JOHN DOE NO. 23, APPELLANT,
v.
ARCHDIOCESE OF MIAMI, INC., CHAMINADE-MADONNA COLLEGE PREPARATORY, INC., AND THE MARIANISTS PROVINCE OF THE UNITED STATES, INC., APPELLEES

Fla. 4th DCA | 2007-09-05
No. 4D06-2956
POLEN, STEVENSON and TAYLOR, JJ., concur.
965 So. 2d 1186 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (2007) Caution
Cited by 7 cases

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Holding

The court held that the plaintiff failed to allege sufficient facts to justify tolling the statute of limitations on an equitable estoppel theory, and thus the dismissal with prejudice was proper.


Headnotes

[1] A plaintiff seeking to toll the statute of limitations under the doctrine of equitable estoppel must allege wrongful conduct by the defendant that induced the plaintiff t…

[2] A defendant's concealment of knowledge of prior incidents of abuse does not, by itself, establish equitable estoppel to toll the statute of limitations if the plaintiff w…

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Facts & Procedural History

Plaintiff sued for sexual abuse that occurred over thirty years prior, filing well outside the statute of limitations for negligence. The plaintiff ar…

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Opinion of the Court
PER CURIAM.

PER CURIAM.

Plaintiff appeals the trial court’s dismissal with prejudice of his amended complaint for negligence against Defendants Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., Chaminade-Madonna College Preparatory, Inc., and the Marianists Province of the United States, Inc. The complaint arose from alleged sexual abuse of the plaintiff by a teacher and clergyman at the Chaminade High School more than thirty years ago. The trial court dismissed the amended complaint because the plaintiff filed the action well outside of the statutes of limitations for negligence and failed to allege sufficient facts to justify tolling the statute of limitations on an equitable estoppel theory. We affirm.

Although the plaintiff alleged that he was sexually abused by the Archdiocese’s employees when he was a student at the Catholic high school in the early 1970s, he waited more than thirty years to file suit. His delay in filing suit outside of the time permitted for negligence actions appeared on the face of his original and amended complaints. When the defendants moved to dismiss the amended complaint based on the statute of limitations, the plaintiff sought to avoid the statute of limitations by relying on the theory of equitable estoppel. The defendant conceded that his delay in filing suit was not the result of any repressed memory of the events. Rather, he asserted that his delay resulted from the defendants’ concealment of their knowledge that the subject employees had sexually abused other boys. He contends that this information would have assisted him in pursuing his wrongful hiring and supervision claims.

To assert equitable estoppel, the defendant must have engaged in wrongful conduct which “induced another into fore-bearing suit within the applicable limitations period.” Major League Baseball v. Morsani, 790 So. 2d 1071, 1079 (Fla.2001). Here, the plaintiff failed to allege any wrongful conduct or specific acts of fraud or fraudulent concealment by defendants at-any point after the acts alleged in his amended complaint to justify applying the theory of equitable . estoppel. Cf Fla. Dep’t of Health & Rehabilitative Servs. v. S.A.P., 835 So. 2d 1091, 1100 (Fla.2002) (holding that the doctrine of fraudulent concealment applied to toll the statute of limitations where the plaintiff alleged that “after the abuse .was uncovered by police, HRS then ‘obstructed’ the police investigation, ‘falsified’ reports, ‘altered’ records, and otherwise ‘actively concealed’ the abuse”).

Further, the plaintiffs claim that the defendants breached a fiduciary duty to disclose the abuse of the other boys does not explain how he was induced to wait almost three decades to sue for abuse. As New York’s highest court explained in Zumpano v. Quinn, 6 N.Y.3d 666, 816 N.Y.S.2d 703, 849 N.E. 2d 926, 930 (2006):

Even if the Court were to assume that a fiduciary relationship existed between the parties during plaintiffs’ infancy and that the diocesan defendants had a legal duty to disclose any knowledge of prior incidents of sexual abuse and breached that duty, plaintiffs still failed to demonstrate how that breach prevented them from bringing a timely action. As noted above, defendants’ concealment of their own actions and of the priests’ conduct, postwrongdoing, does not alter the fact that plaintiffs were fully aware that they had been abused. Plaintiffs also knew the identity of their abusers and that the abusers were employed by the Diocese. They failed to establish that any concealment by defendants changed their awareness of these facts or that defendants had a direct role in plaintiffs’ failure to file suit within an appropriate time period.

See also Doe v. Holy See (State of Vatican City), 17 A.D.3d 793, 793 N.Y.S.2d 565, 569 (2005), appeal denied, 6 N.Y.3d 707, 812 N.Y.S.2d 443, 845 N.E. 2d 1274 (2006); Franke v. Geyer, 209 Ill.App.3d 1009, 154 Ill.Dec. 710, 568 N.E. 2d 931, 934 (1991).

Even recognizing the defendants’ obligation to report child abuse to the authorities at that time,1 we can find no authority which would render a violation of that duty an estoppel to assert the statute of limitations. We conclude that the trial court properly dismissed the amended complaint on the basis of the statute of limitations. Because any further attempt to amend the complaint to state the requisite allegations for tolling the statute of limitations would be futile, the dismissal was properly entered with prejudice. See Walters v. Ocean Gate Phase I Condo., 925 So. 2d 440, 441 (Fla. 5th DCA 2006).

Affirmed.

POLEN, STEVENSON and TAYLOR, JJ., concur. . See Ch. 71-97, at 243, Laws of Fla.


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Citator

Cited By

  • W.D. v. Archdiocese OF Miami, Inc., 197 So. 3d 584 (Fla. 4th DCA 2016)
    …CA 2013) (citation omitted). “To assert equitable estoppel, the defendant must have engaged in wrongful conduct which ‘induced another into forebear-ing suit within the applicable limitations period.’ ” John Doe No. 23 v. Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., 965 So. 2d 1186, 1187 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007) (emphasis added) (quoting Major League Baseball v. Morsani, 790 So. 2d 1071, 1079 (Fla.2001)). Our decision in John Doe No. 23, is on point. There, the plaintiff filed a complaint against the archdiocese alleging he was se…
  • John DOE NO. 69 v. Archdiocese OF Miami, Inc., 95 So. 3d 262 (Fla. 3d DCA 2012)
    …PER CURIAM. Affirmed. See John Doe No. 23 v. Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., 965 So. 2d 1186 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007); Zumpano v. Quinn, 6 N.Y.3d 666, 816 N.Y.S.2d 703, 849 N.E. 2d 926 (2006).…
  • Rubio v. Archdiocese OF Miami, Inc., 114 So. 3d 279 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013)
    …ice. Id. The Fourth District Court of Appeal has held that equitable estoppel did not apply to avoid the statute of limitations defense in a case with facts virtually identical to the instant case. In John Doe No. 23 v. Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., 965 So. 2d 1186, 1187 (Fla. 4th DCA 2007), the plaintiff filed suit against the Archdiocese of Miami alleging that he had been sexually abused by a teacher and a clergyman at a Catholic high school more than thirty years earlier. In response to the Archdiocese’s st…

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