Opinion ID: 811166
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Acts are Related

Text: The district court, without deciding the issue, indicated that “[t]he relatedness of the predicate acts alleged by Plaintiffs is a close call.” Jackson, 2010 WL 931864, at . We believe the list of nine predicate acts identified by the district court are sufficiently related. Acts are related for RICO purposes if they “have the same or similar purposes, results, participants, victims, or methods of commission, or otherwise are interrelated by distinguishing characteristics and are not isolated events.” H.J. Inc., 492 U.S. at 240. 8 The plaintiffs correctly state the law on this matter. The concurrence insinuates that but for Brown II, the court would not be bound by the principle that one can establish a civil RICO claim without establishing the traditional elements of common-law fraud. Even without Brown II, however, the concurrence would remain bound by this principle given the following discussion in Bridge v. Phoenix Bond & Indemnity Co., 553 U.S. 639 (2008): First, as explained above, the predicate act here is not common-law fraud, but mail fraud. Having rejected petitioners’ argument that reliance is an element of a civil RICO claim based on mail fraud, we see no reason to let that argument in through the back door by holding that the proximate-cause analysis under RICO must precisely track the proximate-cause analysis of a common-law fraud claim. Reliance is not a general limitation on civil recovery in tort; it is a specialized condition that happens to have grown up with common law fraud. That specialized condition, whether characterized as an element of the claim or as a prerequisite to establishing proximate causation, simply has no place in a remedial scheme keyed to the commission of mail fraud, a statutory offense that is distinct from common-law fraud and that does not require proof of reliance. Id. at 655–56 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). It is thus unclear how this court would not be bound by this principle but for Brown II. 9 The concurrence accuses the Brown II opinion of selectively quoting Bridge for the proposition that reliance is not always required in order to establish a RICO violation. Somewhat ironically, the quotation relied upon and paragraphs cited by the concurrence in making this point conveniently omit the contradictory surrounding text, including in one instance a clause in the same sentence. As any careful reader would discern, the Court in Bridge unequivocally determined that reliance is not necessary for a civil RICO claim: “the fact that proof of reliance is often used to prove an element of the plaintiff’s cause of action, such as the element of causation, does not transform reliance itself into an element of the cause of action.” 553 U.S. at 659 (internal quotation marks omitted). No. 10-1453 Jackson et al. v. Segwick et al. Page 18 The relationship standard is meant to be broad, not narrow. Brown v. Cassens Transp. Co., 546 F.3d 347, 354 (6th Cir. 2008) (“Brown I”), cert. denied, 130 S. Ct. 795 (2009). The acts alleged here are related in the same manner as the allegations we examined in Brown I. At a minimum, “[t]hey have the same purpose: to reduce [Coca-Cola’s] payment obligations towards worker’s compensation benefits by fraudulently denying worker’s compensation benefits to which the employees are lawfully entitled.” Id. at 355; Moon, 465 F.3d at 724.