Court Opinion

ID: 9481096
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:07:35.66831+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:05.514155
License: Public Domain

DAVID A. NELSON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
Justice Scalia wrote a separate opinion in H.J. that was somewhat critical of the majority’s discussion of the “continuity” requirement. He may or may not have been indulging in a touch of hyperbole, but Justice Scalia professed, at least, to read the Court’s H.J. opinion as “saying that at least a few months of racketeering activity (and who knows how much more?) is generally for free, as far as RICO is concerned.” H.J., 109 S.Ct. at 2908 (Scalia, J., concurring in judgment).
My colleagues evidently read H.J. the same way. With respect, I think a less startling interpretation is possible. Chief Judge Platt, of the Eastern District of New York, recently suggested that the question under H.J. is whether “at the time of occurrence” of racketeering activity there is a threat of future criminal activity sufficient to satisfy the continuity requirement. Morrow v. Black, 742 F.Supp. 1199, 1207 (E.D.N.Y.1990). Whether the threat actually materializes, in Judge Platt’s view, is not determinative: “That hindsight proves that the defendants are found out after a few weeks would not alter the conclusion that the activity threatened future activity at the time of its occurrence.” Id., n. 20.
I agree. Whether repeated criminal acts satisfy the continuity requirement is a question to be determined not in hindsight, it seems to me, but in light of what was known when the acts occurred.
I am aware of no admission, in the case at bar, that at the time American Orthopedic began making the mailings that are now alleged to have violated the mail fraud statute it was understood that the conduct in question would not continue for more than six months. Nothing in the plaintiff’s complaint forecloses the possibility of a showing that there was a reasonable prospect, initially, of the misconduct being continued beyond May of 1987. This being so, I do not believe that the complaint was subject to dismissal for failure to state a claim on which relief could be granted.