Guest Column: Ohio is Missing its #METOO Moment
"Ohio must not miss out on our #metoo moment. The time for change is now." – Susan Petersen
As I sat and listened to the Oscars, I was reminded that a tide has turned in American culture. Victims of sexual assault are being given a voice with which to unroot what was perpetrated against them. There should be no safe harbor for those who would harm others, no matter their status or station.
Sadly, those in power have allowed laws to change to not only empower those who would do harm to others but strip victims of sexual assault of sacred constitutional rights. This isn’t something that just happens in Hollywood. It is a “me too” moment for Ohioans.
The following story gives meaning by example.
Jessica Simpkins was a 15-year-old member of Sunbury Grace Brethren Church in Sunbury, Ohio. During a counseling session in March 2008, the church’s senior pastor, Brian Williams, asked the teenager to perform oral sex. When she refused, Williams forced her. Simpkins then attempted to leave the office. Williams blocked the door, pushed her to the floor and raped her.
Williams had a history of sexual misconduct with minors and young women while at another church. Despite this knowledge, Sunbury had promoted Williams to the senior pastor position.
Simpkins sued, alleging the Delaware church’s negligent hiring practices resulted in the serial rapes. During the jury trial, two women testified that while they were teenagers, Williams had inappropriately touched them and made sexual comments to them. Witnesses testified that Delaware church elders kept the prior misconduct “quiet to protect our brother.”
The jury awarded Simpkins $3.65 million in damages, but because Simpkins was a teenager with no work history, the jury could only award $151,378.85 for economic damages, such as lost wages. The remaining $3.5 million consisted of “noneconomic” damages, like pain and suffering, which should be the jury’s decision.
However, under Ohio’s 2005 tort reform law, Ohio Revised Code section 2315.18, the jury’s ruling on the value of the intangible harms and losses suffered by this young rape victim was stripped of its meaning. The law required the judge to reduce the jury’s verdict for noneconomic damages. Personal injury claims like this one are capped at $350,000 per occurrence where there is no permanent physical deformity or disability.
While the legislature passed this law to prevent “runaway juries” from making “inflated damage awards,” the real-world effect not only empowers wrongdoers, it victimizes the victims. Tragically, the victims include women whose lives have been forever changed by traumatic events . . . like rape.
As I listened to the Oscar speeches, I couldn’t help but think Ohio is indeed missing out on this #metoo moment. Our legislature has eliminated a critical check to balance our system of democracy.
More than 225 years ago, our forefathers ratified the Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution as part of the Bill of Rights. In this amendment, they guaranteed our citizens the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases, and inhibited courts from overturning a jury’s findings of fact. Thomas Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
As a female trial lawyer who represents people like Ms. Simpkins, I can’t think of a better example to demonstrate why this law must go. Ohio House Bill 20, which seeks to exempt victims of sexual or physical assault from the noneconomic damage caps, is stuck in limbo. It has yet to receive any consideration in committee.
This inaction is unsurprising. The impact of noneconomic damage caps falls disproportionately on people who can’t fight back in the eyes of the law. Valuable members of our society, like children, unborn babies, the elderly and stay-at-home moms, do not typically have significant economic losses. The bulk of their recovery is through compensation for “noneconomic” pain and suffering they have endured — which is capped. These caps place an arbitrary, one-size-fits-all value on the most significant injuries in these cases — the intangible harms and losses that something like rape has on a human.
Simpkins’ story epitomizes what is wrong with this capped system. She has received little actual compensation for two rapes that will impact the rest of her life. In stripping her of her constitutional Seventh Amendment rights, the law has violated her ability to be made whole.
As defenders of the Constitution, the General Assembly should do what is right: Restore peoples’ sacred right to a trial by jury, so that we can continue to protect our most vulnerable citizens. I am writing this to do my part.
Ohio must not miss out on our #metoo moment. The time for change is now.
Susan E. Petersen, Esq.
Petersen & Petersen
