A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit Tuesday against Indiana University in which former men's basketball players alleged improper sexual conduct by a former team physician because the players' complaint fell far beyond the two-year statute of limitations.
The Title IX lawsuit, filed in October 2024, alleged that university officials -- including former head coach Bobby Knight, who died in 2023 -- failed to stop alleged misconduct by former team physician Dr. Bradford Bomba despite evidence that they were aware of complaints about his behavior.
Bomba routinely gave male athletes rectal exams during physicals in the 1980s and '90s despite medical guidance at the time that did not recommend them for college-age men, which the lawsuit claims was sexual misconduct.
In an email sent from his attorney, plaintiff Haris Mujezinovic, who played for Indiana in the late 1990s, wrote, "We are disappointed in the Court's decision, but are taking time to weigh our options and make informed decisions about next steps."
A spokesperson for the university did not respond to multiple messages from ESPN.
The players' attorneys had argued that their clients were within the state's two-year statute of limitations for reporting the alleged sexual abuse because they were not aware until 2024 that Bomba's actions constituted sexual abuse under Title IX, the federal gender equity law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational opportunities, including athletics.
In her order to dismiss the lawsuit, U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt of the Southern District of Indiana wrote that the players undermined their argument by stating that they knew, decades ago when they said the abuse occurred, that the alleged assaults were "widely known among university staff" and that those officials had "authority to take corrective action."
"Plaintiffs therefore plead that they had knowledge that Defendants were the cause of their alleged injuries long before 2024," she wrote.
The plaintiffs' argument has been successful in other cases of alleged sexual abuse, including in the 2018 case against former Ohio State University physician Dr. Richard Strauss, who was found to have regularly abused male students during medical examinations from the 1970s to the 1990s.
In that case, an appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs were within Ohio's two-year statute of limitations because the clock started only when the plaintiffs knew or should have known that Ohio State officials knew of Strauss's conduct and failed to take appropriate action. The case is still pending.
Pratt wrote that her court was not subject to the ruling in the Ohio State case, which was in a different jurisdiction, and pointed to other rulings that establish that the plaintiffs' knowledge of the conduct, not their knowledge of its unlawfulness, "triggers the limitations period."
Bomba, who worked as an Indiana men's basketball team physician for nearly 30 years, died last May at age 89. He was not a named plaintiff in the lawsuit, and an outside investigation commissioned by the university cleared him of sexual misconduct last year. He refused to answer several questions about the allegations during a deposition in 2024.
Tim Garl, who was named as a defendant, was Indiana's head athletic trainer from 1981 until last year, when the university announced it would not renew him for a 45th season. Attorneys for Garl did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
