Court Opinion

ID: 9472493
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 04:02:27.169562+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:42:58.641956
License: Public Domain

CARDAMONE, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that this Court should create a requirement of prior criminal conviction for the predicate acts forming the pattern of racketeering activity for all civil RICO claims. In so doing, the panel majority takes this Circuit far from the shores of principled and disciplined reasoning, and leads it unnecessarily into a sea of uncertainty. In the panel’s view, Congress would have intended — had it thought about the implications of § 1964 —that prior convictions be required. Not only does the majority turn the ordinary rules of statutory construction on their head by ignoring the plain meaning of the statutory language, but it also ignores the sound policy reasons for permitting civil RICO cases to proceed absent prior convictions for the predicate acts. In my view, the civil RICO provisions mean just what they say. Because these and other considerations have convinced me that the majority has crossed the line and trespassed in an area exclusively reserved to Congress, I dissent.
I. Prior Criminal Conviction Requirement
Looking at the reasoning that creates a “prior predicate act criminal conviction” requirement one is struck that it — in Alice’s words — gets “curiouser and curiouser.” 1 No support for this proposition is found in the statute or its legislative history. Almost none of the decisions or the commentators argue for such drastic redrafting of the statute. In fact, they support the opposite conclusion, i.e. that no prior conviction is necessary to bring a civil claim under RICO.
Along the way to reaching its novel conclusion, the panel misconstrues Congress’ reasons for the enactment of this statute and makes a number of faulty assumptions. The panel majority’s position seems bottomed on: (1) disapproval of cases that have taken a contrary view; (2) a view that Congress did not give civil courts power to decide when acts are “indictable” or “chargeable”; (3) a view that § 1964 would constitute an unconstitutional “quasi-criminal” statute were a prior criminal conviction for the predicate acts not required; (4) a fear that defendants will be “stigmatizes” by a civil “conviction” for racketeering activity; and (5) analysis based on the word “violation” contained in § 1964. I propose to deal with each of these premises seriatim.
(1) Disapproval of Contrary Decisions
The majority begins by analyzing those decisions that have refused to adopt a prior criminal conviction requirement, and disapproves of them because they supposedly are not well-reasoned. For example, United States v. Cappetto, 502 F.2d 1351 (7th Cir.1974), cert, denied, 420 U.S. 925, 95 S.Ct. 1121, 43 L.Ed.2d 395 (1975) is dismissed almost without comment because “Cappetto made no holding with respect to private civil actions.” Others are discarded because they merely cite to Cappetto. US ACO Coal Co. v. Carbomin Energy, Inc., 689 F.2d 94, 95 n. 1 (6th Cir.1982), which rejected a prior conviction requirement, and reasoned that Congress would have defined the § 1964 “violation” differently had it desired such a requirement, is labelled “misguided.”
This panel’s evaluation of Cappetto puts it at odds with other panels of this Circuit that have cited that decision with apparent approval in other respects. See United States v. Huber, 603 F.2d 387, 393 (2d Cir.1979), cert, denied, 445 U.S. 927, 100 S.Ct. 1312, 63 L.Ed.2d 759 (1980); United States v. Altese, 542 F.2d 104, 107 (2d Cir.1976), cert, denied, 429 U.S. 1039, 97 S.Ct. 736, 50 L.Ed.2d 750 (1977). Cappetto involved a government prosecuted civil RICO claim. Ordinarily more, not less, protection is expected for a defendant *505when the government is plaintiff. When the plaintiff is a private party, as here, the quick dismissal of Cappetto totally ignores the “private attorney general” rationale built into RICO.
Discarding the numerous decisions of other courts that have not raised the bar of a prior conviction requirement will not make them go away. Virtually every court that has directly addressed the issue has decided no prior conviction is required. E.g., State Farm Fire and Cas. Co. v. Estate of Caton, 540 F.Supp. 673 (N.D.Ind. 1982) (holding no prior conviction is required based on statutory interpretation); Farmers Bank of State of Del. v. Bell Mtg. Corp., 452 F.Supp. 1278, 1280 (D.Del.1978) (§ 1964(c) “does not condition that cause of action in any way upon a criminal previous under the criminal provisions of the statute”). See Bunker Ramo Corp. v. United Business Forms, Inc., 713 F.2d 1272, 1287 (7th Cir.1983) (Civil RICO action available “without any requirement of a prior criminal conviction for that conduct,” citing USACO, supra). Morosani v. First Nat’l Bank of Atlanta, 703 F.2d 1220 (11th Cir. 1983) (overruling Kleiner v. First Bank National Bank, 526 F.Supp. 1019 (N.D.Ga. 1981) without discussing prior criminal conviction dictum in Kleiner)-, Pames v. Heinold Commodities, Inc., 487 F.Supp. 645, 647 (N.D.Ill.1980); (private RICO action need not be preceeded by criminal conviction). The majority’s dismissal of these holdings as uninformed or as simply “following Cappetto ” ignores the obviously simple explanation for their resounding rejection of any prior conviction requirement — it does not appear in the statute.
(2) “Indictable” or “Chargeable” Acts
Congress, the majority further tells us, did not intend to give civil courts power to determine whether an act is ‘indictable’ absent a properly returned indictment or ‘chargeable’ absent an information.” How can this view be correct? To begin, the words themselves connote the contrary— i.e., Congress did not use the phrase “for which an indictment or information has been returned or filed ”; much less did it say “for which the defendant has been criminally convicted.” More significantly, Congress clearly used the terms “indictable” or “chargeable” in reference to “acts” forming a pattern of racketeering activity under § 1961, to which sanctions specifically labelled as “civil remedies” were then directed. To stretch this language into a requirement that a prior conviction must be obtained strains credulity. Had that been Congress' aim, § 1964’s title would have been “Post Criminal Conviction Civil Remedies,” not “Civil Remedies.”
Further, the statute as Congress enacted it does not require civil courts to determine that the RICO predicate acts are in fact criminal acts. All that need be determined is that they are acts which, if proved by the government in a criminal proceeding, would subject the violator to criminal sanctions. The use of criminal and civil sanctions for the same conduct is common. Congress has frequently enacted legislation giving private litigants civil remedies for acts which may also be punished criminally. In addition to the antitrust example, Congress has provided for multiple damages, statutory punitive damages, civil penalties and counsel fees in scores of statutes, including inter alia, the patent (35 U.S.C. § 281) and trademark laws (15 U.S.C. § 1117), the Truth in Lending Act (12 U.S.C. § 1640), the water pollution control statute (33 U.S.C. § 1321), the false claims statute (31 U.S.C. § 3729), the wiretap statute (18 U.S.C. § 2520), and the tax laws (26 U.S.C. § 6653(b)). In some of these areas, Congress has gone further and accorded to the government a civil remedy for acts that are also punishable under federal criminal law. Helvering v. Mitchell, 303 U.S. 391, 58 S.Ct. 630, 82 L.Ed. 917 (1938) (after an acquittal for criminal tax fraud, the government obtained a 50 per centum penalty in a civil proceeding against the taxpayer and the court held this a civil, not criminal, sanction); see One Lot Emerald Cut Stones v. United States, 409 U.S. 232, 237, 93 S.Ct. 489, 493, 34 L.Ed.2d 438 (1972) (per curiam) (forfeiture proceeding, civil in nature, not barred under Double Jeopardy Clause after de*506fendant’s acquittal on criminal charges). Rather than asking what kind of sanctions, i.e., criminal or civil, are imposed against a defendant, the majority mistakenly focuses on the nature of the proceeding taken under § 1964. Here the sanction is treble damages. Treble damages have been part of our jurisprudence for centuries — since first appearing as a remedy for waste in the Statute of Gloucester (1278) — and they have never been viewed as “criminal” sanctions.
(3) Constitutionality of § 1964 Absent Criminal Conviction
As just noted, the majority analyzes a proceeding under § 1964 and implicitly finds it “quasi-criminal.” It then seems to conclude that such finding necessitates holding the section unconstitutional were a prior criminal conviction not to be required. If true, this implicit conclusion is at odds with analogous case law in such areas as civil forfeitures, penalties and deportation cases which teaches that the correct procedure is for a court in a civil case to assure, on a selective basis, the existence of certain procedural safeguards, that would otherwise be applicable only in criminal cases. That is, only those criminal procedural remedies necessary to protect a defendant are required in the civil action. See, e.g., Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1886); Lopez-Mendoza v. I.N.S., 705 F.2d 1059 (9th Cir.1983) (en banc) (applicability of Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule in civil deportation proceeding), cert, granted, — U.S.-, 104 S.Ct. 697, 79 L.Ed.2d 163 (U.S.1984). Bramble v. Richardson, 498 F.2d 968, 973 (10th Cir.) (rejecting claim that In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a forfeiture proceeding), cert, denied, 419 U.S. 1069, 95 S.Ct. 656, 42 L.Ed.2d 665 (1974); accord, United States v. Regan, 232 U.S. 37, 34 S.Ct. 213, 58 L.Ed. 494 (1914) (standard of proof in action for penalty for violation of Alien Immigration Act is preponderance of the evidence). Cf. In re Ruffalo, 390 U.S. 544, 552, 88 S.Ct. 1222, 1226, 20 L.Ed.2d 117 (1968) (absence of fair notice of charges deprived petitioner of due process in disbarment proceeding). Close to 90 years ago the Supreme Court rejected the view that a civil forfeiture proceeding of the type involved in Boyd v. United States, supra, is a “criminal prosecution” in which the Sixth Amendment right of confrontation is implicated. United States v. Zucker, 161 U.S. 475, 482, 16 S.Ct. 641, 643, 40 L.Ed. 777 (1896). Despite this teaching, the panel holds in effect that § 1964 is “criminal” for all purposes by requiring a prior criminal conviction before a civil RICO plaintiff can sue.
Thus, even accepting arguendo the view that § 1964 cannot be constitutionally applied in the absence of unspecified safeguards, the proper course is not to require a prior criminal conviction, but to insist on application of those safeguards {e.g., the exclusionary rule, a heightened standard of proof or other criminal protections) within the context of a civil proceeding. The majority’s response that imposing criminal safeguards in a civil case would confuse juries is not borne out in practice. Juries already apply heightened standards of proof to specific issues, in fraud, defamation, paternity and other types of civil actions. See McCormick on Evidence §§ 339-40 (2d ed. 1972) (citing cases).
Moreover, the Supreme Court has outlined the proper method of analysis for challenges to statutory civil remedies on the ground they are “quasi-criminal” or sufficiently “punitive” to require the procedural protections of a criminal trial. In United States v. Ward, 448 U.S. 242, 100 S.Ct. 2636, 65 L.Ed.2d 742 (1980), the Court analyzed a challenge to section 311(b)(6) of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act (FWPCA) which permitted the government to assess a civil penalty of up to $5000 for each violation of the FWPCA. To decide whether a statute is “civil” or “criminal” involves a two-step test: first, courts must examine whether Congress indicated a preference for one label or the other; second, where Congress has signalled a preference for a civil penalty, there must be further inquiry to determine whether the *507statutory scheme is “so punitive either in purpose or effect as to negate that intention.” Id. at 248-249, 100 S.Ct. at 2641. The Court concluded after considering the seven factors set forth in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, 372 U.S. 144, 168-69, 83 S.Ct. 554, 567-568, 9 L.Ed.2d 644 (1963), that the penalty in Ward was analagous to traditional civil damages and held it not sufficiently punitive to require Fifth Amendment criminal safeguards. United States v. Ward, supra, 448 U.S. at 251,100 S.Ct. at 2642. Justice Blackmun’s concurrence emphasized “that monetary assessments are traditionally a form of civil remedy” and found it significant that the FWPCA § 311(b)(6), like 18 U.S.C. § 1964, does not provide for “an affirmative disability or restraint” (such as imprisonment, deportation or disbarment). Id. at 257, 100 S.Ct. at 2645 (Blackmun, J.) (concurring).
More recently, in United States v. One Assortment of 89 Firearms, — U.S.-, 104 S.Ct. 1099, 79 L.Ed.2d 361 (U.S.1984), the Supreme Court held that neither the Fifth Amendment double jeopardy clause nor collateral estoppel bars a forfeiture proceeding where the defendant in the pri- or criminal proceeding was acquitted. A unanimous Court applying the two-level Ward test indicated that even “discouraging unregulated commerce in firearms” and “removing [them] from circulation” are remedial, not punitive, purposes. Id. at 1106-1107. The Court stressed that “Congress may impose both a criminal and a civil sanction in respect to the same act or omission,” (citing Helvering v. Mitchell, supra) and held forfeiture to be a “separate civil sanction, remedial in nature.” Id.
Applying the Ward test to § 1964 demonstrates that it is not a “quasi-criminal” statute even for purposes of Fifth Amendment guarantees, much less all criminal protections. The remedial purpose expressed in the statute is evident from its legislative history. Congress specifically provided that RICO “shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes.” Pub.L. 91-452, 84 Stat. 941 (1970) § 904(a). Section 1964 is designed to compensate private parties who are victims of tortious activity. See United States v. Bornstein, 423 U.S. 303, 314, 96 S.Ct. 523, 530, 46 L.Ed.2d 514 (1975) (double damages under False Claims Act designed to ensure government is made completely whole); United States ex rel. Marcus v. Hess, 317 U.S. 537, 549, 63 S.Ct. 379, 386, 87 L.Ed. 443 (1943) (holding that double damages under False Claims Act are compensatory even if recovered by federal government). Its treble damage provision is therefore primarily remedial, and only partly punitive. The recovery in excess of actual damages constitutes statutory punitive damages designed in part to punish the defendant for tortious conduct, but traditionally allowable in civil proceedings without special criminal law safeguards. See Missouri Pacific By. Co. v. Humes, 115 U.S. 512, 6 S.Ct. 110, 29 L.Ed. 463 (1885) (multiple damages partly compensatory, partly punitive). Thus, § 1964 is “primarily remedial” under the Supreme Court’s tests in Helvering and Ward because its principal purposes are to compensate victims of racketeering activity and to encourage them to vindicate their rights. In serving as private attorneys general, civil RICO plaintiffs aid in the eradication of such activity. In short, Congress’ “civil” and “remedial” labels should not therefore be disregarded.
The majority apparently faced the dilemma of either upholding this statute as written or declaring it unconstitutional as punitive and hence quasi-criminal in nature. It chose neither of these straightforward alternatives. It specifically rejected the former. And, since a statute as written may be held unconstitutional only if the challenger presents “the clearest proof” of it, United States v. Ward, supra, 448 U.S. at 249, 100 S.Ct. at 2641 (quoting Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, 617, 80 S.Ct. 1367, 1376, 4 L.Ed.2d 1435 (I960)), and because such proof is absent here, it could not choose the latter. Instead, to resolve the problem, the majority inserts the prior criminal conviction requirement to avoid perceived “serious constitutional questions.” The premise is flawed because this course of “avoidance” has actually created *508a constitutional question of even greater significance. Addition of this new requirement to civil RICO — one which Congress did not vote on and which the President did not endorse — has raised a question as to whether such judicial creativity is an unwarranted and unconstitutional intrusion into the legislative process.
(4) Stigma
The panel opinion stresses a fear that defendants will be “stigmatized” by their “indictment” at the hands of a “one-man grand jury” for racketeering activity. Yet, stigma alone ordinarily does not suffice to convert a proceeding from civil to criminal. See Ullmann v. United States, 350 U.S. 422, 76 S.Ct. 497, 100 L.Ed. 511 (1956) (contempt conviction for refusing to testify before grand jury upheld following grant of immunity over claim defendant would be stigmatized by revealing past connection with the Communist party). One commentator observed that the holding of In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1428,18 L.Ed.2d 527 (1967), relied on by the majority, has been largely limited to sanctions threatening loss of liberty, and that stigma alone does not trigger the need for criminal safeguards. Note, Organized Crime and The Infiltration of Legitimate Business: Civil Remedies for “Criminal Activity,” 124 U.Pa.L.Rev. 192, 214-15 (1975).
Further, the majority’s sensitivity to the stigma that may attach to decent citizens named as defendants in civil RICO cases seems a bit overstated. Today, defendants in civil suits are labelled as violators of environmental laws when pumping coal byproducts into the atmosphere, despoilers of our rivers when emptying oil from their tanker’s bilges, adulterers in state divorce actions, and killers in vehicular wrongful death actions. The allegations of the civil complaint do not make these citizens criminals, although their conduct may well subject them to separate criminal prosecutions. Why the outcry over RICO? I, for one, believe the public is sophisticated enough to distinguish between a criminal conviction and a civil claim. To be named as a RICO defendant is not quite the Sword of Damocles that the majority would have it. Repeated often enough, it will either lose its effect as a settlement weapon or create enough public pressure to cause Congress to amend the statute. Again, it is not for this Court to alter the statute.
(5) Use of Word “Violation”
The opinion also places heavy reliance on Congress’ use of the term “violation,” and finds this word supports its thesis for a prior criminal conviction. In Ward, the statute also specifically referred to “violations” of the FWPCA. That Court notably attached no special significance to this term, presumably because the word “violation” is commonly used to designate civil wrongs.
Finally, the effect of this ruling will leave victims of those defendants whose activities were at the heart of Congress’ concern without the remedy Congress envisioned. Regardless of whether a defendant is a member of an organized crime family and no matter how lawless his pattern of racketeering activity may be, if he escapes conviction — through acquittal, a beneficial plea, or a decision not to prosecute — then the remedy granted the victim of these activities is lost.
II. Racketeering Injury
Concern that the RICO civil remedy will permit recovery of treble damages and attorneys' fees in every “garden variety” civil fraud case leads the majority to impose an additional standing requirement. Limiting RICO’s broad reach by requiring, for example, an “organized crime” connection was rejected by Congress and by this court, see Moss v. Morgan Stanley, supra, 719 F.2d at 21 n. 17. Similarly, a “competitive injury” requirement has been rejected in the Seventh and Eighth Circuits. Schacht v. Brown, 711 F.2d 1343, 1359 (7th Cir.), cert, denied, — U.S.-,-, 104 S.Ct. 508, 509, 78 L.Ed.2d 698 (1983). Bennett v. Berg, 685 F.2d 1053, 1058 (8th Cir. 1982), affd in part on rehearing en banc, 710 F.2d 1361 (8th Cir.), cert, denied, — U.S. -, 104 S.Ct. 527, 78 L.Ed.2d 710 (1983). The Supreme Court has specifically rejected an approach that would require an *509allegation that the enterprise be “illegitimate.” United States v. Turkette, 452 U.S. 576, 586-87, 101 S.Ct. 2524, 2530, 69 L.Ed.2d 246 (1981).2
What remains is the theory adopted by some courts and that, together with the prior conviction requirement, the majority embraces bere. That is, there must be an allegation of an injury from the “racketeering enterprise,” a so-called “racketeering injury.” Such has also been described as an injury “by reason of conduct the RICO act was designed to prevent,” and as “something more than” the injury caused by the predicate acts alone. How one can distinguish between the injury caused by the predicate acts and the injury done by the enterprise is not explained. My colleagues state that “only when injury caused by this kind of harm can be shown” (emphasis added) does a plaintiff have standing under § 1964. “This kind of harm,” in turn, occurs when “mobsters, either through the infiltration of legitimate enterprises or through the activities of illegitimate enterprises, cause systemic harm to competition and the market, and thereby injure investors and competitors.” This formulation is no more than a euphemism for an “organized crime” nexus requirement that should not be adopted by this Court after its rejection by the lawmakers. Other courts, the statute’s congressional sponsors and commentators do not assign to. civil RICO a scope on such a lilliputian scale.
In Schacht v. Brown, supra, the Seventh Circuit evaluated a similar standing requirement and stated that one trouble with “judicial pruning of RICO’s civil provisions ... where business fraud is alleged [is that] ... there is simply no legitimate principled criterion” that accomplishes the distinction between ordinary “garden variety” fraud and fraud by an organized crime syndicate. Schacht, 711 F.2d at 1356. The Schacht court concluded that since the organized crime limitation on civil RICO had been rejected, it did not want it “revived under the guise of determining the kinds of activity covered by RICO.” Id. See Ral-ston v. Capper, 569 F.Supp. 1575, 1580 (E.D.Mich.1983) (racketeering enterprise injury “undefined”). Accord, Note, Civil RICO and “Garden Variety” Fraud — A Suggested Analysis, 58 St. John’s L.Rev. 93, 107-08 (1983). See also Bennett v. Berg, supra, 685 F.2d at 1059 (rejecting “racketeering injury” requirement which is just another way of arguing that no “enterprise” existed). Hokama v. E.F. Hutton & Co., 566 F.Supp. 636, 643 (C.D.Cal.1983) (racketeering enterprise injury “little more than indirect statements” of requirement of “a ‘nexus to organized crime’ ”). Eisen-berg v. Gagnon, 564 F.Supp. 1347, 1353 (E.D.Pa.1983) (cases do not make clear “what that ‘something more’ would be”); Windsor Associates, Inc. v. Greenfield, 564 F.Supp. 273, 279 (D.Md.1983) (racketeering enterprise injury “analytically indistinguishable” from organized crime requirement).
Again, the majority’s reliance on Brunswick Corp. v. Pueblo Bowl-O-Mat, Inc., 429 U.S. 477, 97 S.Ct. 690, 50 L.Ed.2d 701 (1977), is misplaced for two reasons. First, Congress, at the suggestion of the ABA Antitrust section, indicated an intent not to incorporate technical antitrust standing and proximate cause notions into § 1964. See 115 Cong.Rec. at 6995 (1969) (discussing private civil actions). Second, in Brunswick, the Court found no clear expression of Congressional purpose to allow suits for “losses which are of no concern to the antitrust laws.” Brunswick, 429 U.S. *510at 487, 97 S.Ct. at 696. Fraud, however, was one of Congress’ specifically targeted activities in enacting RICO, and plaintiff has alleged injury from fraudulent conduct. Whatever Brunswick’s contours may be, its holding.has no application where injury from two acts of mail or wire fraud is alleged, since such injury is of the type RICO was “intended to prevent and that flows from that which makes defendants’ acts unlawful,” id. at 489, 97 S.Ct. at 697.
To cast a net sufficiently wide to catch organized criminals, Congress took the calculated risk that others, whose activities are chargeable as crimes under other federal or state laws, would also be netted. Courts should not “creat[e] standing requirements that would preclude liability in many situations in which legislative intent would compel it.” Note, Civil RICO: The Temptation and Impropriety of Judicial Restriction, 95 Harv.L.Rev. 1101, 1120-21 (1982). See Moss v. Morgan Stanley, Inc., supra, 719 F.2d at 21. As with the majority’s prior conviction requirement, the danger is that the racketeering injury standing requirement might well exclude plaintiffs in other cases where defendant’s conduct “would be near the heart of Congress’ concern.” Mauriber v. Shearson/American Exp., Inc., 567 F.Supp. 1231, 1240 (S.D.N. Y.1983).
Finally, despite the majority’s thesis that the House of Representatives was unaware of the consequences of civil RICO, Congressman Poff, its sponsor, stated:
The curious objection has been raised to [RICO's provisions] that they are not somehow limited to organized crime — as if organized crime were a precise and operative legal concept, like murder, rape or robbery. Actually, of course, it is a functional concept like white-collar or street crime serving simply as a shorthand method of referring to a large and varying group of individual criminal offenses committed in diverse circumstances.
116 Cong.Rec. at 35,344. Senator McClellan further noted that RICO “will have some application to individuals who are not themselves members of LaCosa Nostra or otherwise engaged in organized crime.” 116 Cong.Rec. at 18,945 (1970). Congress recognized the possibility of enacting a statute aimed only at “mobsters” or organized crime members and consciously chose not to do so. The majority simply rewrites the statute in a manner Congress rejected under the guise of restricting § 1964 to “mobster” activity. Congress chose means to achieve its ends that imposed a risk of RICO liability on those like appellee Imrex in this case. The allegations alleging wire and mail fraud against defendant Imrex— assumed on a motion to dismiss to be true — are indictable offenses. Fraud is a typical activity of organized crime and Congress specifically noted it in its statement of findings and purpose. Pub.L. No. 91-452, § 1, 84 Stat. 941 (1970). The legislative branch fully considered the possibility of vexatious litigation and took that risk advisedly. H.R.Rep. No. 1549, 91st Cong., 2d Sess. 187 (1970). Moreover, since the lawmakers explicitly provided in § 1964(c) for a private right of action, quite distinct from one judicially inferred, the judiciary’s duty is to administer the law Congress passed and to defer its views on the policy considerations to the legislature. Note, Civil RICO, supra, 95 Harv.L.Rev. at 1117. Judicial creativity can only lead to inconsistency and confusion in the application of civil RICO. Whatever limitation is made should come not from the courts, but from Congress.
Accordingly, I vote to reverse the order appealed from and would reinstate the complaint.

. L. Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, (Children’s Classic ed.) 25.

. I cannot agree with the majority’s view that Turkette and other Supreme Court cases in the criminal area have no application to the issues raised on this appeal. In the first place, Turk-ette itself specifically refers to the civil provisions, noting that they "could be useful in eradicating organized crime from the social fabric, whether the enterprise be ostensibly legitimate or admittedly criminal.” Id. at 585, 101 S.Ct. at 2529. Further, the majority's concerns over "federalization” of the common law of fraud are identical to the concern in Turkette regarding the balance between federal and state enforcement of criminal law, which the Supreme Court noted was considered specifically by Congress, and which provided no basis for courts "to restrict the application of the statute.” Id. at 587, 101 S.Ct. at 2530.