Hundreds of student athletes have described sexual abuse by Strauss, who was on the faculty and a team doctor for OSU from 1978 to 1998. He died in 2005. Thirty former OSU football players, including some that went on to play in the NFL, intend to join a previously filed federal suit against OSU for allowing Strauss to act with criminal impunity.
According to OSU, it has settled with 317 survivors for more than $61 million, and remains actively engaged in mediation. The first federal lawsuits were filed against the university in 2018.
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2026/05/11/869266.htm
This past weekend, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a motion on behalf of OSU to dismiss 77 claims arguing that cases involving alleged abuse prior to Oct. 21, 1986, fall outside the allowable timeframe for federal lawsuits against the university. Prior to filing the motion, Yost announced his resignation last week, six months before his term as AG is up. He is resigning to join a Christian legal group, Alliance Defending Freedom. You cannot make this shit up.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ohio-attorney-general-dave-yost-9796956/
There are grounds for dismissing claims based on the statute of limitations. Boston-based attorney Mitchell Garabedian explained to NBC News:
“If the sexual abuse occurred before the law was enacted, the claims might be dismissed if the applicable law did not allow a ‘look back window’ to include those claims,” he said.
“If a survivor was sexually abused both before and after the enactment of the law, then the sexual abuse which occurred after the law was enacted would probably still stand and not be dismissed,” said Garabedian, best known as the lawyer whose efforts to prosecute pedophile priests were dramatized in the Oscar-winning movie “Spotlight.”
But this kind of “legal maneuvering is just another example of why a civil statute of limitations must be amended to include claims which pre-date the enactment of a law.”
“Ohio State University should at least set a moral example and settle all claims so that survivors may obtain a degree of validation,” said Garabedian.
Ohio Representative Gym Jordan (Ohio District 4) was an assistant wrestling coach at OSU from 1986 to 1994 and has long been accused of knowing of Strauss’ abuse and doing nothing to stop him. Jordan has issued a plethora of denials over the years, including a recent one in response to OSU athletic director Andy Geiger’s deposition testimony that Jordan “probably knew” about Strauss’ ongoing abuse of students. Id.
Jordan has also been deposed, but of course his testimony remains under seal. Ohio voters in District 4 loves them some Gym Jordan and he is returned by the voters to a position of power term after term. They apparently think of him as a “firebrand.” Other adjectives also apply.
If nothing else, universities are learning the only way they ever do–by writing gigantic checks–that hiring men like Richard Strauss, Robert Anderson and Larry Nassar, and ignoring survivors is a very expensive and reputation-damaging mistake.
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