Magistrate appointed for Child Victims Act cases against MD

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The Maryland Supreme Court‘s chief justice appointed a retired Baltimore County judge to serve as a special magistrate who will manage common issues in about 1,200 Child Victims Act lawsuits against state agencies.

In an administrative order issued Thursday, Chief Justice Matthew J. Fader wrote that the special case management magistrate will coordinate discovery and other pretrial matters common across the child sex abuse cases, which involve over 12,000 plaintiffs.

He named retired Baltimore County Circuit Judge Keith R. Truffer to the position and charged him with developing a consolidated case management plan.

“Given the significant volume of cases, volume of discovery and challenges coordinating discovery, and burden on judicial resources, the appointment of a case management special magistrate will promote the prompt, fair, and efficient scheduling and resolution” of the litigation against the state, Fader wrote.

The order came in response to a request by Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, who sent the high court a letter noting the various courts involved took different approaches to case management and issued inconsistent rulings on motions, “including on foundational legal issues.”

Brown also wrote in the letter that there were challenges managing discovery due to a “nearly 70-year allegation timeframe” and “approximately 16-20 million pages of documents” involved.

Eight attorneys representing plaintiffs in Child Victims Act lawsuits had also sent a letter opposing the appointment of a magistrate, noting it could possibly cause more delays in resolving the pending lawsuits.

Fader’s order notes that it doesn’t limit the authority of circuit judges to manage any proceedings before them or supersede any prior order issued before a case management plan is approved.

Passed in 2023, the Child Victims Act eliminated time restrictions on child sexual abuse lawsuits. A 2025 state law limiting the state’s liability for abuse claims filed after May 31, 2025, led to an unprecedented amount of cases against state agencies being filed before the mid-year deadline, creating logistical issues for circuit judges presiding over the thousands of new cases.

Prior to being appointed to the Baltimore County bench in 2016 by then-Gov. Larry Hogan, Truffer spent more than three decades at Royston, Mueller, McLean & Reid, LLP. He was also president of the Maryland State Bar Association from 2018 to 2019 after serving on its board of governors and executive committee.

At one point while serving as a judge, he received criticism from sexual assault advocacy groups after he threw out one of a Baltimore County Police officer’s rape convictions.

Teresa Lancaster, an attorney representing victims of sexual abuse and a survivor herself, said that consolidating before a magistrate is almost a “necessary evil” — although consolidation should not interfere with the awards, the cases simply need to get finished. 

She noted, however, that the backlog of cases was a creation of the state itself through its new cap on liability. Ideally, having unified case management will speed up settlements, she said.

“Hopefully, [Truffer will] understand just how long these survivors have waited,” she said, noting the main complaint she hears from survivors is, “When is this going to end?”

“We do need some kind of case management,” she said. “Otherwise, it will never end.”

This story has been updated.