Opinion ID: 3019770
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: New Jersey RICO Claims

Text: Plaintiffs next object to the District Court’s application of a four-year statute of limitations to their New Jersey RICO claims as opposed to a six-year limitations period. Although they concede that some New Jersey courts have applied the federal RICO statute of limitations of four years to New Jersey RICO claims, see Matter of Integrity Ins. Co., 584 A.2d 286 (1990), they insist that due to some recent changes to the way New Jersey courts approach state RICO claims, “it can no longer be predicted that the New Jersey Supreme Court would feel compelled to follow federal law in determining the appropriate statute of limitations for NJRICO.” Thus, they argue that the law is unsettled with respect to how long the statute of limitations is for New Jersey RICO claims and suggest 45 that the appropriate statute of limitations should be six years.10 To support this claim, plaintiffs rely on State v. Ball, 661 A.2d 251 (N.J. 1995), in which, according to plaintiffs, the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to interpret NJRICO coextensively with federal interpretations of RICO, instead opting to interpret NJRICO as governed by state law principles. We disagree. A close reading of Ball suggests, contrary to plaintiffs’ contention, that the New Jersey Supreme Court believed the New Jersey RICO statute was and should be consistent with the federal RICO statute. Ball, 661 A.2d at 258 (“[B]ecause the federal statute served as an initial model for [the NJRICO statute], we heed federal legislative history and case law in construing our statute.”). Moreover, subsequent New Jersey cases belie plaintiffs’ contention that the New Jersey 10. This is the general statute of limitations for New Jersey state law claims. Mirra v. Holland Am. Line, 751 A.2d 138, 140 (N.J. App. Div. 2002) 46 RICO is somehow divergent from the federal RICO statute. See, e.g., Interchange State Bank v. Veglia, 668 A.2d 465, 472 (App. Div. 1995) (“There is no state decisional law on this aspect of civil RICO law. Therefore, parallel federal case law is an appropriate reference source to interpret the RICO statute.”). In any event, nothing in Ball, or any other case, stands for the proposition that claims under the New Jersey RICO statute possess a six-year statute of limitations, as opposed to the commonly applied four-year limitations period for federal RICO claims. There is no evidence that the New Jersey RICO statute possesses a different statute of limitations from the federal RICO statute and we refuse to adopt such a rule. Thus, for the reasons above, and because plaintiffs were 47 on notice of their claims, we will affirm the dismissal of the NJRICO claim on the ground of statute of limitations.11