Shane Roberts
89 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 173
In 1970, Congress created a powerful litigation weapon to combat organized crime: the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (“RICO”). The government originally used this statute successfully to prosecute notorious organized crime groups like La Cosa Nostra. In addition to its criminal sanctions, RICO also contains a civil enforcement mechanism (“Civil RICO”), which allows private parties to institute suits against persons who participate in the affairs of an enterprise through a pattern of racketeering activity. In Civil RICO litigation, the type of enterprise most commonly pled is one that consists of a group of individuals associated in fact. This Note contends that RICO’s plain language, structure, and legislative history indicate that only groups of individuals—not groups of corporations or other legal entities—can form an association-in-fact enterprise. Despite these strong indications, plaintiffs in the National Prescription Opiate Litigation have filed Civil RICO actions on the theory that several large pharmaceutical corporations formed an association-in-fact enterprise to fuel the opioid epidemic. The success of this litigation very well could rest on the meaning of “enterprise” in the Civil RICO statute. Based on the text, structure, and history of Civil RICO, this Note contends that groups of corporations can never form association-in-fact enterprises.
