New York State Supreme Courthouse
NEW YORK – New York City’s courts will be open to more sexual-abuse lawsuits for 18 months after the City’s council overrode the veto of ex-Mayor Eric Adams on a new amendment.
The Council in November made changes to the Gender Motivated Violence Act three years after an update left courts to decide whether some victims’ claims against defendants that allegedly participated in the crime were covered by the law. Judges said they weren’t.
The new amendment covers violence motivated by gender that occurred before Jan. 9, 2022. Cases that were tossed because they were filed between March 1, 2023, and March 5, 2025, can be refiled.
Plaintiff lawyer Jeff Herman of Herman Law calls it an “empowering step forward for survivors.”
“Not only will institutions that enable abuse be held accountable, but survivors can now reopen previous and wrongly dismissed claims to seek the justice and validation that can be transformative for their healing,” he added.
The law passed unanimously but was vetoed by Adams as he prepared to leave office, leaving the Council vowing to override that decision.
Defendants argued the 2022 changes did not apply retroactively. The First Appellate District agreed in June in a case over alleged abuse that occurred decades earlier, finding the new claim created in 2022 that targeted enablers was not in effect during the abuse.
Hundreds of lawsuits were tossed as untimely, leading the Council to investigate how to fix that. Among those who testified on behalf of the amendment was Jerome Block, of the plaintiffs firm Levy Konigsberg.
“(I)t takes time to process trauma and be able to come forward,” he told the Council. “So nearly all of these cases occurred before 2022 because it takes a long time.
“The whole point in enacting that revival window was to allow people to come forward against enabling institutions, but because of a tactical flaw in the 2022 amendments to this law, that two-year window has been wiped out as applied to the enabling institutions, the enabling parties, the ones most responsible.”
Adams said the new amendment was a $300 million debit card for Block’s firm.
