Key Points

  • The Arkansas Supreme Court overruled its precedent categorically barring the General Assembly from expanding a statute of limitations to revive time-barred claims, holding that the precedent lacks any constitutional basis.
  • The court held that the expiration of a limitations period does not give a defendant a vested property right, or any other right.
  • The court upheld the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sex Abuse Act against Nesmith's constitutional challenge, reversed the circuit court's summary-judgment dismissal, vacated the Court of Appeals' opinion, and remanded for further proceedings.
  • Justice Hudson concurred, finding this an exceptional case that justified departing from stare decisis; Chief Justice Baker and Justice Womack dissented in defense of the court's vested-rights precedent.

The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday overruled its long-standing rule that the legislature cannot revive lawsuits once the statute of limitations has run, clearing the way for four people who say a man who was then a pediatrician sexually abused them as children to pursue their claims.

Justice Nicholas J. Bronni wrote for the court that the vested-rights doctrine, which treated an expired limitations period as a defendant's protected right, has no footing in the state constitution. "Revisiting our vested-rights precedent, we conclude that it lacks any constitutional basis and, as such, cannot stand," he wrote. Special Justice Cory Cox joined the opinion, Justice Courtney Rae Hudson concurred, and Chief Justice Karen R. Baker and Justice Shawn A. Womack dissented. Justice Webb did not participate.

The decision upholds the Justice for Vulnerable Victims of Sex Abuse Act, a statute that gives child sex-abuse victims a limited window to file civil claims that had already expired. It reverses a Pulaski County Circuit Court judgment for the defendant, James Darrell Nesmith, and vacates a Court of Appeals decision affirming it. The court did not confine its ruling to abuse cases: it overruled, as a category, the prior cases barring the General Assembly from expanding a limitations period and thereby reviving time-barred claims.

The plaintiffs, identified in the opinion as H.C., L.S., R.T. and T.K., allege that Nesmith abused them multiple times between 1995 and 2007. Three say he abused them during medical visits while he was a pediatric doctor. The fourth says Nesmith molested him at his home and at a church camp where Nesmith served as a counselor. They seek damages for sexual assault, sexual battery and infliction of extreme emotional distress.

Both sides agreed the claims came too late under the ordinary rules, which allow three years for tort suits and give minors until three years after they turn 21. The plaintiffs nonetheless filed within the revival window the act created. Nesmith moved for summary judgment, arguing that under the court's precedent the legislature had no power to revive the claims. Judge Timothy Davis Fox agreed and dismissed the complaint.

The Court of Appeals affirmed, acknowledging the abhorrent nature of the alleged conduct but finding itself powerless to depart from the high court's precedent. The Supreme Court then granted review.

Bronni cited a 1933 decision, Wasson v. State ex rel. Jackson, as stating that once a claim is time-barred "neither a constitutional convention nor the Legislature has power to divest that right and revive the cause of action." When the court first used the principle to strike down legislation that year, Bronni wrote, it "relied on a single legal encyclopedia published in 1915" reporting what most jurisdictions held at that moment. The precedent, he wrote, "rests entirely on ungrounded judicial assertions and a deeply flawed understanding of the role of statutes of limitations."

Later decisions had described the doctrine as a matter of due process, and Womack's dissent took the same approach. Bronni rejected it, writing that "slapping a constitutional label on a century-old doctrine" is no substitute for principled constitutional analysis. Drawing on U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson and CTS Corp. v. Waldburger, he wrote that limitations periods "are by definition arbitrary" and exist only by "legislative grace." As a result, he concluded, "the expiration of a statute-of-limitations period does not confer a property right—or any other right for that matter."

The opinion framed the outcome as a question of separation of powers. Courts interpret statutes and enforce the constitution, Bronni wrote, but their role does not include "constructing atextual limitations on the legislature's power." He added, "And we now restore to the General Assembly its constitutional power to decide how long is too long to bring a claim."

With the precedent gone, the court said, "this is an easy case," because no one disputed that the plaintiffs sued within the window the legislature set. In a footnote, the court also rejected Nesmith's argument that the separate limitations period of the Arkansas Medical Malpractice Act applied, holding that the sexual-assault claims do not arise from the provision of "professional services."

Hudson wrote separately to stress that the court does not lightly abandon precedent under stare decisis. She said this case was an exception because "childhood sexual abuse presents a unique problem in that—by its very nature—it often prevents victims from bringing timely claims." She concluded that "great injury and injustice will result if we continue to follow our vested-rights precedent in this case," while adding that Nesmith "is certainly entitled to a fair trial on these allegations."

Baker would have affirmed the dismissal. She wrote that she disagreed "with the majority's decision to upend 180 years of this court's precedent prohibiting legislative attempts to revive expired statutes of limitation," a line of cases she traced to an 1846 decision, Couch v. McKee.

Womack wrote that the majority "departs from nearly two centuries of our vested-rights jurisprudence" and that the doctrine rests on the state constitution's due-process guarantee. He called the act's policy goals "powerful and compelling" but wrote, "Our duty is not to decide whether the legislature acted wisely or compassionately; it is to decide whether it acted within constitutional bounds."

Womack also cited an amicus brief from an 87-year-old retired widow defending decades-old claims in federal court, who reported that relevant records no longer exist and that potential witnesses are elderly or dead. "The point is more basic: the passage of decades can make a fair defense difficult, sometimes impossible," he wrote.

The case now returns to the Pulaski County Circuit Court for further proceedings on the plaintiffs' claims, which have not been tried on the merits.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs included Joshua D. Gillispie of Gillispie Law Firm. Nesmith was represented by Mark D. Wankum of Anderson, Murphy & Hopkins, L.L.P.