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	Dioceses across State Will Ask Judges to Toss Abuse Lawsuits By David B. Caruso Associated Press, carried in NEPA News [Pennsylvania] March 16, 2005 Lawyers for Roman Catholic dioceses across the state said they intend to ask judges to dismiss dozens of lawsuits filed by people who allege that they were sexually abused by priests many years ago. Advertisement The move follows a ruling by a panel of Superior Court judges on Monday that Pennsylvania's two-year statute of limitations on personal injury lawsuits generally prohibits people allegedly molested by clergy decades ago from suing now, so many years later. The ruling applied only to claims filed by 18 plaintiffs against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, but lawyers for the church said they believed it set out a standard that will apply to most of the suits currently pending against church officials throughout the state. "We think that the Superior Court got it right," said William Pietragallo II, a lawyer for the diocese of Pittsburgh, which faces more than 30 suits. "The statute of limitations is one of the fundamental tenets of Anglo-American jurisprudence, and the court has recognized that." The Pittsburgh diocese filed a motion Tuesday asking an Allegheny Court judge to reconsider an earlier ruling that had allowed several sexual abuse lawsuits to go forward. That decision was based on reasoning that the Superior Court now appears to have rejected, Pietragallo said Wednesday. A lawyer representing the Allentown Diocese said he intended to file similar motions in counties in the eastern part of the state asking judges to toss out about 10 lawsuits. A law firm that represents both the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown and the Diocese of Greensburg said it also planned to ask courts in Western Pennsylvania to consider whether several cases filed by alleged abuse victims should be dismissed as well. Attorneys for many of the alleged victims have said they plan to appeal the Superior Court decision in an attempt to preserve some chance at justice for people who were sexually abused. Richard M. Serbin, an Altoona attorney who helped craft the legal strategy used in many of the lawsuits against the dioceses, said he was hopeful that the suits will ultimately be allowed to continue. Victims have come close in some counties to realizing one of their goals, which has been to force the dioceses to turn over internal records that might reveal how much top church officials knew about abusive priests, and whether they took any steps to protect them from discovery or prosecution. The cases were filed in several waves in the two years after Catholic officials acknowledged the abuse scandal in 2002. None have yet gone to trial. A three-judge panel of the Superior Court said in an opinion Monday that even if church officials were guilty of "inexcusable conduct," the statute of limitations would protect them from lawsuits unless abuse victims had made some previous attempt to discover whether they had been involved in covering up abuse by priests.
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