Was E. Jean Carrol's civil rape/sexual abuse lawsuit against Donald Trump barred by New York's statute of limitations?

    A retired Birmingham, Alabama lawyer friend, who grew up in The Tiny Kingdom, asked me what I think about New York's Adult Survivor's Act (ASA), which allowed E. Jean Carroll to sue Donald Trump for rape and sexual abuse in a United District Court in New York long after the regular New York statute of limitations had run for such civil lawsuits.

    I found this online about New York's ASA:

The Adult Survivors Act (ASA) is New York State legislation enacted in May 2022 which amends state law to allow alleged victims of sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations has lapsed to file civil suits for a one-year period, from November 24, 2022, to November 24, 2023. The act thus expands the ability of plaintiffs to sue for sexual assault and unwanted sexual contact in the workplace.[1]

Background and enactment

Before 2019, a three-year statute of limitations applied to civil suits for sexual misconduct in New York. In 2019, New York extended the statute of limitations for civil suits arising from sex crimes against adults to 20 years, but this extension was not retroactive.[2]

In 2022, the ASA was enacted. The bill was sponsored by state Senator Brad Hoylman and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal.[3] It unanimously passed the Senate in April 2022, passed the Assembly on a 140–3 vote in May 2022,[4] and was signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul.[5]

Provisions

The ASA amended New York's Civil Practice Law and Rules to allow alleged victims of sexual offenses for which the statute of limitations had lapsed to file civil suits for a one-year period (the "lookback window"), from November 24, 2022, to November 24, 2023.[1][6] The ASA is modeled after the New York Child Victims Act of 2019, which established a one-year window (later extended by an additional year) for victims of child sexual abuse to sue, raising claims that otherwise would have been barred by the statute of limitations.[2]

    Ass-u-me Trump's lawyers filed a pleading objecting to Carrol's lawsuit, because the NY regular statute of limitations had run, and ass-u-me they also argued NY's ASA was ex-post facto, thus illegal.

    I think Trump's lawyers can argue on appeal that NY's ASA is unconstitutional, because it is retroactive - ex post facto. NY's ASA gives someone a cause of acton that ceased to exist because she didn't timely file a lawsuit within the regular statute of limitations time.

    I think Carrol's lawyers might counter that by arguing Trump wasn't living in NY and so the regular statute of limitations is tolled. But Trump's lawyers would argue, what prevented Carrol from suing Trump in Florida, where he lived?

    As much as I dislike Trump, I think the NY ASA is unconstitutional and the jury verdict should be overturned by a federal appellate court.

    Carrol's defamation charges in her lawsuit hinged on the jury finding Trump had raped or sexually assaulted/abused her. For if he had not, how did he defame her by calling her a liar?

    So, if a federal appellate court rules NY's ASA is unconstitutional, and the US Supreme Court affirms that ruling, Carrol's defamation verdict also is overruled, and anything Trump later said about Carrol being a liar, or having made it all up, probably won't fly well in a subsequent defamation lawsuit she prosecutes against Trump.

    I posted that at my Facebook page, and a man living in Chattanooga, who, like me attended Vanderbilt, replied:

EC

The important thing to remember here is that a jury, after hearing the evidence, concluded that Trump did, in fact, sexually assault Ms. Carroll. With that in mind, it does not speak well of a political party to support such a person for ANY political office, much less the Presidency of the United States.

Sloan Bashinsky

There are many reasons Trump is unfit for office, and you named one of those reasons. However, that is not what this Facebook post is about. It is about the rule of law, which Trump seems to have flouted all of his life. And yet, ironically, it looks to this Alabama lawyer, who once clerked for a Federal Judge in Birmingham, that the Federal Court in New York City messed up. Or, Trump's lawyers did not argue the NY ASA law was ex post facto, thus illegal, and they waived that argument and cannot make it on appeal. I have a hard time believing they did not make the ex post facto argument in the Federal Court in NY City. As for what you and I think about Trump's fitness for office, that is irrelevant to people who back him. I am pretty well convinced there is nothing he might do that would cause them not to. vote for him. That, I think, is the most important issue.

As for Carrol, I wonder why she could not remember the year when she claimed Trump assaulted her? And, why did she wait so long to go public with it? Why didn't she go public with it when Trump ran for president in 2016? If she had gone public with it then, would that have affected the outcome? Would Hillary Clinton have won not only the popular vote, but also the electoral college vote? Not that I cared for Hillary. I thought she and Trump both should have been locked up, in adjoining cells. 

 

Peggy 
Sloan, the mind does great things to one's memory sometimes. I was raped in 1960 and the detectives I worked with in the late '70s said I empathized so well with all the survivors that I must have had a similar experience and I said no. Then driving past a certain business in downtown West Palm with a man I was dating in the early '80s, I just started shaking and when he questioned me, I said the owner of that business raped me in 1960 a few weeks after I moved to Florida. Until that moment, my mind shut down about the whole thing, so I can very well understand why a woman could not say exactly when the rape occurred, because the mind just shuts down on some factors of such an assault sometimes.

Sloan Bashinsky
I know some women get amnesia and don't remember being sexually abused, and sometimes something happens that triggers some or total remembering of it. Carrol did not claim that kind of amnesia, she said she remembered it vividly. But not the year. Trump had bragged about getting away with grabbing women’s pussies, and he did not attend the trial, and I think that’s why the jury sided with Carrol. I’m glad the jury did that, yet I can’t understand how a law passed many years later, to bypass an existing statute of limitations, is legal in cases where the woman does not claim she had total amnesia for many years, and then she suddenly remembered it. I also can’t understand why Carrol didn’t make the claim when Trump ran in 2016, when making the claim really mattered, in the bigger scheme of things. Anyway, it’s in a federal appeal now, and will be decided there.

Peggy

Some remember parts of it and not others. I probably remembered the year, and actually the month (June), because it happened just a couple weeks after I came to Florida from Ohio. I can't say why she couldn't remember the year but I think it's likely she was telling the truth. Had it not been such a drastic change for me, I might not have remembered the month and year, either. It happened to me at the beach and I was a girl from southern Ohio who'd never seen the ocean before, much less been right there at the edges of it.

 

Sloan Bashinsky
I believe you, and I believe Carrol. I think her very long delay in speaking publicly about it, given who assaulted her, did not win her any gold stars in Heaven, and, as a lawyer, I think the new retroactive NY law ,which gave her a way around the NY statute of limitations, is illegal. Trump is a SPOS, I think he should be in prison. Too bad Carrol didn’t go to NY law enforcement right after it occurred. She instead finally got around to trying to make money off it.  

 

Peggy

Could be, Sloan, but I'd put it way down the list of reasons.

Sloan Bashinsky
I think her publishing company and her trial lawyer might disagree. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com