Court Opinion

ID: 9494122
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 15:29:52.420419+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:56:13.966680
License: Public Domain

BERZON, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
I agree with the majority that Pirello’s scheme was not an isolated event but a “plan” or “scheme,” and that his advertisements reached a great many people. So the definition contained in the pertinent Guidelines Application Note, U.S.S.G. *733§ 2Fl.l(b)(3), cmt. n. 3 (1998) is satisfied in some respects.
I nonetheless dissent, because Pirello’s conduct did not in another, key respect come within the Application Note definition. Pirello simply placed his advertisements on an Internet website devoted to such advertisements. Such passive placement, to my mind, does not constitute “solicitation by ... the Internet.” “Solicitation” usually denotes more than simply advertising for funds, sales, or signatures. Instead, the term suggests some sort of one-on-one importuning.
The dictionary definition of the term is “the action of soliciting, or seeking to obtain by earnest request .... ” Oxford English DICTIONARY 967 (2d ed. 1989). The use of the word in legal discourse is similar. See, e.g., United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 725, 731, 110 S.Ct. 3115, 111 L.Ed.2d 571 (1990); id. at 733, 110 S.Ct. 3115 (“Since the act of soliciting alms or contributions usually has as its objective an immediate act of charity, it has the potentiality for evoking highly personal and subjective reactions. Reflection usually is not encouraged, and the person solicited often must make a hasty decision whether to share his resources with an unfamiliar organization while under the eager gaze of the solicitor.”) (quoting 43 Fed. Reg. 38824).
It is apparent that the Application Note uses the term “solicitation” in this sense. Aside from solicitation by the Internet, the other two specific types of solicitation mentioned in the Note are “solicitation by telephone [or] mail.” Both of the latter refer to communications that are directed at specific individuals in person, rather than advertisements passively made available to all. The more specific example spelled out in the Note is also of this ilk: “The enhancement would apply, for example, if the defendant conducted or participated in a telemarketing campaign that solicited a large number of individuals to purchase fraudulent life insurance policies.”
It is noteworthy, as well, that the Guidelines’ definition does not mention some very common modes of advertising, such as advertising on television, in newspapers and magazines, or on billboards. Those media can reach very large numbers of people, but do not involve the personal approach which is more difficult to refuse, see Kokinda, 497 U.S. at 734, 110 S.Ct. 3115, and therefore more likely to result in harm if there is fraud involved in the offer of sale. An advertisement in the New York Times, for example, reaches hundreds of thousands of people, and can offer specific items for sale at a specific price; a television “infomercial” can reach millions. Yet it would be unusual to refer to such an advertisement — including a classified advertisement or an “infomercial” — as a “solicitation.”
Had it been intended that “mass marketing” would encompass all advertisements offering an item for sale and reaching large numbers of people, one would have expected that the Application Note would say that, rather than indicating a more limited intent. By what it does not mention, then, as well as by what it does, the Note definition suggests that the enhancement does not include any form of advertisement or media for advertising, but only direct approaches to large numbers of targeted persons.
Two traditional principles of statutory interpretation, noscitur a sociis and ejus-dem generis support this result. “The first means that a word is understood by the associated words, the second, that a general term following more specific terms means that the things embraced in the general term are of the same kind as those denoted by the specific terms.” United *734States v. Lacy, 119 F.3d 742, 748 (9th Cir.1997); see also Sutton v. Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, 192 F.3d 826, 834 (9th Cir.1999) (“When a statute contains a list of specific items and a general item, we usually deem the general item to be of the same category or class as the more specifically enumerated items.”). Here, the examples given are a subset of all possible ways in which sellers reach potential buyers, suggesting a meaning for the term in question, “solicitation by ... Internet,” that draws from the characteristics of only that subset of advertising methods.
If newspaper classified ads and television or radio “infomercials” are not “solicitation by ... other means,” I am at a loss to understand why digital classified ads are “solicitation by ... Internet.” Instead, I would understand that term to include only the kind of personal — albeit electronic — direct approach that is available through Internet-accessed e-mail sites (Yahoo, HotMail, and so on) and other new forms of targeted, affirmative-approach marketing on the Internet. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.