BALTIMORE — More than 3,800 people filed lawsuits under Maryland’s Child Victims Act in the two months before new limits on monetary damages took effect in June, according to a Baltimore Sun analysis of court records.

That legal mad dash could theoretically put Maryland taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in jury awards. It also alleges a culture of sexual abuse across decades in Maryland’s classrooms, churches, foster homes and, especially, jails.

The most significant number of allegations involve the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services, which oversees youth detention facilities, and the Catholic Church, records show. But the cases involving the jail system, and specifically the Charles H. Hickey Jr. School in Baltimore County, sharply outpace any religious body.

“Everywhere where youth-serving organizations exist, so does this issue,” said Annapolis-based attorney Robin Becker.

The Child Victims Act of 2023 enabled accusers to file civil claims at any point in their lives, resulting in thousands of lawsuits in only two years. The caseload has prompted some courts to pause and consider how to manage their dockets. And the “potentially enormous” liability has also compelled lawmakers to reevaluate the bill’s provisions.

Delegate C.T. Wilson, who championed the victims’ act for years, and Gov. Wes Moore said balancing the law’s caseload and goals of justice with the state’s $3.3 billion deficit was essential.

The General Assembly passed House Bill 1378 in the final days of this year’s legislative session, slashing the government’s liability in child sex abuse claims by more than half, and almost as much for private institutions facing their own suits.

Even so, victims’ advocates and victims’ attorneys said the new caps effectively neutered the initial law. Some legal observers also suggest that the new caps will make it more difficult to find lawyers willing to take on such cases, due to the high cost of litigating them.

“They stripped our law of the long-awaited justice,” said Teresa Lancaster, an attorney and survivor whose experiences in an all-girls private school became part of a Netflix series. “It’s gutted the law. It’s awful.”

Between the caps’ approval on April 5 and their taking effect on June 1, more than 180 Child Victims Act lawsuits from more than 3,000 plaintiffs were filed against state entities, The Baltimore Sun’s analysis shows.

That’s more than four times as many cases and about twice as many people who filed state claims since the bill took effect on Oct. 1, 2023, according to information from the Maryland attorney general’s office.

The new cases against the state and several of its agencies, primarily its juvenile justice system, present a maximum liability exceeding $2.7 billion. What the state and other defendants ultimately pay will be based on how interested they are “in reaching an amicable settlement,” Becker said.

Though civil cases, historically, rarely make it to trial, civil rights attorney Kristen Mack said it’s “very rare” that state or local governments settle, “no matter how horrific the facts are.”

“My experience has been they fight it tooth and nail,” she said, adding “at least 80%” of her cases against public institutions go to trial.

The Maryland attorney general’s office, which will represent state agencies in thousands of sex abuse claims, declined to comment.

In an interview, Wilson said the new number of claims — and therefore the state’s liability — was far less than what he was expecting.

“That alone makes it worth everything we’ve done,” Wilson said, “and now we’ve put a finite number on it.”

Most complaints tied to two organizations

Using daily reports compiled by the Maryland Judiciary, The Sun reviewed more than 600 negligence and assault lawsuits filed from April 5, when legislators passed House Bill 1378, through May 31, the day before the bill and its mandated caps took effect.

The Sun then reviewed each case to determine whether it was a child sex abuse complaint. If it was, the number of plaintiffs, the organizations or facilities sued, and the relationship between them were logged, as were the jurisdictions where each case was filed.

Cases not filed under the Child Victims Act were excluded. Because the judiciary reports aren’t available after 5 days, The Sun was unable to review court records from April 9 and 25.

In the nearly two-month period, about 3,880 accusers filed sex abuse claims, the majority of which (over 76%) were submitted in the two weeks before June’s deadline, records show.

The most common defendant was the Department of Juvenile Services. Court records show that between April 5 and May 31, over 2,600 former detainees filed suit. Many cases were submitted in bulk — 24 had more than 90 plaintiffs each — and almost half of the accusers had been held at the Hickey School detention facility near Loch Raven.

Established in 1850 and renamed after a sheriff in 1985, the facility was the first in Maryland dedicated solely to housing juvenile offenders, according to the department. As cases against DJS have flooded the civil docket, the Hickey School has stood out as a setting of alleged abuse across generations, a designation supported by the arrest and 59-count indictment of a decadeslong employee.

A DJS spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

After Juvenile Services, the Archdiocese of Baltimore faced the most sex abuse allegations in the recent wave of court filings, with 298 accusers making claims in circuit court.

The cases against the city’s Catholic Church were the first in over a year and a half since the archdiocese filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Earlier this month, a judge allowed roughly 1,000 survivors to file claims in state court as negotiations in the bankruptcy case stalled.

Catholic organizations and congregations accounted for the majority of approximately 350 claims against religious institutions between April and June. Of the remaining claims against a specific denomination, Protestant defendants followed the Catholics, with 14 accusers.

“It’s not just the Catholics where all this abuse happened,” Lancaster said. “But it is the Catholics that have the playbook on it ... They’ve been doing this for hundreds of years.”

A spokesperson for the Archdiocese of Baltimore declined to comment.

Additionally, 170 plaintiffs filed claims against their former schools, with slightly more cases against public schools than private schools. Nearly 90 accusers filed lawsuits against medical, mental health or addiction treatment facilities before the June deadline and around 50 submitted claims against group homes or the foster care system, the Sun’s analysis shows.

The effects of the new caps

After June 1, damages on claims filed against the state will cap at $400,000, dropping from $890,000. And claims against private institutions will have a $700,000 ceiling, as opposed to $1.15 million.

Though the maximum liability in new state cases almost matches the government’s current deficit, the state’s final bill will almost certainly be lower.

Legal experts say that jurors usually award damages that meet or exceed damage caps. Judges then reduce the amounts to comply with the law.

But most cases never make it to trial, attorneys say. Justice Department data from the early 1990s to 2005 indicate that only 3% of civil claims proceed to trial, while the majority are settled or withdrawn earlier.

Even so, the caps still play a role in negotiating settlements: lower caps mean lower settlements, and lower settlements, on top of tighter limits on attorneys’ fees, will drive some firms away from future claims, lawyers say.

The recent surge in cases still presents a substantial financial liability for the state. On top of potential settlements and judgments, it still has to pay its own legal costs. Some lawyers argue that the new caps and the resulting “mad rush” of cases have exacerbated Maryland’s budget concerns.

Professor Kathi Hoke with the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law said the June 1 deadline gives state leaders a more secure picture of the money at play.

“In a world without that and cases can come any time, any place, any number, it is more difficult to balance your budget,” Hoke said, “to feel confident in how much you should set aside or have available, what you need to manage to be able to pay claims that you don’t even know are coming in.”

The effects of the new cases

In the weeks leading up to June 1, a flurry of media stories and marketing brought new clients to firms across the region, according to Becker, who said she has filed 41 sex abuse lawsuits with about 80 plaintiffs in Maryland.

That surge, she said, caused litigators to cut some corners.

“We’re just kind of going off of what the victim is saying, really,” Becker said, adding that lawyers “weren’t able to do adequate research to be able to back up those points.”

Vetting claims will now have to take place in the discovery process, she said.

“You’re not able to devote the same amount of time to each one,” Becker said. “So I don’t know how that’s going to play out, like if it’s going to weaken the plaintiff’s case because of the sheer volume that’s happening all simultaneously, but that’s what I anticipate.”

The need for organization has also extended to the court system.

Earlier this month, a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge issued a temporary stay on its Child Victims Act cases until it receives guidance from the Maryland Supreme Court on “possible ways to manage” them.

According to The Sun’s analysis, the city circuit court saw approximately 1,600 new claims in the weekslong crunch, the highest amount in the state.

“In reaching the decision to temporarily stay these cases, the Court has weighed the understandable desire of parties to proceed with litigating these cases as well as the need for consistency, efficiency, and fairness,” the judge’s order says.

A spokesperson for the judiciary said they were not aware of any other circuit courts that have issued stays on sex abuse claims. It is unclear when the stay will be lifted in Baltimore City, although new cases can still be filed with the lower caps.

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(Dan Belson and Steve Earley contributed to this report.)

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