, in the context of statutes of limitations, a statutory provision that reduces or enlarges the time within which an action may be brought has to do only with the remedy for existing rights, and there is no constitutional bar to applying it retrospectively. However, as in Ball’s case, after the limitations period has run, the defendants have a “vested right that cannot be taken away by legislative enactment.”

The limitations period that originally governed Ball’s claim expired in 1986. At that point, the defendants’ right to rely upon the statute of limitations defense vested. Applying the revised law to revive Ball’s time-barred claim would interfere with this vested right and would therefore be unconstitutional.

The high court dismissed the fact that the current law is silent on retroactivity. Retroactively applying the current statute would still be unconstitutional even if lawmakers intended the law to be retractive, because doing so would take away a vested right.

Accordingly, the trial court was correct in holding that the current law cannot operate retrospectively in this case.

Ball had argued unsuccessfully that the prohibition against retroactive application should yield where it is reasonable for state government to regulate activities in the exercise of the police power. But the high court said that exception is limited to cases where a retrospective law impairs contractual rights.

The court also rejected Ball’s argument that it should overrule its precedent establishing that a defendant has a vested right to rely upon a statute of limitations defense once the limitations period has run. Ball wanted the court to recognize instead that “there can be no vested right to a statute of limitations defense in actions based on sexual assault.”

Justice Patrick Donovan wrote the opinion in which Justices Melissa B. Countway and Bryan K. Gould concurred.

The opinion closed by commenting that the court is “acutely aware that victims of child sex abuse are some of the most vulnerable victims who deserve all of the protections and remedies available in our judicial system” and that this ruling may prevent some victims of sex abuse from bringing claims.

“Our role, however, in our co-equal, tripartite form of government is to interpret the constitution and resolve disputes arising under it,” leaving “all other considerations with the legislature and people, where they of right belong,” the court concluded.

Topics Claims