Overview

This book was updated in December 2014. 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. Throughout the 1970's, RICO was seldom used outside of the context of the Mafia. In the 1980's, however, civil lawyers noticed section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows victims of racketeering to bring civil claims and recover three times their actual damages. 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. RICO's broad application was the result of Congress' inclusion of mail and wire fraud as two crimes upon which a RICO claim can be brought. 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, 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. The purpose of Grell on RICO is to simplify this very complicated area of the law and to articulate and make more predictable the legal standards that govern such claims.

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In 1990, Jeffrey E. Grell received his juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C., graduating magna cum laude. Jeff began practicing RICO litigation in the early 1990s when he was an associate with Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue and was heavily involved in the BCCI litigation, which presented several high-profile RICO claims. During the late 1990s, Jeff was instrumental in preparing the arguments that were eventually adopted by the U.S. Supreme Court in Klehr v. A.O. Smith Corp., 521 U.S. 179 (1997), which clarified the accrual rule applicable to civil RICO claims. Since 1999, Jeff has taught a RICO seminar at the University of Minnesota Law School and has published and edited the website: ricoact.com. Throughout the 2000s, Jeff has represented numerous clients in RICO litigation and has provided RICO consultation services to lawyers and clients throughout the world. Jeff's insights with regard to anti-racketeering laws have been sought out by many news organizations, including The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Telegraph, NPR's Voice of the Nation, the BBC, U.S. News & World Report, The National Law Journal, The National Review, Investor's Business Daily, Corporate Legal Times, Tech News World, The Boston Globe, Conde Nast Portfolio, La Presse (Montreal, Quebec), The Los Angeles Daily Journal, Cleveland Scene, The Globe & Mail (Toronto, Ontario), The Scotsman, and Primera Hora (Puerto Rico).

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