Until April 5, 2019, every Texas court of appeals considering what statute of limitations applied to a conspiracy claim got it wrong. So holds the Texas Supreme Court in Agar Corp. v. Electro Circuits International (available here).
In Agar, the court of appeals applied the two-year statute of limitations generally applicable to most torts to find that a conspiracy claim also had a two-year statute of limitations. The Texas Supreme Court reversed, holding that, “[b]ecause civil conspiracy is a derivative tort that depends on participation in some underlying tort, . . . the applicable statute of limitations must coincide with that of the underlying tort for which the plaintiff seeks to hold at least one of the named defendants liable.” (citations and quotations omitted).
This makes good sense. After all, under the court of appeals’ contrary finding, a defendant who commits defamation must be sued within one year after making the defamatory statement, but a plaintiff could sue his co-conspirator under a two-year statute of limitations. Similarly, a defendant who commits fraud could be sued within four years, but her conspirator had to be sued within two years. That didn’t make much sense.