Git for creating a one vs. two-year Statute of Limitation Impact Factsheet.
At the time this was written, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee were the only three states within the 50 states and D.C. that have one-year statutes of limitations in civil cases as of August 25th, 2023. This means that claimants had one year after the event to file a complaint for damages, or their claim expires. The short one-year statutes of limitations in civil cases in Louisiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee impose significant challenges on individuals seeking justice.
This narrow timeframe may leave victims with inadequate time to gather evidence, explore legal options, or recover from trauma before their claims expire. The situation is compounded for victims who face criminal charges, potentially facing both legal and punitive ramifications. In Heck v. Humphrey, the Supreme Court of the United States held that a defendant cannot claim damages for an allegedly unconstitutional conviction or imprisonment without showing that the conviction or sentence has been overturned in some way. As a result, many victims of misconduct are given "cover charges" to bar them from claiming damages.
The goal of this factsheet is to analyze the impact of statutes of limitation length on the number of police action cases per court, the merit of these cases, and the disproportionate impact of statutes of limitation length on Black people. The data was gathered using Lex Machina, a litigation research company, on August 25th, 2023, and spans all civil rights cases for police action (PA) in all 94 Federal Courts between January 1st, 2009, and August 25th, 2023.
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