Episode 106
Opinion Summary: Medical Marijuana, Inc. v. Horn | Date Decided: 4/2/25 | Case No. 23-365
The question presented in this case is: Whether economic harms resulting from personal injuries are injuries to “business or property by reason of” the defendant's acts for purposes of civil RICO.
The Supreme Court held: Under civil RICO, §1964(c), a plaintiff may seek treble damages for business or property loss even if the loss resulted from a personal injury.
Transcript
Vs.
Speaker A:Horn, case number 23 365.
Speaker A:The question presented in this case is whether economic harms resulting from personal injuries are injuries to business or property by reason of the defendant's acts for purposes of civil rico.
Speaker A:Justice Barrett delivered the opinion of the Court in which Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, and Jackson joined.
Speaker A:Justice Jackson filed a concurring opinion.
Speaker A:Justice Thomas filed a dissenting opinion.
Speaker A:Justice Kavanaugh filed a dissenting opinion in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito joined.
Speaker A:Please note that this opinion is read by an automated voice.
Speaker B:Justice Barrett's majority opinion Seeking relief from his accident related chronic pain, Douglas Horn purchased and began taking Dixie X, a purportedly THC free non psychoactive CBD tincture produced by Medical Marijuana, Inc.
Speaker B:A few weeks later, however, Horn's employer selected him for random drug screening and Horn tested positive for thc.
Speaker B:After he refused to participate in a substance abuse program, his employer fired him.
Speaker B:Horn then sued Medical Marijuana under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, which creates a cause of action for ANI person injured in his business or property by reason of a criminal RICO violation.
Speaker B: USC Section: Speaker B:The District Court granted summary judgment to Medical Marijuana.
Speaker B:Horns lost employment derived from a personal injury ingesting THC.
Speaker B: d in the court's view section: Speaker B:The 2nd Circuit reversed, concluding that Horn had been injured in his business when he lost his job.
Speaker B: held under civil RICO section: Speaker B:Plaintiff may seek treble damages for business or property loss even if the loss resulted from a personal injury.
Speaker B:Pages 4 to 19A.
Speaker B:The sole question before the Court is whether civil RICO categorically bars recovery for business or property losses that derive from a personal injury.
Speaker B: means for purposes of section: Speaker B: Section: Speaker B:The ordinary meaning of injure is to cause harm or damage to or to hurt.
Speaker B: so the meaning of section: Speaker B:A plaintiff has been injured in his business or property in if his business or property has been harmed or damaged.
Speaker B: Even so, section: Speaker B: usiness and property, section: Speaker B:But the business or property requirement operates with respect to the kinds of harm for which the plaintiff can recover, not the cause of the harm for which he seeks relief.
Speaker B:For example, a gas station owner beaten in a robbery cannot recover for his pain and suffering.
Speaker B:But if injuries from the robbery force him to shut his doors, he can recover for the loss of his business.
Speaker B:A plaintiff can seek damages for business or property loss, in other words, regardless of whether the loss resulted from a personal injury.
Speaker B:Pages 56 Medical marijuana argues that while injury ordinarily means harm, it can also refer to the invasion of a legal right.
Speaker B:Valentine's Law Dictionary 627 Seizing on the latter definition, medical marijuana asserts that injured in his business or property means suffered an invasion of a business or property right that is a business or property tort, and medical marijuana contends that the invasion of a personal right never gives rise to a RICO claim.
Speaker B:So if a personal injury tort causes a business or property harm, the plaintiff cannot recast his harm as the basis for a RICO suit.
Speaker B:Medical marijuana in effect, tries to make a term of art argument without the term of art.
Speaker B:True, injury can mean the invasion of a legal right, but even legal dictionaries confirm that injury often means harm or damage.
Speaker B:In any event, when a word carries both an ordinary and specialized meaning, context determines the choice between them.
Speaker B:Here, context favors ordinary meaning.
Speaker B:The statute uses injured, not injury, and the dictionary medical marijuana relies on defines injured only according to its ordinary meaning.
Speaker B: f the word damages in section: Speaker B:The phrase threefold the damages he sustains refers to monetary redress that is, a plaintiff may recover triple the amount that makes him whole.
Speaker B:Pages 6, 9D Medical marijuana ignores the many cases in which the court has used the words injury, harm, and other terms connoting loss interchangeably.
Speaker B:C E G sedima sprlv imrex co.
Speaker B:473 US 479, 497.
Speaker B:The compensable injury necessarily is the harm caused by predicate acts sufficiently related to constitute a pattern.
Speaker B:Anza v.
Speaker B:Ideal Steel Supply Corporation, 547 U.S.
Speaker B:451, 457 Hemi Group, LLC v.
Speaker B:City of New York, 559 U.S.
Speaker B:1.
Speaker B:12.
Speaker B:Medical Marijuana's Tort centric definition of injured also stands in significant tension with the court's holding in Yegiazaryan v.
Speaker B:Smogging, 599 U.S.
Speaker B:533.
Speaker B: is for recovery under section: Speaker B:Yeheyazarian urged the Court to rely on common law principles governing the situs of economic and property injuries just at 5:46-547.
Speaker B: were even germane to section: Speaker B: nt with the thrust of section: Speaker B:48.
Speaker B:The Court reaches the same conclusion here.
Speaker B:Pages 911 While medical marijuana insists that the Court's antitrust precedent settles the question, its reliance on antitrust law is misplaced.
Speaker B:For one, antitrust law does not require plaintiffs to allege business or property injuries that track common law torts.
Speaker B: the Clayton acts and Section: Speaker B:RJR Nabisco, Inc.
Speaker B: pages: Speaker B:In fact, the conclusions medical marijuana draws from its own hypotheticals rely on pure IPS dixit.
Speaker B:It admits, for example, that draining a bank account using a computer password obtained by violence injures the account holder's property.
Speaker B: It concedes that section: Speaker B:And it insists that a human trafficking victim can sue for her business or property harm despite it resulting from her captivity.
Speaker B:But if an antecedent personal injury bar exists, it is unclear why any of these plaintiffs can recover for their losses.
Speaker B:Defining injured by reference to legal rights also raises questions about defining the right at issue.
Speaker B:Medical marijuana's proposed solution that courts should consult the complaint, state law and general tort principles does not work.
Speaker B:Taking those sources in order, the party's disagreement over whether Horn pleaded a personal injury exposes the problems with looking to the plaintiff's complaint.
Speaker B:Relying on state law would create choice of law questions, and looking to general tort law poses problems of its own.
Speaker B:Not only does general tort law not always clearly distinguish between business, personal, and property torts, but it also is difficult to apply when there is no clear analog or majority rule.
Speaker B:Pages 13 to 17G.
Speaker B:Medical Marijuana warns that the Second Circuit's rule will eviscerate RICO's business or property limitation, allowing plaintiffs to transform personal injury claims into RICO suits for treble damages.
Speaker B:But medical marijuana understates the other constraints on civil RICO claims.
Speaker B:Even so, civil RICO has no doubt evolved into something quite different from the original conception of its enactors.
Speaker B:Sedema, 473 US at 500 and medical marijuana is not the first to express concern about the over federalization of state law claims.
Speaker B:As the Court has said before, if the statute allows the undue proliferation of RICO suits, the correction must lie with Congress.
Speaker B:Ida N.
Speaker B: pages: Speaker A:Opinion Congress explicitly directed that RICO shall be liberally construed to effectuate its remedial purposes.
Speaker A: h particular force to section: Speaker A: d atextual hurdles to section: Speaker C:C.
Speaker C:Justice Thomas dissenting Opinion the writ of certiorari should be dismissed as improvidently granted because one the parties dispute an important threshold issue whether Horn suffered a personal injury that the Second Circuit did not address and 2 the intertwined question of how to define a civil RICO injury remains inadequately briefed.
Speaker C:The Court's limited holdings highlight why the grant was improvident as the Court declines to resolve the question presented and offers minimal guidance on what constitutes being injured in his business or property.
Speaker C:The Court's opinion will likely create substantial confusion by defining one word within the disputed statutory phrase while leaving the most critical and outcome determinative issues for another day.
Speaker D:Kavanaugh Dissenting Opinion the term injured in RICO constitutes a tort law term of art, meaning invasion of a legal right, not merely harm or damage.
Speaker D:As the majority holds the statute's text, the Court's antitrust precedents interpreting identical language, and the federalism can and all support excluding personal injury suits from rico even when such injuries result in business or property losses.
Speaker D:The majority's interpretation improperly allows personal injury suits under RICO whenever they result in business or property losses, potentially federalizing large swaths of state tort law.
Speaker D:The majority errs by one employing an ordinary meaning definition of injured rather than its long standing meaning as a term of art in tort law 2 creating an artificial distinction between injured and injury and 3 failing to decide whether lost wages and medical expenses qualify as business or or property injuries under rico.
Speaker D:This approach will generate substantial confusion and unnecessary litigation in lower courts.
Speaker D:Contrary to Congress's decision to categorically exclude personal injury suits from civil RICO.
