Judges slam Yeshiva University in $680 million abuse case- Title IX - defining statute of limitation

Forward  Imagine you are in a car accident. It’s the other guy’s fault, and you know your insurance company will sue his. But should you then and there investigate the car manufacturer for deliberately ignoring a mechanical fault, even if you have no reason to know that’s true?

That’s essentially the question United States Circuit Judge Guido Calabresi asked August 28 as he lambasted a Yeshiva University lawyer for claiming that dozens of former schoolboys ought to have sued Y.U. decades ago for a sexual abuse cover-up. 

Y.U.’s lawyer, Karen Bitar, argued that students should have found out soon after they were assaulted, during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, that Y.U. was deliberately indifferent to the fact that it employed abusive staff. Calabresi said: “It seems to me that’s a mighty hard way to look at this.” 

Thirty-four former students of Yeshiva University High School for Boys sued Y.U. for $680 million in 2013. They claimed Y.U. administrators, trustees, and other staff, facilitated a massive, decades-long cover-up of abuse at the Y.U.-run high school.  [....] 

 Under Title IX, students have three years from the time they become aware of a school’s deliberate indifference to their abuse to file a suit. To prove deliberate indifference, students must show that before they were abused, a high-ranking official knew that the school employed an abusive staff member and did not act appropriately. Calabresi, part of a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, reminded Y.U.’s lawyer that not even Koeltl believed the statute of limitations began as far back as the time each of the students was abused. [...]