Assault Victims May Have Six Years, Not One, to Sue in Ohio

Published March 29, 2022 · Ohio Appeals Courts

People who are attacked, groped, or beaten often need time before they can even think about a lawsuit. They are dealing with injuries, with a criminal case that may drag on for a year or more, and with the simple difficulty of reliving what happened. By the time they are ready, many have been told it is too late, because Ohio gives assault and battery claims only one year.

A decision from the Tenth District Court of Appeals in Columbus, issued March 17, 2022, says that for at least one kind of claim, that is wrong. In Harris v. Cunix, 2022-Ohio-839 (10th Dist.), the court held that a crime victim's civil claim under Ohio's crime-victim statute carries a six-year limitations period.

The case

Tracey Harris was a poker dealer at a Columbus casino. According to the court's opinion, in June 2014 a player at her table stood next to her and put his hands down her pants. In December 2014, the same player crawled under the table and wrapped his arms around her thighs for 30 to 45 seconds.

She sued him in 2020. When she added a claim under R.C. 2307.60, alleging that his conduct amounted to crimes including assault, gross sexual imposition, and sexual imposition, the trial court refused to allow it. The trial court reasoned that the claim was governed by a one-year deadline and was therefore hopeless.

The Tenth District reversed.

The law: Ohio's civil remedy for crime victims

R.C. 2307.60(A)(1) provides that anyone "injured in person or property by a criminal act has, and may recover full damages in, a civil action," unless the law specifically provides otherwise. The statute also allows recovery of attorney fees and punitive damages when another law authorizes them. We have written before about how this statute lets victims sue even when there is no criminal conviction.

The statute does not say how long a victim has to file. So courts have had to choose between two general limitations statutes:

• R.C. 2305.11(A), which gives one year for "an action upon a statute for a penalty or forfeiture"; and
• R.C. 2305.07(B), which gives six years for an action upon a liability created by statute "other than a forfeiture or penalty."

The question, then, is whether R.C. 2307.60 is a "penalty" statute, meant to punish the wrongdoer, or a "remedial" statute, meant to compensate the victim.

What the court decided

The Tenth District held that R.C. 2307.60(A)(1) is remedial, so the six-year period in R.C. 2305.07(B) applies. The court pointed to several things:

• The legislature used the word "damages," not "penalty" or "forfeiture," which signals that the statute's purpose is to compensate the victim.
• Punishment of the offender happens under the criminal statutes. R.C. 2307.60 is the vehicle for making the victim whole.
• The fact that the statute also allows punitive damages does not turn the whole statute into a penalty statute when its overall purpose is compensation.

The court was candid that it was breaking with other courts. It acknowledged that earlier decisions from the Eighth District in Cleveland, a Fifth District decision, and several federal courts had applied the one-year period, but it found that the leading case on that side offered little analysis. It sent the case back to the trial court, which may still consider other reasons for allowing or refusing the amended complaint.

What this does and does not mean

This is good news for crime victims, but it needs to be read carefully.

It is a Tenth District decision. The Tenth District covers Franklin County. Courts in other parts of Ohio are not bound by it, and some appellate districts have gone the other way. As of today, neither the Supreme Court of Ohio nor the Second District Court of Appeals, which hears appeals from Montgomery, Greene, Miami, and other Dayton-area counties, has decided the question. The issue may well reach the Supreme Court.

It applies to the crime-victim statute, not to every claim. A traditional claim for assault or battery still carries a one-year deadline under R.C. 2305.111(B). Harris concerns the separate statutory claim under R.C. 2307.60, which requires proof that the injury was caused by a criminal act.

The other deadlines have not changed. Claims against a business for failing to provide reasonable security, such as an apartment complex, bar, or hotel where an attack happened, are usually negligence claims governed by Ohio's two-year bodily-injury deadline. We discuss those claims in our post on negligent security and on our premises liability page.

Our guide chapter on deadlines and the timeline of an Ohio injury case lays out the most common limitations periods side by side.

Why you still should not wait

A six-year window, even if it holds up, is a safety net, not a plan. In an assault case, the most valuable evidence is often gone long before the deadline:

• surveillance video from the bar, store, casino, or parking lot, which is commonly overwritten within days or weeks;
• witnesses who move or forget;
• the 911 call and police body-camera footage;
• medical records documenting the injuries while they are fresh; and
• the attacker's assets and insurance, which may change over time.

There is also a strategic reason to move early. When a criminal case is pending, the civil case can use the evidence developed there, and a guilty plea or conviction can be powerful proof. And if a business's negligence made the attack possible, the two-year deadline for that claim may expire long before six years run.

What this means for you

If you were assaulted, sexually assaulted, or otherwise injured by someone's criminal act, you may have more time to sue the person who hurt you than you were told. Do not rely on that. The safest course is to treat the shortest possible deadline as the real one and to talk with a lawyer while evidence still exists. Our personal injury practice handles claims against individual wrongdoers and against the businesses that failed to protect their customers and employees.