Generally courts have not paid much attention to the relatedness requirement (one half of the pattern). The Supreme Court enunciated the characteristics of relatedness in H.J. Inc. v. Northwestern Bell, (1989)(similarity of purposes, results, perpetrators, victims, or methods of commission), but did not indicate whether a RICO plaintiff needed to satisfy all of them, some of them or just one. Defendants have rarely challenged the relatedness of the predicate acts, and there is a dearth of case law examining it.
This changed, at least in the Second Circuit, in 2017 when the Court took a restrictive interpretation, effectively requiring civil RICO plaintiffs to satisfy all of the Supreme Court’s criteria. Reich v. Lopez, 858 F.3d 55, 62. That can be a major hurdle for plaintiffs.
But the Third Circuit has weighed in and held that only one of the Supreme Court’s criteria need be met. Russo v. Lamancusa, 2024 WL 1433637 at *5. Noting the Court had previously described the relatedness requirement as “broad,” it interpreted the Supreme Court’s criteria in the “disjunctive” and “requires only sameness or similarity of any factor.” Thus, it would seem a series of predicate acts would be related if they were all undertaken to harm innocent businesses or consumers (similar “purpose”).
Perhaps unknowingly, this decision created a circuit split. The Third Circuit neither cited Reich nor published its decision. But it will soon be noted throughout the country creating the need for the other circuits to finally deal with relatedness.