Court Opinion

ID: 9486575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 11:53:21.503664+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:48.649031
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I hesitate to try to add anything to such a searching and exhaustive effort to bring to ground this typically meandering and divaga-tory complaint. RICO is a judge’s nightmare and doggedly persistent efforts to hammer it into a rational shape deserve the utmost respect even though they can rarely accomplish the impossible.
Certainly in pursuing the issue of pattern the majority has addressed the aspect of RICO upon which the Supreme Court has focused most in trying to separate the good RICO from the bad. See H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell Telephone Co., 492 U.S. 229, 109 S.Ct. 2893, 106 L.Ed.2d 195 (1989). Pattern is quite fundamental to RICO and, although it too drifts in and out of focus, its prospects for bringing us to useful conclusions are as good as any other. Precedents for pattern or no-pattern are not hard to come by and I think the majority has handled them with *786aplomb and fairness — not to mention dedication.
My only reservation may be about assigning somewhat arbitrary significance to duration as such. I do not favor any bright-line (e.g., eight months, one year) duration rule. In the case before us there were more than 2000 lease transactions in the 8 months involved. If the “fraudulent acts” had been spread out over 16 months, the case would not seem to be much different. I would not think such a scheme is immune from RICO merely because it lasted eight months instead of twelve or more. Cf. H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell, 492 U.S. at 254, 109 S.Ct. at 2908 (Scalia, J., concurring) (“Since the Court has rejected the concept of separate criminal ‘schemes’ or ‘episodes’ as a criterion of ‘threatening future criminal conduct,’ I think it must be 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.”). Even with a 16-month duration, however, I agree that there are still grounds to question fulfillment of the pattern requirement in this case.