Opinion ID: 76990
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Standing to Pursue State-Law RICO Claims

Text: 61 As with Federal RICO claims, under Georgia's RICO statute, [a]ny person who is injured by reason of any violation of Georgia's RICO statute shall have a cause of action for three times the actual damages sustained.... O.C.G.A. § 16-14-6(c). [B]ecause the state RICO act is modeled upon and closely analogous to the federal RICO statute, Georgia courts look to federal authority in determining RICO standing. Maddox v. So. Engineering Co., 231 Ga.App. 802, 500 S.E.2d 591, 594 (1998) (quotation marks and citation omitted). We already have concluded that the plaintiffs have alleged sufficient injury to pursue their federal RICO claims, and accordingly, we conclude that they have alleged a sufficient injury to pursue their state RICO claims as well. Although under Georgia law the plaintiffs are limited to predicate acts arising out of 18 U.S.C. § 1546, we conclude that the plaintiffs' allegations are neither too remote nor too indirect to satisfy Georgia's proximate-cause requirement under state-law RICO. See Maddox, 500 S.E.2d at 594 (In short, the language `by reason of' imposes a proximate causation requirement on the plaintiff. (citation omitted)); id. (A plaintiff must show a causal connection between his injury and a predicate act. (citation omitted)).