A north-west Louisiana jury recently awarded a staggering $1.1bn in damages to a woman who sued over childhood sexual molestation at the hands of her late stepfather in the 1960s and 1970s – a verdict that the plaintiff says “sends a message that children are precious” and “deserve protection”. The outcome in Pamela Elaine Lockridge’s lawsuit caused waves among Louisiana’s legal community, illustrating how much civil juries are willing to award to plaintiffs for cases tried under the state’s so-called “lookback law”. Passed in 2021 and upheld as constitutional in 2024, that law temporarily eliminated filing deadlines for lawsuits involving child...

In a stunning reversal of its decision earlier this year, the Louisiana Supreme Court has upheld a state law giving survivors of childhood sex abuse more time to file lawsuits, a ruling that holds particular significance for Roman Catholic dioceses across the state and hundreds of survivors of childhood abuse by priests and deacons. In an opinion issued Wednesday, the state’s high court ruled 5-2that the “lookback window,” which was unanimously approved by the legislature several years ago, is constitutional, giving abuse survivors a three-year window to file damage suits for the past abuse, regardless of how long ago it...