When the Pennsylvania Superior Court revived a woman's decades-old claims against a Catholic diocese, the case was seen as a game-changer for those seeking to pursue abuse cases. But now that the Supreme Court has agreed to review that decision, a final ruling by the justices could impact a broader swath of civil litigation.

The state Supreme Court granted allocatur in a case that gives the justices a chance to evaluate whether the discovery rule should toll the statute of limitations because of a widespread cover-up of the abuses.

Earlier in March, the justices have agreed to look at a frontline appellate court's ruling that it should be up to a jury to decide whether the plaintiff, Renee Rice, failed to bring her suit against the Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown in time, or if the statute of limitations should be tolled in light of an allegedly widespread cover-up that was eventually detailed in a 2016 grand jury report.

The case is captioned Rice v. Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown.

Coming just as efforts to retroactively extend the statute of limitations for victims of sex abuse were beginning to fizzle in the state General Assembly, the three-judge Superior Court panel's unanimous decision was quickly recognized as a means of opening the "courthouse doors" to hundreds of decades-old claims previously thought to be barred due to the state's statute of limitations. Earlier this year, the Diocese of Harrisburg cited the ruling as part of its decision to declare bankruptcy.

But, the issues that the Supreme Court agreed to take up on appeal in its March 2 order promise to address more wide-ranging topics, including the duties of fiduciaries and how the discovery rule interacts with the statute of limitations in the wake of the justice's high-profile 2018 decision in Nicolaou v. Martin.

The first question the justices agreed to hear argument on is whether "the Superior Court commit[ed] reversible error by misinterpreting the fact-specific holding of Nicolaou v. Martin—a latent disease/medical malpractice case that did not purport to overrule Meehan v. Archdiocese of Phila., Baselice v. Franciscan Friars Assumption BVM Province, Inc., or any other precedent—thereby abrogating the statute of limitations and the discovery rule in civil actions?"

The questions the justices took up were posed by the Diocese of Altoona, which is being represented by Eric Anderson of Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck in Pittsburgh. According to Anderson, the justices could base their eventual decision on any number of factors, including issues that have nothing to do with Nicolaou, but if they do decide to touch on the broader questions, a decision could provide guidance on how broadly or narrowly Nicolaou should be applied.

"The statute of limitations and the discovery rule are extremely broad. They touch on almost every type of case  you have in litigation," he said. "If the court deals with those issues, in whatever manner, you could have ramifications for all types of cases."

The Superior Court's decision in Rice reversed the holding of a Blair County judge who granted the defendants' motion for judgment on the pleadings and dismissed the case. The lower court had determined that Rice's claims were barred by the statute of limitations, since the last instance of abuse occurred in 1981, when she was 14 years old. With the two-year statute of limitations beginning to run at the date of her 18th birthday, the statute of limitations for her claims expired in 1987, the trial court said, so it was "constrained" to dismiss the lawsuit.

However, the Superior Court panel, led by Judge Deborah Kunselman, said the precedent set in Nicolaou, as well as new information revealed in a grand jury investigation into incidents of abuse within the Altoona-Johnstown Diocese, meant that Rice should be allowed to bring her claims to a jury. In relying on Nicolaou, Kunselman said that case stands for the proposition that evidence about a plaintiff's efforts to investigate a possible civil claim can't be viewed in a vacuum and should be largely left for juries to decide.

Nicolaou stemmed from a medical malpractice suit, where doctors allegedly misdiagnosed the plaintiff's Lyme disease as multiple sclerosis. Despite numerous pieces of evidence—including Facebook posts by the plaintiff—that indicated she thought she suffered from Lyme disease before the statute of limitations expired, the justices ultimately determined that jurors, and not judges, should decide whether the plaintiff acted with due diligence to discovery her injuries tolled the statute of limitations.

Since the 2018 ruling, Nicolaou has come up numerous times, often in the medical malpractice context. With Kunselman using the case as a deciding factor in Rice, the pending appeal now gives the justices an opportunity to provide some clarity about how the ruling may apply to other cases.

Rice's attorney, Alan Perer of Swensen & Perer in Pittsburgh, said the case should apply broadly across the civil litigation landscape.

"I can't see anything that would distinguish the Nicolaou case to say it's limited just to medical malpractice," Perer said. "Nothing in the case itself or the holding even hints that this has limited applicability. The discovery rule and fraudulent concealment, it says these are factual matters in every case, and for a jury to decide."

Another significant issue the justices may address in the Rice appeal deals with the role of fiduciaries and their potentially ongoing duties to report issues.

The second question the justices agreed to hear argument on is whether "the Superior Court commit[ed] reversible error by establishing for the first time a rule whereby a fiduciary once in a confidential relationship owes a never-ending duty to speak after the end of the relationship, thereby eliminating a plaintiff's duty to exercise due diligence and conduct a reasonable investigation in support of his/her causes of action?"

Kunselman's ruling had noted Rice's contention that, since she played organ at the church and occasionally helped clean the facility, the diocese owed her a fiduciary duty to disclose its history of abuse. In evaluating the claim, Kunselman discussed federal precedent that used "the parishioner-plus rule" to establish a fiduciary duty for those parishioners who have elevated confidential relationships with the church. Kunselman ultimately determined the rule should apply in Rice's case, and said a jury should determine whether the diocese owed her a fiduciary duty.

Perer said Pennsylvania does not have any strict rules about when a person or organization has a fiduciary duty to disclose, and Rice could provide further clarity on that issue as well. Guidance on those questions, he said, could have significant implications from groups like the Boy Scouts, and the wide swath of universities that have seen abuse scandals recently.

However, if the justices decide to keep their ruling in Rice narrow and have it only apply to abuse litigation, the eventual decision will still have significant impacts for hundreds, if not thousands, of plaintiffs and organizations across the state involved in abuse litigation.