Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/21-1496_d18f.pdf
Page Number: 19

Cite as:  598 U. S. ____ (2023) 

13 

Opinion of the Court 

“wrongful conduct,” bad acts, and misfeasance.  J. Goldberg,
A. Sebok, & B. Zipursky, Tort Law: Responsibilities and Re-
dress 31 (2004).  Some level of blameworthiness is therefore 
ordinarily required.  But, again, if aiding-and-abetting lia-
bility were taken too far, then ordinary merchants could be-
come liable for any misuse of their goods and services, no
matter how attenuated their relationship with the wrong-
doer.  And those who merely deliver mail or transmit emails
could be liable for the tortious messages contained therein.
See Restatement (Second) of Torts §876, Comment d, Illus. 
9, p. 318 (1979) (cautioning against this result).

For these reasons, courts have long recognized the need
to cabin aiding-and-abetting liability to cases of truly cul-
pable conduct.  They have cautioned, for example, that not 
“all those present at the commission of a trespass are liable
as principals” merely because they “make no opposition or 
manifest no disapprobation of the wrongful” acts of another. 
Brown v. Perkins, 83 Mass. 89, 98 (1861); see also Hilmes v. 
Stroebel, 59 Wis. 74, 17 N. W. 539 (1883); Duke v. Feldman, 
245 Md. 454, 457–458, 226 A. 2d 345, 347 (1967).  Put an-
other way, overly broad liability would allow for “one person 
[to] be made a trespasser and even a felon against his or her 
consent, and by the mere rashness or precipitancy or over-
heated  zeal  of  another.”  Bird  v.  Lynn,  49  Ky.  422,  423
(1850).  Moreover, unlike its close cousin conspiracy, aiding
and abetting does not require any agreement with the pri-
mary wrongdoer to commit wrongful acts, thus eliminating 
a significant limiting principle.  See Nye & Nissen v. United 
States, 336 U. S. 613, 620 (1949). 

To keep aiding-and-abetting liability grounded in culpa-
ble misconduct, criminal law thus requires “that a defend-
ant ‘in some sort associate himself with the venture, that 
he participate in it as in something that he wishes to bring
about, that he seek by his action to make it succeed’ ” before
he could be held liable.  Id., at 619 (quoting Peoni, 100 F. 2d, 
at  402).  In  other  words,  the  defendant  has  to  take  some