In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit

No. 00-2750

Josephine Pizzo,

Plaintiff-Appellant,

v.

Bekin Van Lines Company, et al.,

Defendants-Appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.

No. 99 C 4595--Charles R. Norgle, Sr., Judge.

Argued April 3, 2001--Decided July 20, 2001

 Before Posner, Kanne and Rovner, Circuit

Judges.

 Posner, Circuit Judge. The plaintiff

sued the defendants under RICO, the

Carmack Amendment, and Illinois consumer

protection law and now appeals from the

dismissal of her suit for failure to

state a federal claim. As is customary,

having dismissed the federal claims

before trial the judge relinquished

jurisdiction over the state claims (which

we’ll call Pizzo’s "state-law fraud

claim"), leaving the plaintiff free to

refile them in state court.

 The implausible allegations of the

complaint are the only facts we have to

go on, so we suppress our skepticism and

assume their truth. Josephine Pizzo, the

plaintiff, lives in southern Illinois.

From a retail furniture store in a

Chicago suburb owned by Mr. and Mrs.

Reznikoff, two of the defendants, Pizzo

bought a nine-piece bedroom set, to be

imported from Italy. The set was not on

display but Pizzo was shown color photos

of the pieces and told that the furniture

was made of solid walnut. The price was

$16,200, to be paid (and it was paid)

before delivery. The furniture arrived in

the store and from there was trucked to

Pizzo’s home by the moving-company

defendants. It arrived in damaged

condition. "The cartons containing the

furniture were ripped and torn"--we are
quoting from the complaint--and "several

pieces of the furniture were outside of

the cartons." What is more, "it was also

readily apparent to Ms. Pizzo that the

furniture was not, in fact, made of

wood"--of "solid walnut, or any other

natural wood. It appears to be made of

some sort of aerated foam product,

similar to (albeit heavier than)

styrofoam . . . . Foam furniture is

unsuitable for use in Ms. Pizzo’s home,

and is worth far less than genuine wood

furniture. In the absence of Ms.

Reznikoff’s misrepresentation that the

furniture was made of solid wood, Ms.

Pizzo would not have purchased it." But,

the complaint continues, since the

"furniture cost $16,200 and was a total

loss . . . , the minimum jurisdictional

amount of $10,000 for a Carmack Amendment

claim is satisfied."

 Pizzo refused to accept delivery, and

the furniture was carried away,

apparently to a storage facility of one

of the moving-company defendants, where

it remains awaiting the outcome of this

suit. The furniture store mailed Pizzo a

copy of the bill of sale, which states

that no refunds or exchanges will be

made; this mailing is alleged as mail

fraud and related mailings or

telecommunications are alleged as mail

and wire fraud, the various frauds being

the "predicate acts"--the "racketeering"-

- required for liability under the RICO

statute. The Reznikoffs are alleged to

have conducted the "enterprise"

consisting of their furniture store by a

"pattern" of this "racketeering," the

pattern being demonstrated by a complaint

made by another customer of the store. He

claimed that he had bought from them a

sofa and chair, both with coil springs,

to be imported from Germany, and that the

sofa arrived damaged, with no coil

springs and with indications that it

hadn’t been made in Germany, and that

Mrs. Reznikoff used the mails (or wire

communications) to stop payment on the

check she gave him in response to his

demand that she refund his money. There

is no indication of how the complaint was

resolved.

 If Pizzo has succeeded in stating a

claim under RICO there probably isn’t a

retail store in the United States that

can’t be sued successfully under RICO,

and thus branded as a "racketeer" and
exposed to liability for treble damages,

by a disgruntled customer. All the

customer has to do, if Pizzo’s RICO claim

can survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion, is

allege a misrepresentation by a salesman

that induced him to buy a product that he

otherwise wouldn’t have bought, the use

of the mails or of wire communications in

connection with the sale or the ensuing

dispute, and that another customer was

similarly victimized.

 The RICO claim fails, although the

"enterprise" allegations are sufficient,

Cedric Kushner Promotions, Ltd. v. King,

121 S.Ct. 2087 (U.S. 2001); McCullough v.

Suter, 757 F.2d 142, 144 (7th Cir. 1985),

and we’ll assume that the "racketeering"

allegations are as well. Mail and wire

fraud, 18 U.S.C. sec.sec. 1341, 1343, are

predicate acts specified by RICO, 18

U.S.C. sec. 1961(1); Stachon v. United

Consumers Club, Inc., 229 F.3d 673, 675

n. 1 (7th Cir. 2000), and we’ll not

quibble over whether they’ve been alleged

with the particularity required of fraud

allegations, Fed. R. Civ. P. 9(b); Emery

v. American General Finance, Inc., 71

F.3d 1343, 1348 (7th Cir. 1995), though

as a matter of fact, while the place and

content of the misrepresentations are

specified, the time is not, as the cases

also require. Slaney v. International

Amateur Athletic Federation, 244 F.3d

580, 599 (7th Cir. 2001); Vicom, Inc. v.

Harbridge Merchant Services, Inc., 20

F.3d 771, 777 (7th Cir. 1994). What dooms

the RICO claim in any event is that two

complaints by dissatisfied customers do

not add up to a pattern.

 The fact that Pizzo alleges several

violations of the mail and wire fraud

statutes growing out of her single tiff

with the furniture store (ordering the

furniture, arranging to deliver it, and

mailing the contract--a fourth

allegedviolation, that "the mails . . .

and wires were used . . . [in that] the

furniture was delivered via interstate

carrier," makes no sense, since the

furniture was not mailed, nor, of course,

wired) does not help her to make out the

requisite pattern. The Reznikoffs had

only a single dispute with her and

likewise a single dispute with the other

dissatisfied customer, making a total of

only two "acts" relevant to whether the

defendants’ behavior can be characterized

as patterned. As explained in Ashland
Oil, Inc. v. Arnett, 875 F.2d 1271, 1278

(7th Cir. 1989), "[RICO] plaintiffs are

mistaken to emphasize the raw number of

mail and wire fraud violations. Some of

the present uncertainty over the pattern

element stems from such arguments which

depend upon the unusual nature of these

two most commonly alleged RICO predicate

acts . . . . In mail and wire fraud, each

mailing or interstate communication is a

separate indictable offense, even if each

relates to the same scheme to defraud,

and even if the defendant did not control

the number of mailings or communications.

United States v. Aldridge, 484 F.2d 655,

660 (7th Cir. 1973). See Badders v.

United States, 240 U.S. 391, 393 (1916).

Thus, the number of offenses is only

tangentially related to the underlying

fraud, and can be a matter of

happenstance." See also Vicom, Inc. v.

Harbridge Merchant Services, Inc., supra,

20 F.3d at 781.

 And so it is here. There were only two

disputes that have given rise to the

charge of a pattern of racketeering. And

from two disputes five months apart (cf.

id. at 780-81, and cases cited there;

Pik-Coal Co. v. Big Rivers Electric

Corp., 200 F.3d 884, 890 n. 10 (6th Cir.

2000); Hughes v. Consol-Pennsylvania Coal

Co., 945 F.2d 594, 611 (3d Cir. 1991)),

and no evidence that would enable a trier

of fact to extrapolate from them a danger

of recurrence, no inference can be drawn

that the Reznikoffs are engaged in a

pattern of fraudulent activity. We are

sure that not all retail stores in the

United States are violating RICO; yet we

imagine that almost every retail store in

the United States has had at least two

customers mad enough at it to cry fraud.

 The requirement of proving "pattern" is

central to the statute. As the Supreme

Court explained in H.J. Inc. v.

Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S.

229, 242 (1989), "Congress was concerned

in RICO with long-term criminal conduct."

Unless the requirement of proving a

pattern of criminal activity is taken

seriously, isolated wrongdoing by

employees of a firm would expose it, and

perhaps its owners and executives as

well, to the heavy sanctions that the

statute imposes on violators. A criminal

enterprise, as distinct from a normal

enterprise that gets into trouble with

the law from time to time, is an
enterprise that habitually resorts to

illegal methods of doing business. It is

an enterprise whose disposition, whose

bent, is criminal--as shown by its

illegal acts composing a pattern from

which such a disposition can be inferred,

in much the same way that an individual’s

generous disposition is inferred from a

pattern of generous acts, acts frequent

enough and similar enough to enable such

an inference. The customer complaints

against the Reznikoffs are similar

("related," in the language of the

cases), but lack the frequency

("continuity," in the lingo of the RICO

cases) necessary to ground an inference

that the Reznikoffs habitually use their

furniture store as an engine of fraud.

See, e.g., id. at 237; Vicom, Inc.

v.Harbridge Merchant Services, Inc.,

supra, 20 F.3d at 779-84; GE Investment

Private Placement Partners II v. Parker,

247 F.3d 543, 549 (4th Cir. 2001). So

clear is this from the complaint itself

that the RICO claim was properly

dismissed on the pleadings, as in Vicom

and Pik-Coal.

 We are not impressed by Pizzo’s argument

that with pretrial discovery she might

discover additional frauds. If the

defendants were busy defrauding their

customers, Pizzo could have obtained

evidence of that without discovery by

consulting the Better Business Bureau and

the FTC, or by advertising for persons

complaining of being defrauded by the

defendants. The defendants should not be

put to the burden of litigating a RICO

suit beyond the pleadings by allegations

as thin as in this case.

 So much for the RICO claim. The Carmack

Amendment to the Interstate Commerce Act,

a codification of the common law

liability of carriers for damage to

shippers’ goods, provides a remedy

against truckers responsible for damage

to a plaintiff’s goods unless the trucker

can prove that he was free from fault. 49

U.S.C. sec. 14706; Missouri Pacific R.R.

v. Elmore & Stahl, 377 U.S. 134, 137-38,

(1964); Allied Tube & Conduit Corp. v.

Southern Pacific Transportation Co., 211

F.3d 367, 369 (7th Cir. 2000);

Hollingsworth & Vose Co. v. A-P-A

Transportation Corp., 158 F.3d 617, 618

(1st Cir. 1998). The defendants argue

that the Carmack count in Pizzo’s

complaint is defective for failing to
allege that the furniture was in good

condition when they picked it up at the

Reznikoffs’ store to carry it to her

house. They are confused in thus arguing

that the elements of a Carmack claim must

bepleaded. There are no special pleading

rules for such claims. The Federal Rules

of Civil Procedure require a plaintiff to

plead no more than is necessary to place

the defendants on notice of his claim.

E.g., Weiss v. Cooley, 230 F.3d 1027,

1033 (7th Cir. 2000); Bartholet v.

Reishauer A.G. (Zurich), 953 F.2d 1073,

1077-78 (7th Cir. 1992). The rules

contain no special pleading requirements

for Carmack claims; judicial engrafting

of such requirements is disfavored,

Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics

Intelligence & Coordination Unit, 507

U.S. 163, 168 (1993); Hammes v. AAMCO

Transmissions, Inc., 33 F.3d 774, 778

(7th Cir. 1994); In re NationsMart Corp.

Securities Litigation, 130 F.3d 309, 315

(8th Cir. 1997); and no reason is given

or occurs to us why such requirements

would be appropriate for such claims.

 The complaint alleges that the defendant

moving companies are carriers within the

meaning of the Carmack Amendment, that

they transported the furniture that was

delivered in damaged condition to the

plaintiff, and that the damage exceeded

the statutory minimum of $10,000. (This

exception to the abolition of minimum

amounts in controversy in federalquestion cases was, as explained in Ford

Motor Co. v. Transport Indemnity Co., 795

F.2d 538, 544 (6th Cir. 1986), a

"response to a flood of suits in the

United States District Court for the

District of Massachusetts brought under

the Carmack Amendment . . . which often

involved ’minuscule amounts’ and forced

the district court to function ’as a

clearinghouse for the negotiation

andsettlement of private debt.’") So far

as the defendants’ responsibility for the

damage is concerned, however, all the

complaint alleges is that "one or more .

. . or all of them [the carrier

defendants]" caused the damage, and those

who did not cause it would not be liable

for it. But there is cause and there is

cause, and in the Carmack Amendment

"cause" means "responsible for," and the

amendment casts the net of responsibility

wide. Pizzo was free to sue the carrier

that issued the bill of lading as well as

the carrier that delivered the goods, 49
U.S.C. sec. 14706(a)(1), and these

carriers would be jointly as well as

severally liable to her unless they could

show that they were not to blame. Tempel

Steel Corp. v. Landstar Inway, Inc., 211

F.3d 1029, 1029-30 (7th Cir. 2000);

Project Hope v. M/V IBN SINA, 250 F.3d

67, 75-76 (2d Cir. 2001). The Carmack

Amendment is intended to "relieve

shippers of the burden of searching out a

particular negligent carrier from among

the often numerous carriers handling an

interstate shipment of goods." Reider v.

Thompson, 339 U.S. 113, 119 (1950); PNH

Corp. v. Hullquist Corp., 843 F.2d 586,

588-89 (1st Cir. 1988). The issuer of the

bill of lading and the delivering carrier

are prima facie liable even though the

goods may have been damaged by

intermediate carriers; it’s up to the

defendants to put the finger on the

guilty carrier. Id. at 588.

 But hasn’t Pizzo pleaded herself out of

court by seeking not the furniture, but

her purchase price back? Neither the

district court’s dismissal of the RICO

claim, nor our affirmance of that

dismissal, has compelled Pizzo to take

the furniture in its damaged condition.

She can renew in state court her claim

that she was entitled to refuse delivery

of the furniture and get her money back.

If she prevails and does get her money

back, the fact that the furniture is in

damaged condition will be no skin off her

back; any claim arising from the damage

will belong to the Reznikoffs’ store,

which will be revested with the ownership

of the furniture.

 Although not so pleaded, Pizzo’s Carmack

Amendment claim is best understood as an

alternative to her RICO and state law

claims. If she succeeds in rescinding the

purchase of the furniture on grounds of

fraud, she will receive her purchase

price back and the damage to the

furniture will be, as we have said, no

damage to her. But if she fails to

rescind the purchase (she has already

failed, we have held, to do so on the

basis of RICO), and cannot get her money

back, then she is entitled to the

furniture back, and as the owner of the

furniture she will bear the loss caused

by the damage in transit unless she can

obtain damages under the Carmack

Amendment from the movers.
 There is nothing wrong with alternative

pleading, of course, Fed. R. Civ. P.

8(e)(2); Taylor v. Pathmark Stores, Inc.,

177 F.3d 180, 189 (3d Cir. 1999), or with

filing a contingent claim to avoid the

running of the statute of limitations.

Swartz v. Meyers, 204 F.3d 417, 420 (3d

Cir. 2000); Taylor v. Lee, 186 F.3d 557,

561 (4th Cir. 1999); Nino v. Galaza, 183

F.3d 1003, 1005 (9th Cir. 1999). There

was no basis, therefore, for the

dismissal of the Carmack Amendment claim-

- unless it is plain that the damage to

the furniture inflicted by the moving

companies cannot exceed $10,000, the

minimum required for jurisdiction under

the amendment. If the furniture was worth

$16,200 on the assumption that it was

walnut, it is likely to be worth no more

than half of that if it is really a kind

of styrofoam; moreover it was not

completely destroyed, so that Pizzo

contradicts herself in alleging that it

was "a total loss." But these things turn

out not to be critical, even though the

Carmack Amendment does not insure people

against the consequences of being

defrauded, so that if the furniture was

completely worthless even its total

destruction by the carrier defendants

would not have inflicted damages for

which Pizzo could recover under the

amendment. See Olsen v. Railway Express

Agency, Inc., 295 F.2d 358, 359-60 (10th

Cir. 1961); cf. Project Hope v. M/V IBN

SINA, supra, 250 F.3d at 77; Camar Corp.

v. Preston Trucking Co., 221 F.3d 271,

276-78 (1st Cir. 2000). The fact that the

claim is contingent bites here, however.

For, should Pizzo’s state-law fraud claim

fail on the ground that the furniture, in

its undamaged state, really was what the

Reznikoffs had represented it to be and

really was worth the $16,200 that Pizzo

paid for it, then it is possible that the

damage in transit caused her to lose

$10,000 of value.

 So the Carmack Amendment claim should

not have been dismissed for failure to

satisfy the minimum required amount in

controversy. Since, however, it is merely

a contingent claim, it does not provide a

secure basis for retaining under the

supplemental jurisdiction of the district

court the plaintiff’s state-law claim for

fraud. The tail would be wagging the dog

if the district court ruled on the

contingent federal claim before the

plaintiff obtained a ruling on whether
she can rescind the sale or used the con

tingent claim to lever her state-law

fraud claim back into federal court. Yet

to affirm the district court’s

relinquishment of jurisdiction over that

claim while reversing the dismissal of

the Carmack Amendment claim would condemn

the plaintiff to split her case against

the Reznikoffs between two courts. The

district court either should retain

jurisdiction over the state-law fraud

claim or, if it relinquishes it, should

stay further proceedings on the Carmack

Amendment until the state-law claim is

resolved in the state court. We leave the

choice to the district court to make on

remand, and affirm its dismissal of the

RICO claim.

Affirmed in Part, Reversed in Part,

and Remanded with Instructions.