I am not an attorney and this should not be construed as legal 
advice because it is not. I do not give legal advice. I work in this 
aspect of civil law and usually what happens is there are many 
individual suits and then if enough of them add up with good results 
(high monetary damages)  they may consider a class action but I think 
and this should be checked out more by people interested in this.... 
I think there would have to be a deep pocket entity like the Catholic 
or LDS Church to sue ad these cases cost a fortune to bring. And even 
with all those church abuse suits with many plaintiffs they usually 
do not go class action. I think it would have to be something like a 
school taught the therapists to harm the children in some way and 
that many suffered as a result. If one therapist is particularly bad 
isn't there a place to report them for violation of their license. 
Robert may know much more about this than I do but class action is 
usually not done because of the costs. First thing civil attorneys 
usually look at. In many states there is NO statute of limitation on 
sexual abuse so I would focus on that but that is state by state and 
in many states there is no possibility of recovery. Even though I 
agree that emotional and physical is just as damaging the courts do 
not look at it the same way yet. Still much work to be done to change 
the law in this field.
One important aspect of this is that the entity knew and did nothing. 
In our cases the church promoted and moved the abusers. If the entity 
took action once they found out then there is usually no case. 
Unfortunately for the church victims the churches took steps to cover 
it up. I can imagine a scenario where a big entity had 1000 
therapists working and chose to move the therapist to a different 
location if they were reported rather than removing them but I doubt 
this is how it happened. All the therapists we used for Case were 
sort of in their own practice but one was at a hospital. Class action 
seems a stretch to me. Just my opinion though. There is recovery from 
malpractice insurance and that may be a better way to go.
Other than that gathering stories and publicizing the results would be good.
I still read the list sporadically but don't contribute much. I love 
this list though and welcome to the newcomers.

All the best to you guys,
Linda
Case's nana.

At 09:44 PM 2/18/2010, you wrote:
>I am looking for people with speech disabilities who may have been =
>physically,  sexually,  or emotionally abused by PTs OTs and SLPs. You =
>can email me at [log in to unmask] Perhaps if there are enough of us,  =
>we might consider a class action suit.  I am not sure that such abuse =
>goes on now,  but it did in the 1940s and 1950s. - Bob Segalman Ph.D.=20
>
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