Cite as: 528 U. S. 549 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
he knew of his injury in 1986 when it occurred, or that his civil RICO claim was complete and subject to suit at that time. But under Rotella's rule, the clock would have started only in 1994, when he discovered the pattern of predicate acts (his assumption being that he could not reasonably have been expected to discover them sooner). A limitations period that would have begun to run only eight years after a claim became ripe would bar repose, prove a godsend to stale claims, and doom any hope of certainty in identifying potential liability. Whatever disputes may arise about pinpointing the moment a plaintiff should have discovered an injury to himself would be dwarfed by the controversy inherent in divining when a plaintiff should have discovered a racketeering pattern that might well be complex, concealed or fraudulent, and involve harm to parties wholly unrelated to an injured plaintiff. The fact, as Rotella notes, that difficulty in identifying a pattern is inherent in civil RICO, see H. J. Inc., 492 U. S., at 235, n. 2 (collecting cases), only reinforces our reluctance to parlay the necessary complexity of RICO into worse trouble in applying its limitations rule. Cf. Wilson, 471 U. S., at 270 (discussing need for firmly defined, easily applied rules). A pattern discovery rule would patently disserve the congressional objective of a civil enforcement scheme parallel to the Clayton Act regime, aimed at rewarding the swift who undertake litigation in the public good.
Rotella has two remaining points about which a word should be said. We have already encountered his argument that differences between RICO and the Clayton Act render their analogy inapt, and we have explained why neither the RICO pattern requirement nor the occurrence of fraud in
need not and do not decide whether civil RICO allows for a cause of action when a second predicate act follows the injury, or what limitations accrual rule might apply in such a case. In any event, doubt about whether a harm might be actionable before a pattern is complete is a weak justification for the cost of a general pattern discovery rule.
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