508
Stevens, J., dissenting
liability, concerns the latter. Section 1964(c) requires a person to be "injured in his business or property" by a violation before bringing an action for damages. And because that kind of injury only results from some form of overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, liability under § 1964(c) naturally requires injury via an overt act.2 But there is nothing in either § 1962(d) or § 1964(c) requiring the overt act to be a racketeering activity as defined in § 1961(1).3
The Court's central premise is that common-law civil conspiracy cases support the notion that liability cannot be imposed unless the overt act that furthered the conspiracy and harmed the plaintiff was a particular kind of overt act, namely, an act of a tortious character. But the cases cited by the Court do not support that point. First, no case cited by the majority actually parallels the Court's premise. That is, no case involved a situation in which (a) there was an illegal agreement, (b) there was an injury to the plaintiff proximately caused by an overt act in furtherance of that agreement, but (c) there was a refusal to impose civil liability because the overt act was not itself tortious.
Of the dozen cases cited by the Court, ante, at 501-503, half of them rejected liability because they did not satisfy condition (a) above, i. e., there was either no agreement or nothing illegal about the agreement that was made. See Satin v. Satin, 69 App. Div. 2d 761, 762, 414 N. Y. S. 2d 570 (1979) (Memorandum Decision) ("Here, the only such wrongful action is pleaded against [one defendant] alone. . . . In any event, it is doubtful that there could here be a conspiracy between this individual and his own corporation"); Mills v. Hansell, 378 F. 2d 53, 54 (CA5 1967) (per curiam) ("[W]e feel that the able trial judge correctly concluded that . . .
2 Of course, under Holmes v. Securities Investor Protection Corporation, 503 U. S. 258, 268 (1992), the overt act must be the proximate cause of the plaintiff's injury.
3 "[R]acketeering activity" is defined in § 1961(1) to include a slew of state and federal crimes such as murder, bribery, arson, and extortion.
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