Breaking Barriers to Justice
jury. In most cases involving sexual assault or serious institutional abuse, they do. That explanation needs to be developed — through expert testimony, through the case narrative, and through how you prepare your client to tell her story. Invest in client preparation as litigation strategy. A trauma survivor who is unprepared for deposition is not the same as a trauma survivor who is not credible. Preparation that accounts for how trauma affects memory retrieval, emotional regulation, and sequencing — and that gives the client enough time and safety to fully disclose what occurred — produces better witnesses and more complete cases. This is part of the work, and it starts well before a complaint is filed. Expand the defendant map before you draft. Identify every entity whose negligence contributed to the conditions that made the harm possible. In institutional cases, that means running every entity through the Secretary of State to find parent companies, ownership layers, and affiliated facilities. It means checking whether the facility carries any management or staffing relationships with other entities. Never stop at the obvious defendant — the entity on the door is frequently not the only entity with exposure, and it is often not the deepest pocket. Build the regulatory record early. In care facility cases, CDPH inspection records, prior citations, licensing history, and any documented failures to report are available before you file. These records do not just add context — they can establish negligence per se independently, and they can be the foundation of a recklessness finding if they show a pattern of institutional indifference. A facility cited for failure to report suspected abuse has already handed you part of your case. Preservation demands and litigation hold
notices should go out before the complaint, specifically identifying complaint files, incident reports, investigation records, training materials, and corrective action plans. Reframe what viability means. A case is not unviable because the assault details are disputed. It is not a “he-said, she-said.” It is not unviable because the individual perpetrator has no assets. It is unviable when, after a full and informed assessment, the barriers to recovery are genuinely insurmountable across every defendant and every theory. Many cases that appear unviable at first read look significantly different once the institutional record is developed, the right defendants are identified, and the right framework for understanding the client's behavior is built into the case.
Conclusion
The barriers to justice in trauma-based civil claims are real. But not all of them are external. Some of them live inside our own evaluation process — in the assumptions we bring to intake and the analytical shortcuts that feel like judgment but are actually habit. Plaintiff attorneys occupy a critical position in the access-to-justice ecosystem. The cases we take — and the ones we decline — shape who gets to use the civil justice system and who does not. What the defense is counting on, in almost every one of these cases, is that we will evaluate the client through a lens that produces the same result as their own: a screened-out claim, an unaccountable institution, a survivor without recourse. Some barriers to justice are built by legislatures, insurers, and institutions with resources to fight. Some are built in the first five minutes of an intake call. Both are worth dismantling.
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Consumer Attorneys of California
FORUM July/August 2026
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