Ohio State University has filed a motion to dismiss about a third of the remaining claims of the former students who are suing the school for failing to protect them decades ago from being sexually abused by campus doctor Richard Strauss.
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Writing on behalf of the university, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said 43 of the cases should be dismissed “in whole” because the alleged abuse happened before Oct. 21, 1986, when Congress passed a law allowing states and their educational institutions to be sued in federal court for not taking steps to prevent sex abuse of students.
“These are all of the discovery plaintiffs whose alleged violations occurred prior to October 21, 1986,” Yost wrote in a motion filed Sunday in the Southern District of Ohio.
Another 34 cases should be dismissed “in part,” he said, because some of the alleged incidents also occurred prior to that date. Incidents that happened after that could remain as part of the lawsuit.
The university still faces five active federal lawsuits in the Southern District of Ohio from 236 men alleging Strauss abused them. And the 77 claims they are seeking to dismiss are part of those cases.
Yost, who announced last week that he was stepping down as AG eight months before the end of his term, filed the motion just days after 30 former Buckeye football players, including more than a dozen who went on to play in the NFL, signed engagement letters to join the class action lawsuit.
Steve Snyder-Hill, a former OSU student who is one of the men currently suing Ohio State for damages, said some of those former football players could find themselves barred from being part of the ongoing federal class action lawsuit because some of their allegations were prior to October 1986.
Also among those whose cases Yost wants dismissed, according to court papers, is Leo DiSabato’s, a former OSU wrestler and older brother of whistleblower Mike DiSabato.
“I’m incredibly proud of my older brother, Leo, for the courage he has shown,” Mike DiSabato said in a statement on behalf of his brother. “After wrestling at Ohio State in the early 1980s, he has stood firm in telling the truth about what he endured at the hands of Richard Strauss. Seeing his name singled out in a legal filing today only reinforces how important his voice is.”
“Our family has never wavered in speaking honestly about our experience, and I stand with Leo — and every survivor — in the pursuit of accountability and justice.”
Legal experts said Ohio State might have legal grounds to remove Leo DiSabato and other former OSU students who were victimized by Strauss prior to 1986.
“Each allegation of abuse is treated individually and if the allegations pre-date October 21, 1986 an argument can be made that they should be dismissed from the case,” NBC News legal analyst Danny Cevallos said.
Cevallos noted that “it’s in the language of the statute itself: The provisions of subsection (a) shall take effect with respect to violations that occur in whole or in part after October 21, 1986.”
Boston-based lawyer Mitchell Garabedian agreed.
“If the sexual abuse occurred before the law was enacted, the claims might be dismissed if the applicable law did not allow a ‘look back window’ to include those claims,” he said.
“If a survivor was sexually abused both before and after the enactment of the law, then the sexual abuse which occurred after the law was enacted would probably still stand and not be dismissed,” said Garabedian, best known as the lawyer whose efforts to prosecute pedophile priests were dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight.”
But this kind of “legal maneuvering is just another example of why a civil statute of limitations must be amended to include claims which pre-date the enactment of a law.”
“Ohio State University should at least set a moral example and settle all claims so that survivors may obtain a degree of validation,” said Garabedian.
OSU responded to a request for comment about the motion to dismiss by saying it has already settled with a majority of survivors.
“Ohio State has sincerely and persistently tried to settle with all survivors since 2018, and the university has reached settlement agreements with a majority of survivors,” OSU spokesperson Benjamin Johnson said Monday.
And as of April 15, the school has settled with 317 survivors, including some former football players, for more than $61 million, Johnson said. Both OSU and its former president publicly apologized “to each person who endured” abuse at the hands of Strauss, who died by suicide in 2005.
Ohio State has been battling Strauss-related lawsuits since 2018, when Mike DiSabato came forward with allegations that Strauss sexually abused him and hundreds of other male athletes under the guise of physical exams.
OSU hired the law firm Perkins Coie to do an independent investigation which concluded in May 2019 that Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male athletes and students from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s and that coaches and administrators knew about it for two decades but failed to stop him.
One of those former coaches accused by DiSabato and numerous other former OSU wrestlers of doing nothing to stop Strauss from abusing them was Rep. Jim Jordan, the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio who was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994.
Since then, Jordan has repeatedly denied any knowledge of what Strauss allegedly did to the athletes and he is not named in the Perkins Coie report.
The firebrand Republican issued another denial last week after deposition transcripts revealed that OSU athletic director Andy Geiger testified under oath that Jordan “probably knew” that Strauss was abusing the wrestlers.
Jordan has also been deposed as part of the remaining lawsuits against OSU. His testimony remains under seal.
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