After two weeks of trial in February for a suit brought under New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA), the plaintiff, a defendant and their attorneys waited around the federal courthouse in Brooklyn to come back with a verdict.

The plaintiff, who is now in her 30s and asked to be called just by her first name, Laura, alleged that a social studies teacher at her Queens middle school groomed her for sex beginning in the 1998-99 school year and abused her for years afterward.