The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that if plaintiffs claim to have repressed their memory of the bad things that happened to them, they may succeed in suspending for years and even decades the statute of limitations on the resulting tort actions. The court reinstated a suit by a man who said he had been sexually abused at Chaminade College Preparatory School 30 years ago, but had repressed the memory of the episode for 25-odd years. (Robert Patrick, “Repressed memory abuse suits supported”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jun. 13). Reader Patrick R., who sent the item along, says: “This is an invitation to fleece churches and insurance companies through fraudulent claims and an invitation for claimants to sleep on their legal rights.”
Down repressed-memory lane, cont’d
The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled that if plaintiffs claim to have repressed their memory of the bad things that happened to them, they may succeed in suspending for years and even decades the statute of limitations on the resulting tort actions. The court reinstated a suit by a man who said he had been […]
One Comment
The whole issue of recovered memory has largely been discredited by most authoratative sources, except the courts.
In the interest of fairness, if the plaintiff get a few decades to recover their memories, then perhaps the defendant should subsequently be allowed a similar period of time to recover sufficient memory of their wherabouts on Noon, Tuesday, 1971. How the hell can anyone mount a defence decades later.