Attorney: Plaintiffs will refile
Attorney Darren Penn says his Darlington sexual abuse clients “fully intend to refile this case at a date of our choosing.”
An attorney for the plaintiffs in a sexual abuse lawsuit said that despite dropping the case against the defendants, which had included Darlington School, the plan remains to refile the suit at a later time.
In a Friday filing in Floyd County Superior Court, the plaintiffs, primarily former students, had the suit dismissed without prejudice. This action allows for them to refile their complaint.
The former students had alleged they were sexually abused by a former Darlington teacher, a former student and another man during the 1970s and 1980s. They also had claimed the school did not step in to stop it when
the incidents were reported.
In an emailed statement, attorney Darren Penn, of the Atlanta-based Penn Law Group, said, “Although we would have appreciated the opportunity to present our case and move forward to trial, we believe it is better to postpone the discussion of the legal arguments until a later time.
“We fully intend to refile this case at a date of our choosing,” Penn continued.
A hearing had been scheduled for Monday. The defendants would have had the opportunity to argue for the dismissal of the suit, while the plaintiffs would have been able to orally respond to their filings.
Several defendants had issued motions to dismiss the lawsuit in mid-October, claiming the law allowing the lawsuit to be filed was unconstitutional and the statute of limitations had expired for bringing a civil case.
The lawsuit was filed in late June just before the Hidden Predator Act, a 2015 law, expired. This law suspended the statute of limitations for civil suits against those accused of sexual abuse against minors.
An expanded version of this law, the Hidden Predator Act of 2018, never made it past a second reading in the Georgia House of Representatives last session.
“In January, the Georgia Legislature will begin working to amend the existing Hidden Predator Act,” Penn said. “We will be working with our legislators during the 2018 legislative session to correct several serious flaws in that law.”
A main goal of theirs in seeking to amend the law is for it to hold entities liable when they may be complicit in the actions of an individual under the organization’s domain.
Darlington’s motion to dismiss states the law arguably allowed for a revival of claims of abuse by an individual but did not allow for an entity, such as the school, to be sued under that law — so the normal statute of limitations should apply.
In an emailed statement Friday, Darlington Head of School Brent Bell said, “Although the lawsuit has been dismissed, the school is committed to discovering the whole truth and will continue its fact-finding effort outside the legal process to investigate these claims of abuse.”