Jury awards man $437,000 in molest case
San Fracisco, California --
He had sued archdiocese over actions of Catholic priest in 1970s
A San Francisco jury awarded $437,000 Thursday to a 47-year-old man who sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for having done nothing about a priest who molested him repeatedly three decades ago.
The jury's award against the archdiocese, reached on a vote of 11-1 after four hours of deliberations, ended a two-week trial over molestations that the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard committed in the early 1970s against Dennis Kavanaugh.
"I feel good that a positive statement was made for survivors, including myself,'' Kavanaugh said after leaving the courtroom. "I look forward to being helpful to other survivors.''
The amount of the jury's award was significant because Kavanaugh's case was the first to go to trial in California under a 2002 law temporarily lifting the statute of limitations on lawsuits in child molestation cases. Some observers monitoring the trial said the archdiocese had gotten off relatively lightly.
Seventy-five more cases are awaiting trial against the San Francisco Archdiocese, nine of them involving Pritchard. An additional 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Oakland Diocese. The amount of Kavanaugh's award could be pivotal in influencing any pretrial settlements of those cases.
Read the article at SFGate.com dated March 25, 2005
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He had sued archdiocese over actions of Catholic priest in 1970s
A San Francisco jury awarded $437,000 Thursday to a 47-year-old man who sued the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for having done nothing about a priest who molested him repeatedly three decades ago.
The jury's award against the archdiocese, reached on a vote of 11-1 after four hours of deliberations, ended a two-week trial over molestations that the late Rev. Joseph Pritchard committed in the early 1970s against Dennis Kavanaugh.
"I feel good that a positive statement was made for survivors, including myself,'' Kavanaugh said after leaving the courtroom. "I look forward to being helpful to other survivors.''
The amount of the jury's award was significant because Kavanaugh's case was the first to go to trial in California under a 2002 law temporarily lifting the statute of limitations on lawsuits in child molestation cases. Some observers monitoring the trial said the archdiocese had gotten off relatively lightly.
Seventy-five more cases are awaiting trial against the San Francisco Archdiocese, nine of them involving Pritchard. An additional 40 lawsuits have been filed against the Oakland Diocese. The amount of Kavanaugh's award could be pivotal in influencing any pretrial settlements of those cases.
Read the article at SFGate.com dated March 25, 2005
posted by God Almighty Himself at 5:33 PM
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