Ruling on an issue of first impression, a state appeals court has decided in a sexual abuse lawsuit that New York City’s seven-year statute of limitations for its local Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Law is not preempted by the state’s one-year statute of limitations for civil assault cases.
In the same ruling, the Appellate Division, First Department wrote that, by finding that the Gender-Motivated Violence law’s longer, seven-year limitations period applied in the case before it, it was “reaffirm[ing] a municipality’s right [in New York state] to create a private right of action to protect its citizens from gender-motivated violence.”