Track

Status

Governing provision

No limitation for felonies — § 500.050(1): “Except as otherwise expressly provided, the prosecution of a felony is not subject to a period of limitation and may be commenced at any time.” Kentucky has had no general felony limitation since the 1974 Penal Code, and the official Crime Commission commentary records the reasoning: the safeguards against conviction on stale evidence — burden of proof, proof beyond reasonable doubt, unanimity, the right to a speedy trial — were thought to make a limitation period largely unnecessary. 

One year for everything else — § 500.050(2): “Except as otherwise expressly provided, the prosecution of an offense other than a felony must be commenced within one (1) year after it is committed.” 

BUT — ten years past eighteen for misdemeanor sex offenses against children — § 500.050(3)(a): “For a misdemeanor sex offense when the victim is a minor at the time of the offense, the prosecution of the offense shall be commenced within ten (10) years after the victim attains the age of eighteen (18) years.” The deadline is therefore the survivor’s twenty-eighth birthday. 

What counts as a misdemeanor sex offense — § 500.050(3)(b): a misdemeanor offense in KRS Chapter 510 (sexual offenses); in KRS Chapter 531 involving a minor or the depiction of a minor; or under KRS 506.010 or 506.030 for attempt or solicitation to commit any of those, or promoting prostitution under KRS 529.040 where the defendant advances or profits from the prostitution of a minor, or human trafficking involving commercial sexual activity under KRS 529.100, or promoting human trafficking involving commercial sexual activity under KRS 529.110, or unlawful transaction with a minor in the first degree under KRS 530.064(1)(a). 

Reach-back, and its limit — the Legislative Research Commission note records that 2021 Ky. Acts ch. 89, § 3 provides that the Act “shall apply to causes of action accruing on or after [March 23, 2021], and to causes of action accruing before [March 23, 2021], if the applicable statute of limitations, as it existed prior to [March 23, 2021], has not yet run before [March 23, 2021].” For the criminal side that limit is constitutionally required, not optional: reviving an expired criminal limitation would be an ex post facto law under Stogner v. California, 539 U.S. 607 (2003). 

Why this has been changed to “partly removed”: for felonies Kentucky genuinely has no deadline, and that is unusual and strong. But § 500.050(3)(a) was added in 2021 and it puts a ten-year clock, running from the victim’s eighteenth birthday, on every misdemeanor sexual offense against a child — including misdemeanor offenses in Chapter 510 and misdemeanor child-exploitation offenses in Chapter 531. Before 2021 those carried one year from commission, so the amendment was a large improvement; but it is an improvement to a deadline, not the removal of one.

Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 500.050 — Justia (2025 Kentucky Revised Statutes)

The period — § 413.249(2): “A civil action for recovery of damages for injury or illness suffered as a result of childhood sexual assault or abuse shall be brought within ten (10) years after the victim attains the age of eighteen (18) years.” The deadline is the survivor’s twenty-eighth birthday. 

It reaches institutions on the same period — § 413.249(3): the ten years applies to an action against “(a) A person alleged to have committed the act of childhood sexual assault or abuse; or (b) An entity that owed a duty of care to the plaintiff, where a wrongful or negligent act by an employee, officer, director, official, volunteer, representative, or agent of the entity was a legal cause of the childhood sexual assault or abuse that resulted in the injury to the plaintiff.” “Entity” is defined broadly in § 413.249(1)(b) and expressly includes the Commonwealth, cities, counties and their agencies. 

No conviction is needed — § 413.249(1)(a), closing words: “No prior criminal prosecution or conviction of the civil defendant for the act or series of acts shall be required to bring a civil action for redress of childhood sexual assault or abuse.” 

A sealing regime found in few other states — § 413.249(4): the complaint must be accompanied by a motion to seal and “shall immediately be sealed by the clerk of the court”, remaining sealed until the court rules on the motion, until any CR 12.02 motion to dismiss is ruled on, or, where the defendant answers and moves to seal on the ground that a valid factual defense exists, until the defendant’s summary judgment motion is granted. If the complaint is dismissed, it and the related papers stay sealed unless opened by a higher court. 

Third-party liability has a threshold — § 413.249(5): “A victim of childhood sexual assault or abuse shall not have a cause of action against a third party, unless the third party failed to act as a reasonable person or entity in complying with their duties to the victim.” 

Privilege is abrogated, with two exceptions — § 413.249(6)(a): neither the husband-wife nor any professional-client or patient privilege, “except the attorney-client and clergy-penitent privilege”, may be a ground for excluding evidence regarding childhood sexual assault or abuse or its cause, in any judicial proceeding, and this applies in criminal proceedings as well as civil. § 413.249(6)(b) then narrows the clergy-penitent exception to information “received solely through confidential communications with a clergy member, privately or in a confessional setting”, during the discipline or practice of that church, where the clergy member is authorized or accustomed to hearing such communications and has a duty to keep them secret. 

The privilege provision is the part of the Kentucky statute most worth carrying into comparative work. It abrogates therapist, physician and spousal privilege for child sexual abuse evidence while preserving a deliberately narrowed clergy-penitent privilege — and it applies in criminal cases too. Very few states in this dataset legislate on evidentiary privilege inside their limitations statute at all.

Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 413.249 — Justia (2025 Kentucky Revised Statutes, effective 15 July 2024)

 The provision, still in the current statute — § 413.249(7)(b): “Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, any claim for childhood sexual assault or abuse that was barred as of March 23, 2021, because the applicable statute of limitations had expired is hereby revived, and the action may be brought if commenced within five (5) years of the date on which the applicable statute of limitations expired.” 

And the retroactivity clause beside it — § 413.249(7)(a): the General Assembly states that the 2017 amendments “shall be applied retroactively to actions accruing before its effective date of June 29, 2017. This section is a remedial statute which is to be given the most liberal interpretation to provide remedies for victims of childhood sexual assault or abuse.” 

What the Supreme Court held — Thompson v. Killary, decided 15 February 2024. The Court held, first, that § 413.249 is remedial and applies retroactively; second, that “a party has a vested right to assert the running of a statute of limitation as a defense”, protected by nearly two hundred years of Kentucky authority running from Davis v. Ballard (1829) and Cassity v. Storms (1867); and third, that § 413.249(7)(b) does not revive claims already time-barred. Reversing the Court of Appeals, it reinstated the dismissal of the claims against the third-party defendants. 

The reasoning on (7)(b), which matters for anyone hoping the legislature can fix it — the Court read the uncodified limiting language in 2021 Ky. Acts ch. 89, § 3, reproduced in the Legislative Research Commission note, as confining the amendment to causes of action whose limitation had not yet run on 23 March 2021. Following Holcim v. Swinford and Martin v. Warrior Coal, it held that such uncodified “temporal scope” language has the force of law under KRS 7.131(3). But the Court then added, in footnote 12, that “[e]ven if KRS 413.249 lacked the LRC note, the revival of time-barred claims is clearly prohibited by the principals expressed in the long-line of cases cited earlier in this opinion.” Re-enacting the revival without the note would therefore not, on this majority’s reasoning, change the outcome. 

The dissent is worth recording, because it is the strongest judicial statement in this dataset for the other side — Bisig, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part, would have held that the codified revival provision takes precedence over the uncodified limiting one, that the limiting provision was included by mistake as to civil claims, and that “the General Assembly may revive expired causes of action so long as in so doing, it does not violate due process protections”, the revival provision surviving even strict scrutiny because it is narrowly tailored by its own five-year cap. In footnote 15 she makes a point no other opinion in this review makes: the limiting language made perfect sense for the criminal misdemeanor extension enacted by the same Act, because reviving an expired criminal limitation would violate the ex post facto prohibition under Stogner v. California — but the ex post facto clause has no application to civil claims, so as to the civil revival the limitation is “plainly contradictory and mistaken”. 

Kentucky sits with Arkansas, Colorado, Utah, Maine and New Hampshire on the vested-rights side of the national split, and against Connecticut, Maryland, North Carolina and Louisiana. But it is worth noting where the disagreement now runs Maryland’s Supreme Court expressly declined to follow Thompson v. Killary in Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington v. Doe (3 February 2025). Two state supreme courts reached opposite conclusions on the same question within a year.

Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 413.249 — Justia (2025 Kentucky Revised Statutes)

the tracker carries “Kentucky | Thompson v. Killary | 683 S.W.3d 641 (Ky.); No. 2022-SC-0308-DG | 2024 | Struck the KRS 413.249 retroactive revival — SOL is ‘a vested right beyond legislative control.’ Revival scored as none.” The outcome is right; the word “struck” is not. The Court did not strike the provision. It construed § 413.249(7)(b) narrowly — holding that the uncodified limiting language in 2021 Ky. Acts ch. 89, § 3 confined the amendment to claims not already time-barred — and therefore held that the provision “does not act to revive those claims”. The subsection remains in the Kentucky Revised Statutes and appears in the current official text. The distinction matters for the tracker’s Bills to track entry, which anticipates the legislature curing the defect: footnote 12 of the opinion forecloses the obvious cure, because revival of time-barred claims is prohibited by the long line of Kentucky authority whatever the drafting.