280
Ginsburg, J., concurring
A second reason for Albright's decision not to pursue a Fourth Amendment claim concerns the statute of limitations. The Court of Appeals suggested in dictum that any Fourth Amendment claim Albright might have had accrued on the date of his arrest, and that the applicable 2-year limitations period expired before the complaint was filed.6 975 F. 2d, at 345. Albright expressed his acquiescence in this view at oral argument. Tr. of Oral Arg. 13, 20-21.
Once it is recognized, however, that Albright remained effectively "seized" for trial so long as the prosecution against him remained pending, and that Oliver's testimony at the preliminary hearing, if deliberately misleading, violated the Fourth Amendment by perpetuating the seizure, then the limitations period should have a different trigger. The time to file the § 1983 action should begin to run not at the start, but at the end of the episode in suit, i. e., upon dismissal of the criminal charges against Albright. See McCune v. Grand Rapids, 842 F. 2d 903, 908 (CA6 1988) (Guy, J., concurring in result) ("Where . . . innocence is what makes the state action wrongful, it makes little sense to require a federal suit to be filed until innocence or its equivalent is established by the termination of the state procedures in a manner favorable to the state criminal defendant."). In sum, Albright's Fourth Amendment claim, asserted within the requisite period after dismissal of the criminal action, in my judgment was neither substantively deficient nor inevitably time barred. It was, however, a claim Albright abandoned in the District Court and did not attempt to reassert in this Court.
his criminal trial"). A right to sue someone who is absolutely immune from suit would hardly be a right worth pursuing.
6 In § 1983 actions, federal courts apply the state statute of limitations governing actions for personal injury. See Wilson v. Garcia, 471 U. S. 261, 276-280 (1985). The question when the limitations period begins to run, however, is one of federal law. See id., at 268-271; see generally Connors v. Hallmark & Son Coal Co., 935 F. 2d 336, 341 (CADC 1991) (collecting cases).
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