California opened the door to justice for sexual abuse survivors - but fraud walked in too

The California Legislature effectively removed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims six years ago when it passed A.B. 218 to offer survivors their day in court. Tens of thousands of claims poured in across the state. In April 2025, Los Angeles County settled 11,000 claims filed against it with a record-setting $4 billion fund. In October 2025, the County proposed to settle 400 more claims for an additional $828 million.

Meanwhile, news reports disclosed that the County's first taxpayer-funded settlement process may include some fabricated claims. According to the reports, some individuals were paid small sums to present false claims of long-ago abuse. These scandalous reports are not an indictment of true survivors; they are consequences of legislative policy, which predictably led to a system seemingly making it easy to file deceptive claims.

The silver lining is that Los Angeles County anticipated this problem and negotiated court-approved guardrails precisely because fraud was a foreseeable risk once the Legislature erased ordinary time limits on sexual-abuse claims. Every claimant must submit a detailed factual statement sworn under penalty of perjury. The retired judges hired to serve as independent allocators determine fair compensation for valid claims but can also continue to reject dubious ones. The County says it will remain vigilant in utilizing fraud detection measures in the settlement process for all the claims. As long as questionable claims are flagged and removed, the claims system is not failing.

If the valid claims are to be recognized and paid efficiently, the risk of fraud can't be eliminated entirely. Moreover, the filtering task is made harder because even the most legitimate claims often rest on little or no written evidence, possibly hazy memories, and few corroborating witnesses. But once the Legislature chose to revive thousands of old claims, some going back to 1959, in the name of justice for survivors, even the best safeguards could only reduce and manage the fraud risk.

Lawyers know that statutes of limitation exist for just such reasons. As the U.S. Supreme Court once explained, "Statutes of limitation ... are designed to promote justice by preventing surprises through the revival of claims that have been allowed to slumber until evidence has been lost, memories have faded, and witnesses have disappeared." (Order of Railroad Telegraphers v. Railway Express Agency, 321 U.S. 342, 348 (1944).)

When evidence is lost over time, truth can become a casualty. That is the tradeoff the Legislature overlooked when it opened the gates to long-dormant claims and left full financial responsibility on public entities like L.A. County. The problem was exacerbated by not reining in high attorney fees and hard to measure non-economic damages.

The victims of the Legislature's policy choice are the assault survivors and the public. When money is siphoned on false claims and unwarranted attorney fees, real survivors risk disbelief and their compensation may be diluted from a fixed settlement fund. Taxpayers must fund settlements that may include fabricated claims. Public entities have less money to spend on other vital priorities.

Fraud in mass tort compensation plans is not new. Whenever money, scale, and sympathy converge, especially when evidence is incomplete, the risk of some unjustified payments follows. What matters is how the system handles the foreseeable risk. In agreeing to the huge settlements, but demanding rigor in the claim-review process, L.A. County seems to have acted responsibly to address the potential mix of both righteous and unjust old claims.

Contrast that diligence with the countervailing incentives. Because the Legislature did not initially set guidelines, the claimants' attorneys can collect unregulated high fees even though they have almost no risk of contingent loss. When evidence has vanished and the threat of loss in a costly trial is virtually nonexistent, an attorney's workload and risk are minimal while the aggregate payout, funded by taxpayers, is immense. That can translate into big paydays for some law firms, far more than individuals will likely receive. Certainly not every firm filing sexual abuse claims engages in fraud, but the pattern of lax moral and professional standards in some appears hard to miss. If proven, it deserves condemnation and punishment.

Nevertheless, when the Legislature chooses to abandon a key legal concept like the statute of limitations, there are inevitable consequences. Lawmakers must confront them and address the necessary tradeoffs. Here, the Legislature just opened the floodgates without adding realistic limits. The Legislature knows how to make tradeoffs; it did so when it placed limits on medical malpractice claims years ago. The Legislature's 2023 amendments to our Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (California Civil Code § 3333.2), with its limits on non-pecuniary damages and attorney's fees, could be a fair model for these revived abuse claims.

Published stories of fraud understandably attract attention, but fraud is only a part of this story. The deeper problem is a statutory framework that is well-intentioned, but also unnecessarily invites exploitation and leaves public institutions exposed to huge financial burdens of investigating and paying claims, as well as increased insurance costs. A January 2025 report by the state's Fiscal Crisis & Management Assistance Team warned that ignoring the financial strain A.B. 218 placed upon public institutions had the potential to ruin their ability to address other priorities of governing such as schools and climate change. L.A. County's experience (nearly $5 billion in settlements, with many more claims left to be addressed) is just the tip of the iceberg. Other public entities in California are also facing massive claims. The L.A. County settlements will be used to establish monetary models for claims elsewhere in the state; hopefully other settlements will use the County's model to detect and reject fraudulent claims.

Our Legislature can fix the unintended problems A.B. 218 created, but only by facing the complexities realistically. Politics as usual is not the answer. The survivors and the public deserve wise judgment and political courage from our elected representatives.