John / Billybob
I just keep seeing these posts on the illegal threads about citizens being able to bring RICO lawsuits against companies that knowingly employ illegals, so I was wondering if a citizen would also have standing to take it to the ACLU for interfering with the lawful discharge of a city’s obligations to its own citizens.
I agree that we need to be careful with this stuff, but it’s worth discussing, if nothing else.
John,
I’ve always enjoyed your posts. They’re erudite, well written and good humored.
You’re of course right and we’d all be safer if boundaries were respected. The ACLU, however, seems to specialize in probing them for any weakness and breaching them full force whenever possible.
A contrary view of RICO application is excerpted (from http://www.ricoact.com/) below.
Also, When the ACLU acts like a thug during a home invasion and the preferred 12 gauge is out of reach, any close at hand cudgel is a Godsend.
“In 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961-1968. At the time, Congress’ goal was to eliminate the ill-affects of organized crime on the nation’s economy. To put it bluntly, RICO was intended to destroy the Mafia.
Throughout the 1970’s, RICO’s intended purpose and its actual use ran parallel to each other. Seldom was RICO used outside of the context of the Mafia, and it is not an overstatement to say that civil claims under RICO were simply not brought.
In the 1980’s, however, civil lawyers noticed section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows civil claims to be brought by any person injured in their business or property by reason of a RICO violation. Any person who succeeded in establishing a civil RICO claim would automatically receive judgment in the amount of three times their actual damages and would be awarded their costs and attorneys’ fees. The financial windfall available under RICO inspired the creativity of lawyers across the nation, and by the late 1980’s, RICO was a (if not the most) commonly asserted claim in federal court. Everyone was trying to depict civil claims, such as common law fraud, product defect, and breach of contract as criminal wrongdoing, which would in turn enable the filing of a civil RICO action.
RICO’s broad application was the result of Congress’ inclusion of mail and wire fraud as two crimes upon which a RICO claim could be brought. Given the breadth of activities that had historically been criminally prosecuted under the mail and wire fraud statutes, it was not difficult for creative civil attorneys to depict practically any wrongdoing as mail or wire fraud.
During the 1990’s, the federal courts, guided by the United States Supreme Court, engaged in a concerted effort to limit the scope of RICO in the civil context. As a result of this effort, civil litigants must jump many hurdles and avoid many pitfalls before they can expect the financial windfall available under RICO, and RICO has become one of the most complicated and unpredictable areas of the law.
Today, RICO is almost never applied to the Mafia. Instead, it is applied to individuals, businesses, political protest groups, and terrorist organizations. In short, a RICO claim can arise in almost any context...”