Cite as: 521 U. S. 179 (1997)
Syllabus
adopted by some Circuits, which is similar to the "continuing violation" doctrine in antitrust, in that the commission of a separate, new predicate act within the 4-year limitations period permits a plaintiff to recover for the additional damages that act caused. Under the separate accrual rule, however, the plaintiff cannot use an independent, new act as a bootstrap to recover for injuries caused by other predicate acts that took place outside the limitations period. See, e. g., Grimmett v. Brown, 75 F. 3d 506, 513. Thus acts taking place after August 1989 do not help the Klehrs, for they have not shown any additional damages, and the Third Circuit rule is incorrect insofar as it would allow the presence of a new act to help them recover for injuries caused by pre-1989 acts. This case also does not present the kind of special circumstance in which courts might permit plaintiffs to recover for injuries that were so speculative or unprovable at the time of Harvestore's unlawful act that starting the limitations period when the act first caused injury would have left the Klehrs without relief. Zenith, supra, at 339- 340, distinguished. Pp. 187-191. (c) Resolving the conflicts among the various discovery accrual rules used by other Circuits would not affect the outcome of this case, as the petitioners' civil RICO claim is barred under the most liberal accrual rule, as applied by the Eighth Circuit. There is no clear or obvious error in the Eighth Circuit's application of its "injury and pattern discovery" rule and it is beyond the scope of the writ to reconsider whether the Klehrs reasonably should have discovered the silo's flaws before 1989. Pp. 191-193. 2. A plaintiff who is not reasonably diligent in trying to discover his civil RICO cause of action may not rely upon "fraudulent concealment" to toll the limitations period or to estop a defendant from asserting a limitations defense. This requirement is uniformly supported by relevant authority in the related antitrust context, where the "fraudulent concealment" doctrine is invoked fairly often. And while those courts that do not require "reasonable diligence" in contexts other than antitrust cases have said that the doctrine is concerned only with defendants' behavior, that is not the case with respect to antitrust or civil RICO. In both of these contexts private civil actions seek not only to compensate victims but also to encourage those victims diligently to investigate and thereby to uncover unlawful activity. See Malley-Duff, supra, at 151. The Klehrs' fact-based question whether the Eighth Circuit properly applied the "due diligence" requirement to the evidentiary materials before it is beyond the scope of this Court's writ. Pp. 193-196.
87 F. 3d 231, affirmed.
181
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