Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-08-07074/USCOURTS-caDC-08-07074-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued March 20, 2009 Decided June 9, 2009 

No. 08-7074 

RALPH NADER, ET AL., 

APPELLANTS

v. 

DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, ET AL., 

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 1:07-cv-02136) 

Oliver B. Hall argued the cause and filed the briefs for 

appellants. 

Joseph E. Sandler argued the cause for appellees. With 

him on the brief were Douglas K. Spaulding, Lasagne A. 

Wilhite, Kim M. Watterson, Marc E. Elias, John Hardin 

Young, Lawrence Noble, Laurence E. Gold, Lyn Utrecht, and 

Michael B. Trister. 

Before: SENTELLE, Chief Judge, and TATEL and 

GRIFFITH, Circuit Judges. 

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge TATEL. 

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TATEL, Circuit Judge: Believing himself the victim of a 

concerted effort to thwart his 2004 presidential bid, Ralph 

Nader sued an array of influential Democrats in late 2007 for 

malicious prosecution and abuse of process. His complaint 

alleges a far-reaching civil conspiracy whose object was to 

deplete his resources by forcing him to defend meritless ballot 

eligibility challenges in nearly twenty states. The district 

court dismissed the complaint, concluding that Nader’s suit, if 

successful, would punish the Democrats for activity protected 

by the First Amendment. Nader appeals, arguing that the 

district court misapplied the applicable First Amendment test. 

Because the district court’s approach and the merits of 

Nader’s claims present state law issues of first impression, we 

think it best to resolve this case on simpler and more certain 

grounds. Both here and in the district court the parties fully 

briefed the question whether Nader’s suit exceeded the 

applicable statute of limitations. Agreeing with defendants 

that the complaint itself demonstrates its untimeliness, we 

affirm on this ground alone. 

I. 

Because the district court granted defendants’ motion to 

dismiss, Nader’s allegations “must be taken as true.” Chalabi 

v. Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, 543 F.3d 725, 726 (D.C. 

Cir. 2008). So read—and citing various newspaper articles to 

bolster its claims—the complaint relates the following events. 

Blaming Nader for their defeat in 2000, the Democrats 

were eager to find a way to prevent him from siphoning off 

their votes in the next election. Am. Compl. ¶ 1. Thus, 

“[d]efendants and their co-conspirators decided to try to 

prevent Mr. Nader from running for president if he announced 

his candidacy in 2004.” Id. ¶ 45. At a not-so-secret meeting 

at the time of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in 

Boston, the alleged conspirators fleshed out a plan to “launch 

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a nationwide legal assault on Mr. Nader’s campaign, which 

would drain the campaign of money, time and other 

resources, in a deliberate attempt to use the sheer burden of 

litigation itself as a means to prevent Mr. Nader from running 

for public office.” Id. ¶ 45; see also id. ¶ 48 (quoting, without 

attribution, account of Four Seasons meeting in Janice 

D’Arcy, Anti-Nader Forces Coordinate Strategy, HARTFORD 

COURANT, July 27, 2004, at A1). According to Nader, the 

Democratic National Committee organized and paid for the 

meeting, with key attendees including such influential 

Democratic Party strategists as Toby Moffett, Elizabeth 

Holtzman, Robert Brandon, and Stanley Greenberg. Id. ¶ 46. 

Their plan entailed using three soft-money organizations—

The Ballot Project, The National Progress Fund, and Uniting 

People for Victory—that would begin raising funds in earnest 

at the convention. Id. ¶¶ 50–51. Moffett, President of The 

Ballot Project, became the point man for the anti-Nader legal 

effort. See id. ¶¶ 46–52, 60–63. He told the press at the 

convention: “‘This guy [Nader] is still a huge threat’ . . . . 

‘We’re just not going to make the same mistake we made in 

2000.’” Id. ¶ 51 (quoting, without attribution, David 

Postman, Nader Foes Seek Funding from Democratic Donors, 

SEATTLE TIMES, July 28, 2004 at A1). 

Nader alleges that in order to avoid the 2000 “mistake,” 

Moffett began coordinating an effort to challenge Nader’s 

ballot access “not only in . . . ‘battleground’ states but in as 

many other states as possible, in order ‘to drain him of 

resources and force him to spend his time and money.’” Id. 

¶ 47 (quoting, without attribution, Katharine Q. Seelye, 

Convictions Intact, Nader Soldiers On, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 2, 

2004, at A14 (internal quotation marks omitted)). This 

strategy entailed wide-ranging coordination with a diverse 

array of alleged co-conspirators. Moffett enlisted local 

Democratic parties to launch challenges to Nader’s ballot 

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access in their respective states. Id. ¶ 52 (quoting Steve 

Terrell, Fears of Nader Keep Dems on Offensive, SANTA FE 

NEW MEXICAN, July 29, 2004, at A4); see also id. ¶¶ 54, 57. 

DNC officials filed several ballot access complaints in their 

own names. Id. ¶ 56. Labor unions and their members 

participated in acts of sabotage or harassment, endeavoring to 

derail Nader’s efforts at mustering sufficient valid signatures 

for ballot access. See, e.g., id. ¶ 69. While litigating a ballot 

challenge in Maine, Nader uncovered that the plaintiff was 

working in close coordination with the DNC, which was in 

fact paying for her lawyers. Id. ¶ 118. “Moffett told the New 

York Times, ‘We’re doing everything we can to facilitate 

lawyers in over 20 states.’” Id. ¶ 60 (quoting Katharine Q. 

Seelye, Democrats’ Legal Challenges Impede Nader 

Campaign, N.Y. TIMES, Aug. 19, 2004, at A24). According 

to Nader, the effort eventually enlisted over 50 law firms 

performing millions of dollars of legal work. Id. ¶ 61. 

Pennsylvania represented an especially contentious forum, 

with hundreds of attorney hours and innumerable volunteers 

dedicated to scouring Nader’s petitions for excludable 

signatures. See id. ¶¶ 179–90. In addition to the ballot access 

challenges ultimately brought in eighteen different states, the 

alleged co-conspirators filed five complaints with the Federal 

Elections Commission. Id. ¶¶ 126, 135, 227. 

Moreover, Nader alleges, the Democrats’ own words 

demonstrate that they brought these challenges without regard 

for their merit and with the ulterior purpose of bleeding his 

campaign dry. Nader quotes Moffett telling the Washington 

Post that “[w]e wanted to neutralize his campaign by forcing 

him to spend money and resources defending these things, but 

much to our astonishment, we’ve actually been more 

successful than we thought we’d be in stopping him from 

getting on at all.” Id. ¶ 62 (quoting Jonathan Finer & Brian 

Faler, Nader Unsure of Ballot Spot in Many States, WASH.

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POST, Aug. 24, 2004, at A9). Acknowledging the same 

purpose to the New York Times, Moffett said that they had 

sued Nader in swing states and safe states alike “‘to drain him 

of resources and force him to spend his time and money.’” 

Id. ¶ 47 (quoting Seelye, Convictions Intact, Nader Soldiers 

On, supra, at A14). Nader alleges that DNC Chairman Terry 

McAuliffe promised to support him in some states if he would 

voluntarily avoid the battlegrounds, and that the Democrats’ 

first legal complaint came on the very day Nader rejected this 

offer. Id. ¶ 3. Thus, Nader claims, the Democrats’ “admitted 

purpose for bringing these lawsuits . . . was not to vindicate 

valid legal claims, but rather to bankrupt Nader-Camejo’s 

campaign by forcing the candidates to spend their limited 

resources of time, talent and money on the defense 

of unfounded lawsuits.” Id. ¶ 4. He believes that the 

Democrats’ record bears him out: although winning a handful 

of their challenges, they “eventually lost the vast majority of 

lawsuits they filed.” Id. ¶ 62. 

President Bush’s reelection quieted the conflict. All state 

ballot challenges had been resolved in the weeks prior to the 

election, and though the Democrats still had a handful of FEC 

complaints pending, each was dismissed in due course 

without further proceedings. In early 2005, however, the law 

firm that prosecuted the successful ballot access challenge in 

Pennsylvania, Reed Smith LLP, won an award of costs that it 

eventually pursued by writ of attachment in the Superior 

Court of the District of Columbia in the summer of 2007. 

Id. ¶¶ 194, 201–03. Nader opposed the attachment, claiming 

to have recently discovered a fraud in the underlying suit in 

the form of undisclosed ties between Reed Smith and justices 

of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. See id. ¶¶ 194–203. 

That dispute remains pending in Superior Court, see id. ¶ 203, 

though the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania has already 

refused to reopen its award of costs, see In re Nomination 

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Paper of Ralph Nader, No. 568 M.D. 2004, slip op. at 7–9 

(Pa. Commw. Ct. Dec. 4, 2008). 

This brings us to the case before us, which followed 

closely on the heels of the Reed Smith attachment. Nader 

first filed his complaint in Superior Court on October 30, 

2007, naming as defendants the Democratic National 

Committee, Kerry-Edwards 2004, The Ballot Project, 

America Coming Together, the Service Employees 

International Union, John Kerry, Jack Corrigan, Toby 

Moffett, Elizabeth Holtzman, Robert Brandon, Mark Brewer, 

and Reed Smith LLP. He alleged malicious prosecution, 

abuse of process, civil conspiracy, and federal civil rights 

violations. Defendants removed the case to federal court 

where, for procedural reasons having nothing to do with the 

issues before us, Nader then dropped his federal claims. This 

left only the state law claims, which defendants moved to 

dismiss pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). 

Among other things, the Democrats argued that Nader’s 

complaint was barred by the statute of limitations, insufficient 

to state a claim, and precluded by the First Amendment. 

Accepting defendants’ First Amendment theory that the 

complaint was barred by the so-called Noerr-Pennington 

doctrine, the district court granted the motion to dismiss. See 

generally Eastern R.R. Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor 

Freight, Inc., 365 U.S. 127 132 n.6 (1961); United Mine 

Workers v. Pennington, 381 U.S. 657 (1965). Noerr and 

Pennington are antitrust cases, but they stand for the 

proposition that when a person petitions the government for 

redress, the First Amendment prohibits any sanction on that 

action—for instance, a Sherman Act penalty for anticompetitive behavior—so long as the petition was in good 

faith. See, e.g., Covad Commc’ns Co. v. Bell Atl. Corp., 398 

F.3d 666, 667 (D.C. Cir. 2005). For this purpose, the 

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Supreme Court has treated lawsuits as petitions, see, 

e.g., Bill Johnson’s Restaurants, Inc. v. NLRB, 461 U.S 

731, 741 (1983) (citing Cal. Motor Transp. Co. v. Trucking 

Unlimited, 404 U.S. 508, 510 (1972)). And discussing NoerrPennington, we have said that “it is hard to see any reason 

why, as an abstract matter, the common law torts of malicious 

prosecution and abuse of process might not in some of their 

applications be found to violate the First Amendment,” 

Whelan v. Abell, 48 F.3d 1247, 1254 (D.C. Cir. 1995). The 

district court thus thought that before Nader could bring such 

claims, he had to show that the Democrats’ ballot challenges 

fell within the Noerr-Pennington bar’s “sham exception,” i.e., 

that their lawsuits were “(1) . . . objectively baseless in the 

sense that no reasonable litigant could realistically expect 

success on the merits and (2) . . . brought with the specific 

intent to further wrongful conduct through the use of 

governmental process—as opposed to the outcome of that 

process.” Nader v. Democratic Nat’l Comm., 555 F. Supp. 2d 

137, 157 (D.D.C. 2008) (citing Prof’l Real Estate Investors, 

Inc. v. Columbia Pictures Indus., 508 U.S. 49, 60–61 (1993)) 

(internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Assuming 

for the sake of argument that the Democrats’ lawsuits were in 

fact objectively baseless, the district court found that Nader 

had at least failed to allege facts sufficient to satisfy the sham 

test’s second element—that is, inappropriate subjective intent. 

Nader, 555 F. Supp. 2d at 158–161. It thus dismissed the 

complaint under Noerr-Pennington without reaching the 

Democrats’ statute of limitations defense. Id. at 145. 

Nader appeals, arguing that even if Noerr-Pennington 

applies, his allegations—fully credited as they must be on a 

motion to dismiss—easily satisfy the sham test. On the 

merits, the Democrats defend the district court’s decision and 

then argue that, even if Nader can overcome NoerrPennington, he failed to state claims for abuse of process and 

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malicious prosecution. They also renew their claim that 

Nader’s complaint came too late. Because the district court 

decided these issues on a motion to dismiss, our review is de 

novo. See Chalabi, 543 F.3d at 729 (reviewing timeliness de 

novo); Kaemmerling v. Lappin, 553 F.3d 669, 676 (D.C. Cir. 

2008) (reviewing decision on motion to dismiss de novo). 

II. 

We begin by briefly addressing the elements of the torts 

at issue. Under District of Columbia law, “[c]ivil conspiracy 

is not an independent tort but only a means for establishing 

vicarious liability for an underlying tort.” Hill v. Medlantic 

Health Care Group, 933 A.2d 314, 344 (D.C. 2007) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). A claim for civil conspiracy thus 

fails unless the elements of the underlying tort are satisfied. 

See Executive Sandwich Shoppe, Inc. v. Carr Realty Corp., 

749 A.2d 724, 738 (D.C. 2000) (“[C]ivil conspiracy depends 

on performance of some underlying tortious act.” (internal 

quotation marks omitted)). Indeed, because its only purpose 

is to spread liability for a successful tort claim to all agreeing 

parties regardless of whether they actually committed the 

tortious act, a civil conspiracy claim incorporates not only 

every substantive element of the underlying tort, but also its 

statute of limitations. See, e.g., Diamond v. Davis, 680 A.2d 

364, 366 n.4 (D.C. 1996) (citing with approval Thomas v. 

News World Commc’ns, 681 F. Supp. 55, 73 (D.D.C. 1988)). 

Of the substantive torts Nader alleges, malicious 

prosecution is the more straightforward. In the District of 

Columbia, malicious prosecution requires: “(1) [that] the 

underlying suit terminated in plaintiff’s favor; (2) malice on 

the part of the defendant; (3) lack of probable cause for the 

underlying suit; and (4) special injury occasioned by the 

plaintiff as the result of the original action.” Morowitz v. 

Marvel, 423 A.2d 196, 198 (D.C. 1980). In other words, the 

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victor may sue the vanquished for a baseless suit if it was 

brought with malicious disregard for its validity and caused 

injury over and above the ordinary costs of litigation. And 

although “injuries to reputation, emotional distress, loss of 

income, and substantial expense in defending have all been 

held to fall outside the scope of the definition of special 

injury,” Joeckel v. Disabled Am. Veterans, 793 A.2d 1279, 

1282 (D.C. 2002) (internal quotation marks omitted), we long 

ago held that, as a matter of District of Columbia law, 

repetitious malicious actions may satisfy this element, see 

Soffos v. Eaton, 152 F.2d 682, 683 (D.C. Cir. 1946) (“[O]ne 

who twice sues another maliciously and without probable 

cause is responsible to him in damages.”). 

Abuse of process presents more complicated issues. 

Although we observed in Whelan that, under its most 

expansive interpretation, this tort could be used even against 

someone who sues successfully while harboring an improper 

motive, see 48 F.3d at 1257, the District of Columbia Court of 

Appeals has given the tort a narrower construction while 

leaving its exact elements far from clear. See, e.g., Morowitz, 

423 A.2d at 198 (holding that while “ulterior motive” is 

insufficient, the “critical concern . . . is whether process was 

used to accomplish an end unintended by law, and whether 

the suit was instituted to achieve a result not regularly or 

legally obtainable.”). According to the District of Columbia 

Court of Appeals, abuse of process “lies where the legal 

system has been used to accomplish some end which is 

without the regular purview of the process, or which compels 

the party against whom it is used to do some collateral thing 

which he could not legally and regularly be required to do.” 

Bown v. Hamilton, 601 A.2d 1074, 1079 (D.C. 1992) (internal 

quotation marks omitted). We know at least that suits 

intended primarily to achieve their lawful purpose need not be 

brought with a pure heart. See, e.g., Scott v. District of 

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Columbia, 101 F.3d 748, 755–56 (D.C. Cir. 1996) (holding 

that attempt to secure conviction was not abuse of process 

even where defendant alleged police officers had “ulterior aim 

of covering up their use of excessive force”). Still, the 

District of Columbia Court of Appeals has yet to provide 

precise guidance on the question of how “collateral” the 

“thing [that] could not legally and regularly be required,” 

Bown, 601 A.2d at 1079, must be to support an abuse of 

process claim, which represents the essential question in 

determining the boundary between everyday litigation and 

tortious abuse of court procedures. 

Nader’s theory simplifies the issue, however. Because 

the Democrats were, after all, bringing ballot challenges to 

achieve their goal of keeping Nader off the ballot—a perfectly 

natural means to what is a perfectly lawful end in and of 

itself—the only way they could even theoretically have 

abused the legal process was by filing such claims knowing 

that they were false. Nader’s theory of either tort thus 

requires him to prove a pattern of filings that were objectively 

baseless and intentionally so. 

This discussion should make clear that Nader’s civil 

conspiracy theory, which aggregates the Democrats’ many 

challenges into a single pattern of baseless litigation, is 

essential to the validity of his claims. Nader’s theory of 

special injury for malicious prosecution, as well as his theory 

of the “collateral” end for abuse of process, both turn on his 

ability to demonstrate that the Democrats employed a pattern 

of baseless litigation to deprive him so dramatically of 

resources as to leave him unable to meaningfully campaign 

for the presidency. Reviewing the allegations of a broad 

Democratic strategy recited in the complaint, see, e.g., Am. 

Compl. ¶¶ 45–66, and even in the headers of his briefs to this 

court, see, e.g., Appellants’ Opening Br. 11 (“Conspirators 

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Filed Twenty-Nine Complaints . . . in an Effort to Use a 

Pattern of Baseless and Repetitive Claims as a Means to Bar 

the Candidates from Running For Public Office During the 

2004 General Election.”), we think it plain that it is this 

aggregated, conspiratorial theory of misuse of the judicial 

process that Nader has actually brought. Indeed, although the 

complaint recites some facts from each individual forum 

where Nader’s access was challenged, see Am. Compl. ¶¶ 72–

227, it contains no facts tending to show that any individual 

claim was objectively baseless other than its relation to the 

scheme and the large number of failed claims overall. 

On the merits, this aggregated theory presents interesting 

legal issues of first impression. First is the applicability of 

Noerr-Pennington. If Nader in fact concedes that his theory 

requires him to prove a pattern of deliberately false filings, no 

Noerr-Pennington problem could arise because “[h]owever 

broad the First Amendment right to petition may be, it cannot 

be stretched to cover petitions based on known falsehoods.” 

Whelan, 48 F.3d at 1255. But if Nader argues that he can 

prevail on abuse of process without such proof, see Oral Arg. 

Tr. 34–37, we would then have to decide—or perhaps certify 

to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals—the question of 

the exact scope of abuse of process in relation to the NoerrPennington doctrine. See Whelan, 48 F.3d at 1257 (raising 

precisely this concern). Moreover, even were Nader to 

concede that he must prove a strategy of repeatedly filing 

deliberately false claims, a difficult question would remain as 

to whether his complaint can actually allege as much where, 

as here, it acknowledges that the Democrats were batting 

between .172 and .263 depending on whether one counts 

filings or forums—far above the perfect failure rate we might 

expect for a strategy without any basis at all. In other words, 

we would need to decide whether Nader must prove that the 

Democrats’ overall strategy was itself objectively baseless or 

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whether it would be sufficient for Nader to show only that the 

Democrats’ strategy resulted in more than one baseless suit. 

Then, assuming Nader’s claim could survive despite the 

Democrats’ handful of wins, we would face the choice of law 

problem in marking the boundary between a Democratic loss 

and a baseless lawsuit. If the question is the baselessness of 

the strategy writ large, then perhaps District of Columbia 

law would suffice. But if each suit requires separate 

consideration, we would face nineteen separate legal 

standards, each having at least three inquiries: (1) What 

makes a valid ballot challenge in State X? (2) What is State 

X’s law of probable cause for purposes of malicious 

prosecution? and (3) Does State X have a special standard for, 

say, sending a letter to an election commission or for election 

law issues in general? Almost all these legal issues are 

questions of state law on which we lack instructive 

precedents. And this list is hardly exhaustive. 

Such problems convince us to rely on the statute of 

limitations as the better-marked path to disposition. Although 

we normally prefer to address the district court’s rationale, 

“we may affirm on any ground properly raised,” Jones v. 

Bernanke, 557 F.3d 670, 674 (D.C. Cir. 2009) (internal 

quotation marks omitted), and choosing such an alternative 

makes particular sense where, as here, it means avoiding 

questions of state law on which we have little guidance from 

the state courts. 

III. 

With respect to the statute of limitations, we begin from 

common ground. The D.C. Code sets the statute of 

limitations for malicious prosecution at one year. See D.C. 

CODE § 12-301(4). The D.C. Code contains no specific 

provision for abuse of process, however, and the District of 

Columbia Court of Appeals has never decided whether its 

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similarity to malicious prosecution brings it within this oneyear period or whether it instead falls within D.C. Code 

section 12-301(8)’s three-year catch-all. See D.C. CODE § 12-

301(8). Because the court appears to interpret limitations 

provisions in favor of claimants, however, see, e.g., Saunders 

v. Nemati, 580 A.2d 660, 663–64 (D.C. 1990) (holding that 

tort based on verbal abuse not covered by one year statute of 

limitations for assault), we think it safest to assume that the 

limitations period for abuse of process is three years. For 

malicious prosecution, the limitations period would ordinarily 

run from the date on which the underlying action terminated 

in the defendant’s favor; for abuse of process, it would 

ordinarily run from the date on which abusive process last 

issued. We say ordinarily because it would normally be 

obvious to a victim of a malicious or abusive suit at the time 

of suit that every element of either tort claim was met. Cf. 

D.C. CODE § 12-301 (“[T]he period specified below [runs] 

from the time the right to maintain the action accrues.”). 

Nader filed his complaint on October 30, 2007. Thus, even 

assuming Nader can properly allege abuse of process, and that 

the statute of limitations for abuse of process is in fact three 

years, Nader’s timely filing window cannot stretch back any 

earlier than October 30, 2004. And significantly for our 

purposes, Nader nowhere disputes that every one of the 

Democrats’ challenges terminated more than one year before 

he filed his complaint and that no process issued against him 

in any of those proceedings within three years of this suit. 

Nader nonetheless insists that the statute of limitations 

presents no bar. His primary argument is that because both 

the DNC and the Kerry Campaign denied any involvement in 

the state ballot challenges, he may charge the Democrats in 

general with fraudulently concealing the coordinated and 

conspiratorial nature of their conduct, thereby depriving him 

of the notice necessary to start the running of the limitations 

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period. See, e.g., Richards v. Mileski, 662 F.2d 65, 72 (D.C. 

Cir. 1981) (tolling limitations period for plaintiff who “knew 

that the charges against him were based on misrepresentation” 

because he lacked constructive knowledge that “defendants 

deliberately conspired” against him). In Nader’s view, the 

Democrats’ fraudulent denials “were intended to conceal, and 

did in fact conceal, the Defendants’ participation in the 

unlawful conspiracy alleged in the Amended Complaint, and 

even the existence of the conspiracy itself, until after the 

conclusion of the 2004 General Election.” Appellants’ Reply 

Br. 26–27. To be sure, the Democratic Party and the Kerry 

Campaign may well have tried to conceal coordinating with 

The Ballot Project’s effort—certain kinds of coordination 

have serious implications for campaign finance laws. But at 

least under District of Columbia law, the question isn’t 

whether tortfeasors have tried to fraudulently conceal their 

conduct, it’s whether they succeeded. See, e.g., Riddell v. 

Riddell Washington Corp., 866 F.2d 1480, 1494 (D.C. Cir. 

1989) (“Clearly, the doctrine of fraudulent concealment does 

not come into play, whatever the lengths to which a defendant 

has gone to conceal the wrongs, if a plaintiff is on notice of a 

potential claim.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). And 

although we have said that “a defendant who has engaged in 

fraudulent concealment, in order to make out a defense based 

on the plaintiff’s lack of due diligence, must show something 

closer to actual notice than the merest inquiry notice,” id. at 

1491, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals has since 

expressly disagreed, holding that “the standard is in fact the 

same in all cases to which the discovery rule applies, 

regardless of the presence or absence of fraud,” Diamond, 

680 A.2d at 381; see also id. at 376–79. That standard is 

knowledge of “(1) an injury; (2) its cause in fact; and (3) 

some evidence of wrongdoing,” id. at 379, and it includes not 

only what Nader knew, but what he could by reasonable 

diligence have known, see id. at 381. 

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Under that standard, Nader’s argument, set forth in his 

brief, that the Democrats “did in fact conceal . . . the existence 

of the conspiracy” is belied by the facts he alleges in his 

complaint. Because every victim of a baseless suit 

immediately knows their injury and its cause in fact, the 

question is only whether the allegations in the complaint 

establish that Nader knew, or should have known, of “some 

evidence” of a conspiracy to abusively deploy a pattern of 

baseless suits against him. The answer to that question is yes. 

Nader’s complaint supports its allegations with a series of 

newspaper articles that on their face reveal the existence of 

the very conspiracy of which Nader now complains. For 

example, the complaint quotes Moffett’s statements about 

The Ballot Project coordinating attorneys in twenty states 

and being astonished at their own legal success. The 

conspiratorial planning session immediately before the 

convention was reported in an article Nader cites, and the 

complaint references the fact that the Democrats’ very first 

challenge came on the day that Nader declined an offer from 

DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe to support Nader in certain 

states if he would give up his campaign in others. The 

complaint even quotes from a deposition in which the plaintiff 

in the Maine litigation admits that the Democratic Party was 

paying for her lawyers, and it notes that the Michigan case 

was filed in the name of the Vice Chair of the DNC himself, 

Am. Compl. ¶ 123. Although the complaint omits these 

details, the Washington Post article that Nader himself cites 

reported on August 24, 2004 that Nader was being “[d]ogged 

by an unprecedented public relations and legal campaign 

against him by the Democratic Party and like-minded 

groups,” and that same story quotes a Nader spokesman 

complaining that “[i]n 2000, we didn’t have to waste so much 

time fending off dirty tricks.” Finer & Faler, supra, at A1 

(emphasis added); cf. Kaempe v. Myers, 367 F.3d 963–65 

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(D.C. Cir. 2004) (considering content of document on motion 

to dismiss where complaint relied on that document’s terms). 

Together, these facts demonstrate Nader’s actual knowledge 

of his cause of action—particularly the revelation in Maine 

and the statement by his spokesman. But even if not, it would 

be strange if the Washington Post could discover facts about 

Nader’s life that he couldn’t reasonably discover himself, 

especially because, unlike the Post writers, Nader could have 

read about it in the paper. 

 

We find a comparison to the facts of Richards v. Mileski

instructive. See 662 F.2d at 67–69. In 1955, the United 

States Information Agency fired Richards based on an 

informant’s false allegation that Richards engaged in 

homosexual behavior. Though Richards obviously knew then 

that the allegations were false, he failed to sue until 23 years 

later when he first discovered that the informant’s report had 

not actually misled the government, but had instead been 

concocted by the government investigators themselves with 

the aid of an unreliable informant. See id. at 67–68. We 

concluded that Richards’s claims were nonetheless timely, 

calling it “no mere ‘detail’ in 1955 that the false charges 

against Richards had been fabricated as part of a deliberate 

conspiracy against him, or that his own superiors rather than 

an unknown informant were the source of his misery.” 

Id. at 69. Indeed, we emphasized that Richards’s new claims 

for fraud, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional 

distress, and violation of his constitutional rights were distinct 

from the claims available before the revelation of government 

malfeasance: “[p]ossible claims of wrongful discharge or 

coerced resignation, which are not raised in this suit, are 

entirely separate from the causes of action for which Richards 

now seeks his day in court.” Id. at 69; see also id. at 67 n.1 

(listing claims). 

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 Nader’s case, involving only newly discovered 

participants in already known conduct, is worlds apart. 

Indeed, even had the complaint left any doubt about Nader’s 

constructive knowledge of the DNC’s involvement in 2004, a 

later revelation of the national party’s role would change 

nothing about the claim Nader could have brought in August 

2004 against Moffett and his alleged co-conspirators—other 

than adding a new target. Unlike the facts in Richards, the 

involvement of the DNC here does not alter the fundamental 

nature of the wrong at issue, and so the addition of this coconspirator cannot resuscitate Nader’s claim against the entire 

conspiracy. See Fitzgerald v. Seamans, 553 F.2d 220, 229 

(D.C. Cir. 1977) (affirming summary judgment on claims 

against conspirators known at time of injury, even while 

tolling period for a conspirator who successfully concealed 

his involvement). 

But perhaps Nader’s argument is more limited: that even 

if his claim is untimely as against the conspiracy in general, 

he may still sue those particular defendants whose 

involvement was effectively concealed until later. See 

Appellant’s Reply Br. 26–27 (apparently distinguishing 

between knowledge of the conspiracy and knowledge of 

defendants’ involvement). We endorsed such a principle in 

Fitzgerald, 553 F.2d at 229, and the District of Columbia 

Court of Appeals has since agreed, see Diamond, 680 A.2d at 

380. The viability of such a theory turns on the known 

relationships among the co-conspirators, however, and 

although the District of Columbia Court of Appeals explained 

in Diamond that this will often be a question of fact, it held 

there that “the relationship of the defendants, together with 

other facts, may establish as a matter of law that a reasonable 

plaintiff with knowledge of the misconduct of one [coconspirator] would have conducted an investigation as to the 

other.” Id. Here, the complaint identifies only the DNC and 

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18 

the Kerry Campaign as having attempted to conceal their 

roles. See Am. Compl. ¶¶ 64–65; see also id. ¶ 204 (alleging 

that Reed Smith concealed that it had been retained by the 

DNC). Elsewhere, however, the complaint establishes that 

the DNC’s role was hardly a secret. Nader surely had inquiry 

notice of a claim against the DNC when he discovered it was 

paying the lawyers in the Maine dispute. And given the 

relationship between the Kerry Campaign and the DNC at the 

time of the 2004 election, we cannot see how the campaign 

would have fallen outside the zone of reasonable suspicion 

after that. 

As a fallback, Nader argues that Reed Smith’s recent 

attachment against him in Superior Court makes his entire 

claim timely as a continuing tort. In the District of Columbia, 

a continuing tort requires “(1) a continuous and repetitious 

wrong, (2) with damages flowing from the act as a whole 

rather than from each individual act, and (3) at least one 

injurious act within the limitation period.” Beard v. 

Edmondson & Gallagher, 790 A.2d 541, 547–48 (D.C. 2002) 

(internal quotation marks and ellipsis omitted). Nader’s 

theory fails the test’s second element because the damages 

flowing from the attachment are self-evidently separate from 

those related to the ballot challenges. His alleged injury from 

the pattern of baseless ballot challenges was having been 

deprived of resources for the 2004 presidential election, and 

whatever damages the recent attachment may have caused, it 

could not possibly have contributed to harming Nader’s 

campaign three years earlier. If this attachment was in fact 

abusive then Nader might have recourse through a separate 

suit—assuming, of course, that dispositions in the 

Pennsylvania courts have not yet precluded the issue. Even 

so, he may not use the attachment to pry open a timely-filing 

window now firmly closed. 

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IV. 

Whatever the Democrats tried to conceal, Nader’s own 

complaint reveals his constructive knowledge of “some 

evidence of wrongdoing” by each current defendant more 

than three years before he filed his suit. Because Nader’s 

complaint is thus untimely on its face, we affirm on this 

limitations ground without addressing the district court’s 

decision or the ultimate merits of Nader’s theory of the case. 

So ordered.

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