Legal systems impose limitation periods for good practical reasons. Evidence disappears. Witnesses die. Memories fade. The defendant has had no reasonable opportunity to prepare a defence if a claim can be brought decades or centuries after the events concerned. And the certainty that limitation periods provide is essential to a functioning legal and commercial system: people need to know that past transactions will not generate unlimited future liability.
English limitation law provides maximum periods of six years for most contract claims and three to six years for most tort claims. Even the most generous equitable exceptions, applicable in cases of fraud or deliberate concealment, have not been applied to extend limitation periods beyond decades. No English or international court has ever applied limitation doctrine to accommodate a claim arising from events 200 to 400 years in the past.
The reparations claim would require creating an entirely new and unprecedented exception to limitation doctrine, one that has no parallel in any legal system. Courts do not create such exceptions by themselves. They would require primary legislation, which would itself face legal challenge and would set troubling precedents for retroactive liability across a vast range of other historical activities. The limitation problem is not a technicality. It is a fundamental barrier that reflects important principles about legal certainty and the purposes of civil liability.
